“What? You-you’re like steel.”

He felt tension radiating throughout his body and knew he couldn’t do anything about it. How could she not be aware of it? What should he say, that he’d just seen something that scared the hell out of him and was going to do the same to her?

Instead he said, “We have to get going. Now.”

“Now? You’re- Without lunch?”

She’d already pulled out of his embrace and was staring up at him, her need-hazed eyes filled with question, doubt, a return to fear, distrust of everything about him. She didn’t care any more about food than he did.

“Go ahead. Eat. I’ve got-”

“You’ve got to what? Damn it, Cord! For once in your life be honest with me! I can’t take any more of this!”

It could be a hiker, a ranger. The human or humans out there weren’t necessarily killers. “Don’t you want to find him?”

Her look, hard and cold and hot all at the same time sliced into him. He already regretted what he’d said, but the words had spewed from him in a knee-jerk attempt to distance himself from her outburst. Although he readied himself for more of het anger, she whirled away and stood with her back to him, fists knotted at her side. “Do it, Cord,” she snapped. “Find him so I can get away from you.”


Although her head pounded, Shannon gave no thought to asking Cord to stop and allow her to rest. Something had happened to him, changed him, just as they were on the brink of-On the brink of what? If only she could think beyond her own emotions, but she should know better than to even try. Cord brought out so much in her, made her crazy.

Maybe, she thought without seeing any humor in it, she was already crazy and had been since the day he walked into her life.

There was incredible danger in thinking back to what had nearly happened between them earlier today, but putting their embrace and what went with it, and the words she’d thrown at him, behind her was impossible. She should know that by now.

They’d come close, so close that it scared her. She’d needed his understanding and compassion and love, needed it desperately. She no more could have kept that from him than she could have once not told him she loved him.

When he’d trusted her with what he carried inside him of the wisdom of the Taos Indians, he’d given her a precious gift she’d just begun to understand. She’d acknowledged his offer in the only way her heart had known, by showing him that she, too, believed in the wisdom of his people.

And then something had happened. He’d heard, or seen, or remembered, and something had ripped him from her and she’d lashed out.

Only something to do with Matt could have done that.

She’d thought his pace relentless earlier but his determination now frightened her so much that she couldn’t remember what she’d said to him, just that those words had been the last they’d spoken to each other. His forward progress was only slightly faster than it had been before because every few feet he had to search and reassess.

During those times when his entire attention was focused on the ground and his hands knotted and his knuckles turned white, she almost begged him to tell her the truth. But every time the words pushed their way to the surface, she held them back.

She didn’t want to know.

Instead she watched Cord and wondered when she’d have the words to ask his forgiveness. Not until he could concentrate on her. He moved so quietly that if she hadn’t been directly behind him, she wouldn’t know he was here. Because he said nothing, he left her free to listen to the voice of the earth around her. Its sound reached her as an ebbing and flowing wave, notes both high and shrill from a scolding chipmunk or deep and low as the wind worked its ageless way through the trees. Her world smelled of hot bark and dirt. They’d recently gone through a burned area and she’d been struck by the earth’s ability to repair and renew itself. She could spend her life here surrounded by the colors of the wilderness-finding herself.

What had Cord said, that the Grandfather is the creator who bathed everyone with his mind and gave life to all things? What incredibly eloquent words.

“He’s still limping”

Cord hadn’t said anything for so long. Instantly she lost her sense of peace. “You’re sure?”

He pointed at something on the littered ground that made little sense to her. Then in a tone so controlled that she could nearly touch the effort of his keeping it so, he explained that Matt was putting more weight on one leg than the other and occasionally dragging that leg.

“It’ll slow him down, won’t it?” she made herself ask.

“Yes.”

Yes. There was that single eloquent word again. “Cord, when do you think we’ll overtake him?”

“Soon.”

Soon meant in a few minutes or tomorrow, or maybe the day after that. He had to give her more to cling to than that. As weakness hit her, she fought to brace herself. “If we called to him-”

“No.”

He’d been talking with his body angled away from her. She grabbed his arm and pulled him around; he let her. “Why not?”

Although the silence that trailed after her question nearly drove her crazy, she refused to push. Finally, “He’s trying to get home on his own. If he hears us, he might try to hide. In fact, I can guarantee it. He could get careless and hurt himself.”

“Oh.”

“One time-” He glanced away and then met her gaze again. “Once early in my career I went after an older woman who’d gotten separated from a group of senior citizens. She was out there for two nights. Everyone was calling, me included. Finally we found her down a ravine with a broken leg. She’d heard us, gotten disoriented, convinced herself she had to hurry or we’d leave. She didn’t see the drop-off.”

“She panicked. Matt wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t he?”

She freed herself from Cord’s gaze long enough to focus on their son’s footprint. Matt was hopelessly lost, now with an injured leg or foot. What would it do to him to hear his parents’ voices echoing off a hundred boulders? She also didn’t dare let herself forget his damnable pride, his determination to complete what he’d set out to accomplish. “So…so, what do we do?”

“Come to him gently.”


He shouldn’t have pushed her the way he had, Cord admonished himself as he watched Shannon sink onto her knees when night stopped them. Without saying a word, he helped her out of her backpack and then knelt in front of her so he could untie her boots. She was watching his hands, maybe seeing something in the way they worked that he should be keeping from her.

All afternoon he’d waited for a rifle shot, and when it hadn’t come, he’d asked himself if he maybe shouldn’t have taken a chance on trying to call out to the hunters, if that’s what they were, and let them know that a little boy was out there. But they were too far away and if they were poaching, they might hide from him. Besides, Shannon would hear-would realize that he’d already heard sounds that might have spelled their son’s death.

“We’re close,” he told her. The words were more for himself than her. “Much closer to him than we were last night.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” He finished pulling off her boots and began massaging her right instep. She continued to watch him through half-closed eyes, her body rocking slightly as if she could barely keep it erect. After the way she’d snapped at him earlier today, he hadn’t known what to expect from her tonight, but she seemed to have put her outburst behind her.

Maybe. And maybe he’d been given a sample of her true feelings toward him. It didn’t matter, not with why they were here and how it might play out. He didn’t dare forget that-as if he could.

Five minutes later he was still kneading, only now he’d pushed her pant leg as high as it would go and had pressed fingers and thumb against her calf. She’d braced herself with her hands behind her. Her eyes were closed and she breathed lightly through slightly parted lips and he managed to quiet the hammering questions about Matt’s safety, the boy’s life even.

He’d surrendered to those lips twice already. He knew how hard resisting now, and later tonight, would be. Earlier, he’d been distracted from making love to the mother of his son first by a flash of light and then by her anger, but it was dark now and they were locked within nature’s dark world.

Only, first he had to make contact with another world.

Without trying to explain why he was leaving her when that was the last thing he wanted to do, he removed the walkie-talkie from his pack. She didn’t open her eyes when he told her he needed to climb to a higher elevation where natural obstructions would be less likely to interfere with transmission. She told him to tell her parents she was going to take a quick nap, and then stretched out on the ground.

Still he didn’t attempt to make contact with her family until he was sure he was out of Shannon’s earshot in case the sheriff was with them. Her father answered. The first words out of his mouth were to ask if they’d found Matt. No, he had to tell his former father-in-law, but tomorrow-

“I hope to God you’re right. If that boy has any idea how hard this is on all of us… What does that matter? It’s got to be much harder on him.”

His throat tight, Cord agreed and then explained what they’d accomplished today. He could only pray they were still talking about a living child. Halfway through the conversation, Shannon’s father told him the sheriff wanted to talk to him.

“It’s not good,” Dale Vollrath said when Cord reached him at his house. “I figured I’d better wait until you contacted me. I take it Shannon still isn’t part of this?”

“No.”

“You ready? Hell, what choice do you have? I’ve finally learned the identity of who owns a plane that’s been at the airport for about a week.”

“Tell me.”

“The guy’s name is Chuck Markham. It probably doesn’t mean anything to you, but this isn’t the first time I’ve heard of this joker. He gets around all right, anywhere there’s game.”

“Game?”

“Sorry, Cord. Markham has a record-the proverbial mile-long rap sheet, starting with hunting out of season, as a teenager. Since then he’s pretty much made a career of flaunting the law. He’s been stopped a number of times, even served time twice. Mostly be gets a slap on the wrist and, I’m assuming, goes right back to work the next day.”

“Work?” Cord asked, although he was pretty sure he already knew the answer.

“He’s graduated to the big time, at least that’s what he’s done in the past and I have no reason to believe he’s turned over a new leaf and is here simply to commune with nature. Hell, why should he take up a different line of work when this one has been so profitable?”

“He’s poaching, right?”

“Yeah, not that that’s what he tells the IRS. And he has three other men with him, which means-”

“Which means be’s probably acting as their guide.”

“Bingo. Damn. If I had more time, I might be able to learn who’s with him, but at this point it doesn’t particu larly matter.”

No, it didn’t. This wasn’t the first time he’d been involved with hunters who believed that money gave them the right to bring down whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted. Men like that didn’t have a conscience, at least not the kind that made any kind of sense to him. This morning they’d shot at something-maybe a child, his child.

“I’ve alerted all the rangers in the area,” Dale was saying. “Not that there are that many of them on Copper right now. One thing I can promise you, Markham and his employers won’t get back to their plane without our knowing it.”

That was some consolation, although by the time those men tried to leave the mountains, they might have already accomplished what they’d set out to, namely illegally killed one or more wild animals. And, if they shot without first getting a good look at their so-called prey, they might put a bullet into an innocent boy.

Holding that thought at bay with all the willpower in him, he told Dale about the early morning shot and the glint of sunlight he’d seen this afternoon. His throat still tight, he asked Dale to keep him informed.

“You better believe it. The thing is, these jokers are going to do everything they can to stay out of sight of any rangers or deputies. They might be carrying radios. If they are, they could be listening to us right now and getting the message, but I wouldn’t count on that.”

“I’m not.”

“I’m sorry as hell about this, Cord. Damn it, you’ve already got enough to worry about.”

“It’s all right.”

“Hmm. You haven’t told her yet, have you?”

“No.”

“Look, man, she’s-”

“I can’t!” he blurted. “She’s already going through hell.”