Blood lure

If it was poisoned, so be it. She wouldn't have missed the spurious magic of the moment for the promise of ten lifetimes.

Chapter 18

Because she was truly thirsty, A

The body satisfied, the mind was able to expand its focus past where the next drink was coming from. Carrying the bottle, empty now but far too interesting with its puncture marks to be left behind, she moved partly to get the blood flowing and because, gift or no gift, she did not want to linger in a place she'd been found out.

Walking slowly into the trees, where morning's light had not yet cleared away the shadows, she put together a rudimentary plan. Had the water not made its miraculous appearance, she would have headed down toward camps and creeks immediately. Given a short reprieve, she needed to go back to where she'd left her pack. Not to find, capture or confront evil-doers, she promised herself, but to look without being seen and to get her stuff back, including the 35-mm camera with film containing pictures of her attacker's bootprints. Or Gunga Din's bootprints. Could the roller of the rock and the bringer of water be one and the same? It made even less sense than A

Taking her time, moving with an ear to her own footfalls and an eye to keeping trees or rocks between her and the ridge where the pack had been left, she walked in a long ellipse so she would come upon the place from the north and above. This time she would be the stalker.

Movement and the return of the sun restored her equilibrium. Hunger, burning lightly in her middle, was a pleasant companion, reminding her she was alive and had much to look forward to. Within thirty minutes she had wended her surreptitious way back to where her reckless sprint had begun the evening before. Above and to the right of the den's-if it was in fact a den-entrance she made herself comfortable, her back to a green and gold boulder rapidly warming in the sun. The branches of two pines, tangled like ancient lovers fighting, created a pierced screen between her and the world.

A woman in purdah, A

The boulder that had been pushed down toward her had come to rest below the pack, maybe six yards. Beneath its bulk poked the crushed arms of a small tree. From her elevated vantage point it wasn't hard to see the tree branches as the scaly withered arms and legs of a flattened witch. A

The mind game shifted and she saw herself beneath the rock. Her own life crushed, her own legs and arms made sere and dry. That, after all, was what had been intended. She thought about that for a while. It hurt her feelings and offended her delicate sensibilities but, sequestered in the warmth of the sun, safe from prying eyes, she wasn't afraid.

The rock and the tree milked for all the drama they had to offer, her thoughts moved on.

The brush that had been banked against the bottom of the rocky outcrop, partially obscuring the slot in the stones, had been dragged away. The opening was considerably larger than she'd imagined, several feet high and eight or ten feet wide, tapering down at either end. A nice place to pass the winter or hide out from the law.

Since it was not near de

Snug on her hillside, the thought of bears in residence did little more than delay her slide and scramble down a few minutes more. Her long watch was for two-legged animals. An hour passed. A

One of the items tumbled from her abandoned pack was a one-liter wide-mouth plastic water bottle. With the mountainside warming, A

She was too old or too crusty to pass for Snow White or Rose Red. She could not expect a bear to bring her a beverage a second time.

Shortly after nine-thirty, convinced there was no one near and grown significantly thirsty again, she left her secluded niche and worked her way as quietly as she could on the sliding scree to the gash beneath the rocky overhang. There she waited once more. No sounds from within. No cool exhalation that she'd come to expect out of the mouths of big caves. This, then, was what it looked like; a shallow grotto beneath the rock. Still, she skirted it respectfully, careful her shadow did not fall across the mouth, and went to her pack.

The camera was there, though the film, both exposed and unused, was gone. The NPS radio Ruick had issued her was gone. Her flashlight had been smashed. The greatest disappointment was the water bottle she'd packed in. It was undamaged but the contents had been poured out. Her portable water filter was missing. All the evidence envelopes were gone. Her notebook had been left but the pages with writing on them had been ripped out and taken. Near as she could tell, everything else had been ignored: map, underwear, socks, pens remained.

Whoever had messed with it had cared only that she go away and go away with no record of the things she'd seen. The items taken or destroyed decreed she must hike out and soon.

Why empty this water bottle, steal the filter, then go to the trouble of tracking her down to leave a gift of water outside her hiding place? Why try to kill her with rock and gun, then let her sleep unharmed through the night? Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Or, like the werewolf, kind and humane by day, ravening beast by night?

Moving quickly, not allowing herself to mourn the loss of the water, she stuffed the goods, including the sleeping bag, willy-nilly into the main compartment of the pack.

Having finished, she turned her attention to the den. During her musings and stuffings she'd never once turned her back on it. Without the flashlight, she was even less anxious to go poking into its shadows than she had been before. But there was nothing for it. Either she looked as best she could or the inspection was put off a minimum of twenty-four hours while she hiked out and made her report.

Approaching the gash from the side, she went down on one knee in the ru