Primal Force Page 23

  Jori pulled up the hood of her jacket and tied it tightly around her face then leaned her head against Sam’s. “You have to stay here. I’ll crack a window but leave the engine running for you for heat.”

  Why was she talking to a dog? Because she badly needed to bounce her thoughts off someone. And Sam was watching her with the intensity she displayed when learning a new game. Her ears were up, eyebrows twitching, her body ready to react as her gaze shifted intently with Jori’s every move. As if she might be asked to repeat them. Sam was more than a warm body. Sam knew things.

  Jori pushed open her door. As she did so, she heard sounds of an engine close by. Her heart stumbled and she scrambled out onto the road. Another car. Someone to help her.

  She moved to the front of her truck so she could be seen, head swiveling left and right to catch sight of approaching headlights. But nothing moved in either direction through the dreary blue-gray morning misted by sleet. The only light, other than her own vehicle, came from a house across the valley. That faint light might as well have been from a star. Too far away to help her.

  After a few miserable seconds more, Jori realized the engine sounds she heard were coming from the wreckage. That sent a shudder through her . Movie and video images of exploding autos papered her thoughts. Fuel leaks igniting. Greasy engine parts catching fire.

  “No. Focus, dammit.” The shouted words brought her back to reality. An empty freezing stretch of roadway. Sheet bouncing in micro beads off her face. No other human sound in the world. Only the musical tinkle in the overhead branches of freezing rain turning into ice crystals.

  A shudder of cowardice quaked through her. She was already cold, scared, and clumsy. She wasn’t very brave, and she certainly wasn’t a trail climber or outdoorsperson. She might only end up another casualty. But she was all the help Law was going to get. For now.

  Until she got to Law. Law would know what to do. But she had to get to him first.

  Holding that thought in her mind, Jori made her way to the back of her SUV. She had on boots, but they weren’t especially helpful with traction on the slick road.

  She shoved her cell phone into her pocket and discovered long-forgotten gloves. Happily she tugged them on.

  Sam barked as she opened the hatch, and jumped with paws over the backseat.

  “No. Sam. Stay.”

  She began sorting through things. Yes, the first-aid kit was there. And the bulkier auto emergency kit. And two blankets. She set the first two items on the ground and tucked the two blankets under an arm.

  As she reached up to close the hatch Sam launched herself across the backseat and out the rear of the SUV.

  “No, Sam.” Jori turned to go after her and nearly lost her footing.

  Sam stood watching her for a second then barked and headed off down the road, nose to the roadway.

  Jori shook her head. She didn’t have time to chase Sam. With luck the dog would follow her.

  She picked up her kits and moved to the edge of the road. The first few feet of the drop-off were steep, as if a giant shovel had gouged a piece out of the hillside.

  Sam barked. She was twenty feet away, back toward the curving crest where the truck had left the highway. She barked again, several excited barks, and began pacing back and forth in a lazy eight, spinning once, then retracing herself and shaping a zigzag pattern of sniffs as she walked toward the rim.

  Jori knew what Sam was looking for. The same thing she was. She could only guess that perhaps Sam, familiar with Law’s truck, had found the smell of Law’s tires on the roadway, recognized them, and knew the trail went downhill. The dog might not know there was a wreck ahead. But she scented something that had her dancing as her barks became more strident and urgent.

  Jori half walked, half slid her way up to where Sam stood on the roadway, trying to find a way to step down into the valley.

  “Okay. Okay.” She was yelling because she had moved out of the sheltering mountain’s curvature. The wind whipped up from the valley, hitting her full in the face. Perhaps Sam had caught the scent of Law and/or his truck in the wind. Sam’s scent base would include things like Law’s truck in which she regularly rode.

  Jori turned her back and moved to the edge, off the roadway. There was a narrow strip of black-tarred gravel, not even enough to call a shoulder, and then nothing. She put down her things and reached for the flashlight. The beam showed her a sheer drop of about six feet, the same as before. She couldn’t handle that.

  She began walking the rim, pointing the flashlight over the edge. Sam danced along beside her, barking occasionally, as if to hurry her along. Finally, about ten yards farther, she found a slope of earth. Not more than two feet wide. It angled downward like a ramp dug into the hillside.

  Sam at her heels, Jori hurried back to pick up her things, swearing when she nearly fell again. The road’s smooth surface was quickly becoming a skating rink. Surely once she was off the road into the dirt and trees, the ground would be drier, not yet frozen and thus easier to navigate. She thought for two seconds about putting Sam on a leash. But if she fell or Sam did, and they got tangled up in the underbrush, the leash could break Sam’s neck or strangle her. No, the dog was better left off leash.

  Sam watched her, head down and still, as Jori touched first one boot and then the other over the edge. Her arms were full. She held her flashlight in the same hand as the auto kit. No way to catch herself if she went down. But she needed the supplies.

  Her right foot slipped a little in wet mud but her left foot found solid footing in rougher rutted ground strewn with gravel, sticks, and leaves. Slowly, one foot at a time, she moved down the makeshift ramp until she was only head and shoulders above ground.

  This seemed to be Sam’s signal that it was time for action.

  Sam moved in behind her, snuffling as she went.

  “No, Sam. Stop.” Sam was prodding her, nose at the middle of Jori’s back.

  “Okay, good girl. Go slow, Sam.” Jori spoke automatically. Her concentration was on the ground in front of her. Or rather below her. The ramp didn’t extend very far. About four feet ahead, it sluiced back into the hillside.

  “Crap.” Jori froze. What was she going to do now?

  Impatient with the delay, Sam barked and pushed past her.

  “Aaah!”

  Dumped off the trail by the dog, Jori fell several feet and began sliding on a combination of rain, mud, and soaked leaves. First on one knee and then on her butt, she pinwheeled down a steep slope interspersed with tree trunks, leafless limbs, and vines that looped through the undergrowth like trip wires. A tree limb struck her right wrist, forcing her fingers to open and release one of the kits.

  “Crap!” Angry tears filled her eyes.

  With her free hand she grabbed a vine and jerked herself to a stop. It happened so fast she couldn’t process it all. She felt nothing for a second but relief that she wasn’t dead.

  Then pain flared to life. Her wrist. Her shoulder. Her knees.

  “Dammit, Sam!”

  She sat up and looked around. She could still see the rim of the road backlit by the gray sky maybe twenty-five feet above her. She hadn’t fallen that far. But she’d lost the auto emergency kit. No flares. No blankets. She didn’t want to waste time looking for them.

  Her flashlight lay farther down the slope, its light half buried in a tangle of dry brush. She climbed to her feet, ignoring the pain in her ankle, and flexed her hand around the first-aid kit. She had that much.

  The silence was suddenly split with a dog’s excited barks, from below her.

  “Sam! Law?” Sam had found Law. She was sure of it.

  Jori scrambled to stay on her feet as she began moving through the treacherous but less steep woodlands. The sounds of Sam’s barks were her beacon. Sam had found Law. Law would know what to do. All she had to do was get to him.

  She paused when she finally saw the truck. It had landed on or rolled onto its roof. The front end was crumpled and the tires were a
ll shredded. But the cab remained intact. Everything was still. No Sam. No barking. No sounds but the moaning of the wind high overhead and the growing silvery jingle of icicles.

  Why wasn’t Sam still barking?

  Jori moved forward slowly. She just knew it was going to end well. That Law was hurt maybe. But surely, he would be okay. She forced her feet forward. Her heart thumping so hard her body shook with each beat. The wind shoved her along, almost against her will. Whatever was here, whatever she found, she’d have to deal with it.

  “Oh, Law.”

  Jori approached the passenger side, set her teeth over her bottom lip, and ducked her head to aim her flashlight into the truck cab. All the windows were broken out, making access easy.

  Law lay on his back on the roof at an awkward angle. Another man’s body hung, nightmare-like, from the front seat on the driver’s side. But her only focus was Law.

  His face was wet with blood. Sam had wedged herself in and around him for protection. But it was the look in his eyes when he recognized her that stunned her.

  “Jori? What the hell are you doing here?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  Jori’s reply was pure reflex. Nothing close to the got-my-act-together quip it seemed to be. Her voice was hoarse from the cold. She was soaked and shaking. Her thighs trembled from exertion. Her shoulder and left hand ached from the fall she’d taken. She hadn’t any expectations beyond hoping to find Law alive.

  Was he even glad to see her?

  Law blinked, as if he didn’t trust what he was looking at. Then his expression turned grim. “As long as you’re here you can be useful. First, move this doodle off me.” His voice was curt but calm.

  Still reeling from his lack of welcome, she crawled in far enough to reach out and grab the edge of Sam’s service vest. She tugged. “Come on, Sam.”

  Sam wiggled back, ready to stand her ground. She could probably smell Law’s injuries and wanted to protect him.

  “It’s okay. You’re a good girl. Yes, you found him.” Jori’s hand went to her pocket where she kept treats. It was an automatic move made dozens of times in a day, yet she was surprised to find a few nuggets. She held out one. “Good Sam. Get your treat.”

  Sam nosed the nugget in Jori’s palm but then looked back at Law.

  Law spoke up. “Yes. Good Sam. You get a treat.”

  For the first time since she’d known him, he’d used the high-energy excited voice of a K-9 trainer to motivate Sam. It worked.

  Sam crawled forward and took the treat. As she reached for several more, Jori noticed that Law wasn’t looking at her. In fact, he seemed oddly still. He didn’t try to shove Sam or even pet her. His body was at an awkward angle, his hands out of sight. Just how injured was he?

  Frowning, Jori tugged on Sam’s vest harder. “Come on, girl. Move over here.”

  This time Sam did move. Six inches. Then she looked back over her shoulder with twitching nose and ears on full alert.

  Jori looked at Law. “How badly hurt are you?”

  Instead of answering, he half rolled onto his stomach so that Jori could see his hands were bound by flex cuffs. “Find something to cut these with. I need to get to Becker before he bleeds out.”

  For the first time since crawling into the cab, Jori let her gaze move from Law’s face. The first thing she saw was that she was kneeling not in just rainwater but in mud mixed with blood. Something awful had happened. Law was cuffed. A prisoner.

  A strong reaction spasmed her stomach. For one wild second she thought she might be ill.

  “Jori. Jori, look at me. It’s not my blood.”

  She opened her eyes to focus again on Law. Rolled back onto his bound hands, he stared at her with a steady penetrating gaze.

  “Go to the truck bed. Open my toolbox. Find pliers, wire cutters. Something with a sharp edge.”

  Jori crawled backward, sparing only a quick glance at the man strung upside down in his shoulder harness and seat belt. There was blood dripping from his shoulder but it came from higher up. His eyes were open but he didn’t seem to know she was there. A dozen questions about why he had done this to Law flashed through her mind, but it wasn’t time to get answers to any of them.

  One more quick glance at Law’s grim face and she was backing out into the cold.

  The rain had shifted over to sleet. BB-sized bits of ice on the push of the wind whipped and stung her face. The ground around her was growing white. As she moved toward the bed of the overturned truck, steadying herself on the damaged metal side, she realized her right hand was bare. She hadn’t noticed when or how she’d lost her glove. It didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered. Not even Law’s less-than-happy-to-see-you greeting mattered at the moment. She had a job to do. Find a tool that could free him.

  She had to drop to her knees to get in under the bed to locate the toolbox. The lid was bent, and when she pulled on the latch nothing happened. She tugged twice more, her cold fingers beginning to cramp.

  “Crap.” She shimmied back on her knees and looked around for something she could use as a lever to pry it open. A few feet away she saw what looked like a jack handle. She stood up and took a few hurried steps. And fell.

  “Shit!”

  “Jori?” She heard worry in Law’s tone but she didn’t have time to reassure him.

  She came to her feet, trying to dig her heels into the freezing ground with each step. Get the jack handle. It became her entire focus. Five steps and she had it.

  She made it back without falling again, and ducked under the side of the truck bed. She jammed one end of the tool into the latch of the toolbox and jerked. Nothing. She jerked several more times. It wouldn’t give.

  “Screw this. Open up!” This time she half stood and as she jerked she added the full weight of her body to the jack handle.

  The truck rocked back and forth, making sickening sounds as metal ground against metal—and then the truck began to slide.

  Frightened, Jori fell back, bumping her head on the lip of the truck bed as she scrambled crab-like for safety. She heard Sam bark and a man cry out in pain. Almost as quickly as it began, the trunk shimmied to a stop barely a yard away. It was enough to reveal the ground scattered with the contents of the toolbox.

  “Yes.” Jori pumped her fist in the air and then grabbed up an assortment of wrenches, wire cutters, pliers, anything that looked like it might cut something. With an armful of items, she scrambled back to the passenger side and knelt down.

  “Having fun?” Law’s voice sounded strangled.

  “Fuckin’ dandy.” She couldn’t see him well. The flashlight she’d left in the cab had rolled into the front section during the slide.

  She dropped her tools, moved to the front, and reached a hand under the headrest to retrieve it. As she did so the man in the front suddenly reached up and grabbed her by her hoodie.

  “Who are you?”

  Startled, Jori blindly grasped the first thing to come under her searching hand and swung hard. Her assailant cried out and released his hold. She snatched up the flashlight and shone it in his eyes. “I’m the idiot trying to save your life, asshole!”

  She scuttled on her knees to the back section again and shone the light on Law.

  This time there was a look of doubt on his face. “Jori. You seem a little overexcited.”

  “You think?” Her breath was coming quickly, taking in the cold that made her chest ache.

  “Ease back, just a tad, before you wear yourself out.”

  “Turn over. Now.”

  The light caught a flash in his eye, something she didn’t have time to process before he began squirming to turn onto his stomach. The entire time, Sam lay beside him, whining softly as if cooing to a child.

  Jori pointed the light on her collection to choose a tool. But the light bounced around. She grabbed the flashlight in both hands to steady it. Of course, she was bordering on hysteria. She could feel it creeping in. But she pus
hed it back down into whatever hole in her psyche it had slunk out of. Time to fly apart later.

  She chose the oversized wire cutters and, going flat on her belly, slid in beside Law. That’s when she realized his prosthesis was missing. No time to wonder. She felt with her hands for a spot to cut and then slid the blades in under his right wrist.

  The cuffs came off with ease. Two quick snips.

  The first thing Law did was lever up, grab her by the shoulders. Hard.

  Furious with him, she tried to push him away. He held her tight. His eyes were bright but his face was pale.

  “You’re no illusion.” For the first time he looked close to happy to see her. But Jori was too cold, achy, tired, scared, and worried to accept his version of an apology.

  “Lucky for you. Now let go of me. I’ve got to go find help.”

  “The hell you are.” She tried to move away but he continued to hold her in place with what seemed like very little effort on his part. “You aren’t dressed for a long hike. You don’t know the terrain. You could get lost.”

  “Or fall and break a leg, and freeze to death. I know that.” Her voice sounded so reasonable. As if she were saying second place wasn’t so bad. She didn’t know why.

  “Look at me, Jori. You’re not going. And I don’t have a goddamn leg to stand on—literally. So we’re both going to stay right here until the storm blows through. At least we’ve got some shelter.”

  Jori’s gaze went to the man watching them both with hot feverish eyes of pain. He was breathing in short rapid gusts.

  “You’ve got to help me get him down and find where he’s bleeding. We can ride this out together.”

  Jori held his gaze. She suspected Law could very well take care of his former kidnapper, or whatever he was, alone. But she wasn’t perfectly sure she could find help.

  “Maybe I’m not equipped to go for help. But I know who is.”

  She looked at Sam, who came instantly alert as if she’d called her name. “Sam’s been taught to go for help when her owner is in trouble. We can send her for help.”