Angel Fire

Chapter Eleven

Sam stood transfixed as the crystal clear water splashed across the rocks. She imagined it was cold, but she didn’t care. She was hot and sweaty and wanted nothing more than a bath and to wash her hair.

She turned, looking behind her toward their camp. Angel had put the tent up thirty or forty feet from the river. They appeared to be lower again in elevation as there were only a handful of pines. Most of the trees were the fragrant junipers. Angel was busy gathering firewood and the sound of the gurgling water beckoned her. He’d said he’d give her privacy and she believed him. So she walked a little farther away to where a shallow pool was. It looked inviting. Cold, but inviting. She listened to the sound of the rushing water, then heard other sounds that she’d not taken the time to notice before: birds calling and the wind as it rustled the lone pine near her. It was nice. It was relaxing. She looked over once again and Angel had his back to her.

“No sense in being modest,” she murmured.

She kicked her boots off, then pushed her jeans and underwear down in one motion. She had a flannel shirt over her T-shirt. She’d stripped off Tori’s sweatshirt that morning and tied it around her waist. She paused to smell the T-shirt and wrinkled her nose.

She decided to rinse it out. It might not be dry by morning but at least it would be cleaner. The tiny bar of soap Angel had given her was clutched in her hand as she took a step into the water.

“Jesus,” she hissed as the cold penetrated all the way to her bones.

She reminded herself that she didn’t care how cold it was. She walked in, past her knees, then nearly to her waist. That was as deep as the pool was. She silently counted to three, then sunk down over her head. She stood up quickly, shivering. But she ignored the cold. She lathered the soap and washed herself, feeling better already. She dipped under again, wetting her hair thoroughly before rubbing soap in it. It wasn’t the silky smooth shampoo she was used to but it did the job.

She was absolutely freezing when she got out and she used her shirt to dry herself a little before putting her jeans back on. She felt ten times better. Cold, but better.

When she made her way back to camp, Angel was nowhere to be found. She had a moment of panic as she looked around her.

“Angel?” she called. “Angel?”

Had he left her? But no, his pack was there. The tent was already assembled. Then she heard movement and turned, finding him walking along the stream from the opposite direction as she’d been. Apparently he’d taken his own bath.

“Feel better?”

She nodded. “Much.”

“Me too.”

She relaxed again, although that thought struck her as odd. She was more relaxed in her captor’s presence than not. Well, there was the threat of mountain lions.

She motioned to the water. “You think there might be trout in there?”

“I imagine so.”

“Doesn’t that sound…you know, good for dinner?”

He raised his eyebrows. “You want to go fishing?”

“Well, I was thinking maybe you would,” she said, smiling slightly. “Fresh fish sounds so much better than one of those things you’ve got there,” she said, pointing to his pack. She wiped the smile from her face, realizing how that sounded. He could be starving her if he wanted to. “Not that I’m complaining,” she added quickly. Then, “Much.” He actually laughed and she relaxed again. “Is that a yes?”

“I guess I could try. I’ll have to improvise. I don’t carry fishing gear,” he said.

“Maybe on your next trip, you should add that to your list.”

He was smiling as he rummaged through his pack. She smiled too, but she was feeling blue. Fishing made her think of Tori. Talking about Tori made her feel better.

“I don’t really like to fish,” she said. He looked up but said nothing. “Tori loves it. We have this boat. It’s a cabin cruiser. She keeps it on Eagle Mountain Lake, just west of Fort Worth,” she said. “Casey and Tori go fishing. Leslie and I talk and read and sit in the sun.” She paused. “And bring them a cold beer on request.” She sighed, wondering if she would ever get to do that again. “Usually on the days we plan to cook the fish they caught, they don’t catch anything,” she said with a quick laugh. She met his gaze when he looked at her again. “I’m sorry,” she said quickly. “I miss her.”

He nodded and held up a piece of wire. “I can bend it into a hook.”

“What will we use for line?”

“More importantly, what will we use for bait?”

“Oh.” She hadn’t even thought of that.

Angel tossed her the rope. “Untwist the twine,” he said. “I’ll see if I can find something.”

She started on her task while keeping an eye on him. He went to a fallen tree and started pulling off the bark. After a few minutes, he held up what appeared to be a beetle of some sort. He walked back over, looking skeptically at her.

“Not sure it’ll work,” he said.

She watched silently as he made a loop with the wire then tied the twine to it. About a foot higher, he made a knot in the twine and secured a small rock.

“For weight,” he said to her unasked question.

He made a crude hook, then unceremoniously impaled the unlucky beetle. Without being asked, she followed him to the stream. He walked downstream a bit, then tossed the twine in the water upstream. The water carried it downstream past them and he pulled it out. The beetle was gone.

“There’s more where that came from.”

He handed her the fishing twine, and he nearly jogged back to the fallen tree. He brought another beetle with him and repeated the impaling process. This time, he bent the wire a bit at the tip. Again, he tossed it in the stream, letting it float down. This time, the beetle was still on there. He repeated this several times before he got a hit. He jerked the line out of the water and Sam’s eyes widened as a trout came out with it. Disappointment quickly followed as the fish twisted off the make-do hook and landed safely back in the water. Unfortunately, the beetle was gone.

“Damn, that was close,” she said excitedly. “Is it bad for me to say that I could almost taste him?”

“Well, we better catch one. Now you’ve got me salivating for fresh trout too.”

After a third beetle was sacrificed, the line was once again tossed into the stream. Sam stood nearby, hands rubbing together in anticipation. On his fourth try, a trout hit and he jerked the line hard. Sam saw the twine go taut, then a trout jumped out of the water much like the first one. This one, though, did not twist free.

“You got one, you got one!” she said, clapping her hands.

“He’s not on shore yet,” Angel warned as he backed away from the water, pulling the twine with him.

Finally, the fish was securely out of the water and it was a nice big one. Sam felt sorry for it as it flipped back and forth on the rocky shore. But only for a moment. All she had to do was remember the meals she’d had the last two nights.

Angel held him up, offering him to Sam. Sam held up her hands and shook her head as she took a step backward.

“Oh, no. No, no,” she said. “I don’t actually clean them,” she said. “I cook them.”

“But I caught him,” Angel said. “Seems fair that you should clean him.”

Sam grinned. “That logic doesn’t work for Tori, it’s certainly not going to work for you.” Then she laughed. “Of course, if you want to give me your knife…”

“No. On second thought, I should probably clean him.”

“Thought that would be your answer.” She glanced over to their campsite. “So, you do have something to cook him in, right?”

He motioned to his pack with a toss of his head. “There’s some cooking gear. Not much. Help yourself.”

As she sorted through the stuff in his pack, it occurred to her that they were not exactly acting like hostage and captor. Had they really ever? Of course, for her, that was a good thing. She’d taken enough psychology classes, had sat through enough training seminars on hostage situations to know that the more the abductor thought of the hostage as a person and not a prisoner, the better the chance for a positive outcome.

She turned her head, watching for a moment as he knelt by the stream, cleaning the fish. It would be a lot less stressful if she thought of this as a backpacking trip and not a forced march on the mountain with a killer. But then, there was the girl. Sam could still see her bloody face, her stained clothes. She could still see Leslie lying on the ground from a wound he inflicted. She closed her eyes for a moment and shook those thoughts away. He was Angel and she was Sam, and she was going to cook them dinner.

“Find what you need?”

“I think…I think I can use this,” she said, holding up a small pan. She looked at the trout he held. It wouldn’t fit.

As if reading her mind, he said, “I can cut it up.”

“Okay. That’ll work.” She moved other stuff around in his pack. “Seasonings?” she asked hopefully. “And a side dish?”

“A side dish?”

“Something with rice or potatoes?”

“Yeah, there’s some instant mashed potatoes,” he said.

She smiled. “Then we’ll practically have a feast.”

* * *

“This is where we’ll sleep?” Tori looked around at the slope. “On the side of a goddamn mountain?”

“You were the one who wanted to push on,” Cameron reminded her.

That was true. Tori blew out her breath as she let her pack fall to the ground. Andrea was already collecting firewood. Cameron was assembling their tent. Yeah, their tent. Tori looked at her pack, then untied her own tent. God, what she wouldn’t give to have Sam with her right now. She’d been able to push her loneliness away for the most part. She was a part of the rescue mission, that was the important thing. Only this rescue mission wasn’t like anything she’d been a part of before. Cameron Ross was calling the shots and her sense of urgency was lacking, in Tori’s opinion. But hell, they were in the middle of goddamn nowhere.

On the side of a mountain.

She shook out her tent and went about assembling it. They were on a rocky slope, and she moved as many rocks out of the way as she could. Cameron had taken their tent into the woods although the slope seemed even more drastic there than on the edge. Well, maybe they wanted privacy.

“If we don’t come to a stream soon, we’re going to be in trouble,” Andrea said as she shook her water bottle. “I have one more full one. How are you two?”

“Yeah, me too,” Cameron said. “Enough for dinner and coffee.”

Great.

“But we’ll find water,” Cameron said. “Angel’s in the same situation we are.”

Tori was too tired to comment. She walked over to the fire ring Andrea had assembled, then glanced around, looking for downed wood to add to the pile. She walked alone into the woods, picking up small limbs as she went. Loneliness settled on her shoulders, and she tried to shake it off. It was almost surreal—this trek through the woods that she’d been on. One minute they’d been resting comfortably at the RV, enjoying the evening. If Casey had ever gotten a fire going, they’d have sat around it while dinner was cooking. They’d have beer. Or wine. Most likely Sam and Leslie would have brought out a bottle of wine and she and Casey would have pretended to enjoy it more than the beer. Then they would have wanted something with a bit more substance…like that nice bottle of scotch she’d brought.

But no. They’d answered the call. Like they were trained to do. When someone was in distress, you went. No questions asked. And she and Casey had gone. And now Sam was missing. Abducted by the same man who’d killed that family, the same man who had taken three million dollars, the same man who had killed his accomplices.

And that same man had Sam.

And she couldn’t do a goddamn thing about it.