Raymond gave her a wink, “See you in four days.”
Hunter had a change of clothes in her trique bag; a violet tee shirt with a bright lightning bolt running from her left shoulder to her right hip, and a well-worn pair of Wrangler jeans, along with an old pair of Asics running shoes. There was also the concealed carry holster so she would still be armed. She changed in the restroom at the hospital, and walked to where her friend, Lynne had dropped off the pickup in the hospital parking lot and, as prearranged, left the keys under the left front fender and balanced on top of the tire.
Too bad Lynne was moving soon. She and her husband, Mike, were travelling to Boerne, in the Texas hill country, where they had a new business going. It was making enough money they decided it made more sense to be closer to it than three hundred miles away. Hunter would miss them both.
She used the keys and opened the driver’s door, tossed her bag in the passenger’s seat, and slid behind the wheel. She adjusted her concealed holster so the baggy tee shirt covered the Glock’s handle. With that, she started the pickup, put in a new audiobook story from Mark Pryor, and drove through town and on to the Terlingua road, State Highway 118. The narrator, Todd McLaren was perfect for Pryor’s story.
Hunter was soon lost in the story. As she approached Elephant Mountain, she spotted what looked like a wreck in the road. Her attention was jerked back from Paris to the here and now, in West Texas, and a woman with a bloody head staggering around her vehicle on the highway.
It was Erica, and the children were nowhere in sight.
Chapter 10
Hunter parked fast, skidding the tires the last ten feet, and hopped out to run to Erica. Dario’s mother had a long cut across her forehead at the hairline, but it wasn’t deep. “It’s okay, Erica, the cut’s not deep. Cuts on the head bleed a lot.”
Erica regained her breath and, crying, said, “The boys, they ran into the desert. One of the men chased them.”
There was no other vehicle around. Hunter said, “What happened here?”
She wiped her eyes and nose, “A big pickup was sideways across the road, and two men stood by it. They waved for help, so we stopped. As I got out, Adan recognized one of the men and shouted for me to get in and drive away, but it was too late. They had the passenger door open and had both boys by the arms.”
Hunter felt a sense of dread, “What did the men do?”
“I ran at them and hit them, telling those bastardos to release the boys, but the big one, he pushed Adan to his partner, who tried to hold both boys, and he hit me with something. When I came to, I was on the road, my head bleeding and the children gone.”
“Did you see where they went?”
Erica thought in silence, and Hunter waited a full minute until she spoke. “I remember the big truck driving away, and hearing the other man yell at the boys. Oh, and I remember the sound of fence being crossed, like the wires twanging.”
She looked at the woman’s head. The edges of the wound were curling up and back, resembling lips, and evidence of a hard blow. Hunter went to her pickup and got a quart bottle of water and returned to wash off Erica’s face and the wound. She walked the injured woman to her pickup and pulled out her emergency medicine kit, removing a tube of Neosporin antibiotic cream, sterile pads and a roll of adhesive tape. Hunter had good skills and in several minutes had Erica’s head bandaged and treated.
No vehicles came by, and Hunter told Erica to move her car off the road while she moved her pickup. They parked side by side on a caliche road that ended at a ranch gate. Hunter took Erica’s shoulders and said, “I have to go after them, you understand?”
“Yes. Do you have a gun?”
“I do.”
“Shoot those men it they hurt either of the boys.”
Hunter didn’t say yes, but she didn’t say no, either. “I’ll be on their trail. Here’s my phone, call for the police, or any law enforcement agency, okay? Show them which way I will go.”
“I will.”
Hunter touched her shoulder again, took a large swig of water, then pulled on a faded, burnt orange Texas Longhorns ball cap given to her by a friend who said the actor Matthew McConaughey tossed it to her at one of the Longhorn’s home games in Austin.
Hunter walked the fence and found their tracks with little trouble. She pushed down the top strand of barbed wire to step across the fence into the scrub desert pasture beyond it. She spotted the tracks near the fence, but as the man and two boys moved away from the road and deeper into the desert, Hunter had to slow to keep from losing her quarry. More rocks and tufts of grass and creosote and various sorts of cactus made tracking more difficult, but because the man wasn’t trying to hide his trail, she continued to follow without a lot of difficulty.
Fifteen minutes later, Hunter caught a glimpse of them as they went over a slight swale near a small hillock. She broke into a fast trot and covered ground quickly, reaching the spot on the swale where she’d last seen them. There were flecks of red on the soil. Hunter realized it was blood, but didn’t know who, or how badly they were injured. She searched the ground for tracks and slowed her pace as she pursued the two boys and the man.
The tracks veered right, then left. Hunter studied them and saw where one of the boys broke free and dodged the man, then raced across the desert.
She had a decision to make, which trail to follow, and she decided the one with the man and boy, because that boy was in the most danger.
Desert terrain stretched before her, with austere, steep-sided mountains on both sides of a wide, flat bottomed canyon where the tracks were visible in the deeper stony soil. They followed the canyon, going arrow straight.
Hunter trotted after them as the day grew hotter and she felt it beat down on her shoulders and ball cap-covered head like a heated blanket.
There was the always-present pack of Eclipse gum in her pocket, and she popped two of them out of the foil and chewed. Flavor and wetness filled her mouth. It was a temporary fix, but good enough for now. She moved into a trot and continued on the clear trail, glancing left and right occasionally out of habit.