Don't Cry for Me - Шарон Сала

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was jumping at every rustle in the brush, afraid he was missing clues beneath the water because he was so anxious about walking up on the bear.

      Still, he couldn’t quit on this. His gut instincts kept telling him this was how the bear was getting away and why the dogs were losing the scent. Except for feeding, the bear was actually using the water as a highway.

      He’d gone about a mile upstream from the kill site when he spotted something in the creek bed that gave him pause. There was a large, moss-covered boulder jutting out of the water with four long, distinct scratches cut into the moss. They were equally spaced and went all the way to the rock. It made him think of claws cutting flesh down to the bone, like he’d seen on the leg of the hiker he’d rescued.

      He straightened abruptly, scanning the area to make sure he was still on his own, then took another step, slower this time, and began looking closer as he continued to move upstream. The next clue he found was on the actual creek bank, where a large chunk of earth and grass had been broken off, as if something very large and heavy had stepped too close to the edge and it had given under the weight.

      He climbed up onto the bank to backtrack, eyeing the forest floor for further prints. But the ground was covered in leaves and pine needles in different stages of decay. If anything had passed that way, it wouldn’t have left any prints. He moved a few yards farther, still looking for signs of scat or the remnants of a kill. He was so focused on looking down that when something large suddenly darted out of the brush to his right, he fell backward. He was scrambling for his rifle when he realized it was only a deer. The doe leaped across his line of vision before disappearing downhill.

      “Shit,” Quinn muttered, as he got to his feet and shifted his rifle to a better position.

      He paused and looked up, then caught himself staring at the trunk of a sixty-foot pine. The gashes that had been cut into the tree were at least ten feet off the ground, maybe higher—just like the ones he’d found at the site where the hiker was killed. It was the bear—still marking territory.

      He pulled out his two-way.

      “Ranger Walker to dispatch, do you copy?”

      “Go ahead, Walker.”

      “What’s the status on the team of trackers? Over.”

      “They lost the trail again about two miles from the canine kill site, over.”

      “Are they still on the mountain? Over.”

      “Yes. They’re moving down and east from Greenlee Pass.”

      “I’m going to send you my coordinates. Tell them I’ll be waiting. I think I found something. Over.”

      “Will do. Waiting to receive them. Over,” the dispatcher said.

      Quinn ran his GPS, sent the location and settled in to wait. At best guess it would take most of an hour for the men to reach him. He glanced at his watch. It was already after 2:00 p.m. Once it got past 4:00, it got dark fast, and he had no intention of leaving Mariah home alone in the dark, nor did he relish a hike off the mountain after the sun had gone down.

      He sat down on a rock, shed his backpack and then dug out a bottle of water and an energy bar. It wasn’t home cooking, but it served a purpose. As soon as he finished, he put the wrapper in his pocket, put the empty bottle in his backpack and settled down to wait.

      Six

      Quinn glanced at his watch, then pulled out his phone to check on Mariah. He made the call, and while he waited for her to answer, he wondered if she was on to him for the sneak visit from his mother and sister, then decided it was too late to worry about that now.

      The phone rang several times. Just when he was about to become concerned, she answered, and he could tell she’d been sleeping.

      “Hello?”

      “Hey, it’s me,” he said. “You sound sleepy. Did I wake you?”

      “Yes, but that’s okay. I’m glad you called. I’ve been worrying about you…uh, I mean with the bear and everything.”

      He smiled. “I’m still all in one piece.”

      “Oh, my God, do not even joke about that,” she muttered. “Your mother and sister were here. They brought food for dinner tonight.”

      The tone of her voice took care of one concern. She didn’t sound pissed.

      “Oh. I’m sorry I wasn’t there to introduce you. Were you okay with that?”

      “Of course I was okay. They stayed and ate lunch with me. I liked them, Quinn. They’re really nice.”

      He grinned. “And you were surprised that they were nice…as opposed to me, you mean?”

      “Oh, shut the hell up,” she said.

      He laughed.

      Mariah grinned and then changed the subject. “What’s going on with that bear?”

      “Not sure just yet, but I have a theory. I’m waiting for the trackers and their dogs to get to my location.”

      “You’d think dogs would be able to track it. Why is that not happening?”

      “That’s part of my theory. There’s a creek that winds nearly twenty-five miles on Rebel Ridge before it hits a river. It was close to where the bear first attacked the hikers, and a few miles down the mountain that same creek is also close to where those hunting dogs were killed. I think the bear is using it like a highway, which leads me to think it’s either sick or injured. If I’m right, that’s one reason why the dogs keep losing the trail. It doesn’t just go in and out of water but stays in it, maybe for miles. That’s also why it’s so important to find it. A weakened animal is a desperate one. It’ll take chances it wouldn’t normally take in its drive to survive.”

      She shivered. “I didn’t know all that. Now I am worried.”

      “I survived the worst the Taliban threw at me. One sick bear is not going to be how I meet my end.”

      “And you know this how?”

      He had no intention of telling her that he planned on living to a ripe old age with her. Not yet.

      “I just do.” Then he began to hear barking. “Hey, I hear dogs. I guess the trackers were closer than I thought. I’ll try to be home before dark. Take care of yourself, and don’t forget to do your exercises.”

      “In the meantime, is there anything I could do? I mean for you?”

      “Just take care of yourself.”

      He disconnected, shouldered his backpack and his rifle, and waited for the trackers to arrive.

      * * *

      Everyone on Rebel Ridge knew Jake Doolen’s bloodhounds were the best trackers on the mountain, maybe even in Kentucky. Jake was on call with the Kentucky State Bureau of Investigation, as well as anyone else in need, on a twenty-four-hour basis, but to the best of Jake’s memory, neither he nor his sons, Avery and Cyrus, had ever been called out just to track a bear. It wasn’t that the hounds couldn’t do it, because he had faith that they ultimately would. But this was like tracking a ghost bear. Every time his hounds picked up a trail, it always ended when the bear went into the water. And they’d never been able to pick up the trail again on the other side.

      When he got the message from ranger headquarters about a possible new lead, he was ready to jump on it. He was sick at heart from the loss of life, both human and animal, and scared shitless the bear would kill again before they took him down.

      According to the directions they’d been given, they should be near the site where the ranger was waiting, and when the dogs suddenly began to bay, he realized someone or something was coming their way.

      Cyrus took his rifle off his shoulder, while Avery flipped the safety off his. Just in case. Then they saw the ranger coming toward them

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