Silent Hunter. Maggie K. Black
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his fist and smashed the glass. He wrenched the handset from the cradle. “Hello? Hello? Can anyone hear me?”
“Nine-one-one. Emergency services.” The voice was crisp and female.
“I’m at Camp Spirit on rural route eight. The lodge is on fire and someone’s inside.”
“Emergency vehicles are being dispatched to your location, can you describe—”
“No. Sorry. I need to get her out of there.”
He ran at the lodge and threw his weight into a solid blow aimed right at the center of the office door. It flew back off the hinges. Smoke poured out.
Sloshing his jacket in a rain barrel beside the door, he held it to his face and entered the building. A surge of hot air beat back against his body. He bowed his head and pushed through as smoke seared his lungs. It seemed as if the fire was fiercest in the back of the building, but it was only a matter of time before flames engulfed the office, too.
“Hello! Hey! Can anybody hear me?” A voice groaned in the darkness. “Hang on!”
In seconds he reached George. The one man Luke owed his entire life to lay pinned to the floor underneath a bookcase. He was pale but—Thank God—still conscious.
“It’s me, Luke. I’m going to get you out of here.”
Shoving the bookcase aside, he grasped George under both arms and pulled him out from under it. The air was getting hotter. The smoke was growing thicker. His mind’s eye set firmly on the faint shaft of daylight cutting through the darkness, he stumbled toward it.
Clean air filled Luke’s lungs as he hauled George through the doorway and up onto the grassy slope. He knelt beside him.
“I called 9-1-1. Help is on the way. But I saw a woman in the window. She still in there?”
George nodded. “Nicky.”
“How do I get to her? Stairs?”
“No. Just...ladder.” George’s voice was so faint Luke had to strain to catch his words. He turned back to the fire as George grabbed his arm. “Please... Take...like...” A fit of coughing stole George’s words from his lungs. Tears filled his smoke-stained eyes. “Cash box...”
The words hit Luke like a slap in the face. Was George asking him to run into the fire to find the camp cash box? Or was he intentionally reminding Luke of the very worst thing he’d ever done?
There wasn’t time for this. Shoving the question from his mind, Luke ran back toward the lodge, ignoring the pain in his lungs and the heat on his limbs. Soot coated his skin. He snapped off what remained of his tie, swinging loose over a shirt now more tatters than clothing.
A woman’s scream filled the air. He rounded the corner and saw her.
“Nicky” dangled from the skylight window, climbing hand-over-hand down the slanted roof tiles using something that looked like a knotted tarp. Clever. But she was still almost three stories off the ground, with a sheer slide to the cement below. The makeshift rope barely reached halfway to the ground. He’d have to convince her to jump and find some way to break her fall. If he missed, she’d break every bone in her body.
Smoke poured through the window above her as he ran to her aid. He could hear sirens wailing in the distance.
The tarp chain snapped. Nicky flew backward through the air. Prayers for mercy poured wordlessly through his lips as he reached out. Her body hit his chest. The force knocked him back, throwing them to the ground. His arms tightened around her, absorbing the blow, as cement knocked the air from his lungs.
She lay on top of him for a moment, her back pressed against his chest. Her face turned towards him. Her breath came fast and hard on his neck. Wild, dark hair brushed against his face, filling his senses with haunting scents of wood smoke and wild berries. “It’s okay. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
“George... He...” She tried to speak, but could barely manage a whisper.
“He’s all right. I got him out. You okay to walk? We’d better get away from this building.”
She rolled off onto the ground beside him. He helped her to her feet, but they’d barely gone a few steps when he felt her fall against his shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not hurt. Just shaky.”
He wrapped his arm around her. “Take it slow. We’ll get the paramedics to check you out.”
Emergency vehicles poured down the camp driveway. Doors slammed. Voices shouted. Fire hoses roared to life.
“I’m Nicky Trailer, the camp director. Thank you for saving me.”
“Luke Wolf, Torchlight News. You’re very welcome.” A smile turned at the corner of his lips. Then it froze as he looked down at her face. Luminous hazel eyes looked up into his, shining like gold in her soot-stained face and sending disjointed memories cascading through his mind. His heart stuttered.
That Nicky? Still here? This many years later? Could it really be her? If so, did she even have any idea who he was?
She stumbled. Her hand brushed against his, sending an unsettling shiver through his skin. Her gaze dropped to his where his shirt laid torn open over his chest. A gasp slipped through her lips. Her eyes grew wider as she pushed him away and stumbled backward.
“Louie? Is it really you?” She crumpled to the ground.
The afternoon sun had already begun its trek toward the top of the tree line when a police officer dropped Nicky back at the camp to grab a few things from her cabin and pick up her car. They didn’t want her spending the night at the main site until the investigation into the fire was complete. Not even in her own cabin, her own bed. At least the police had no problem with her still taking George’s potential donors on the camping trip tomorrow, given they’d be canoeing to a small island and not staying at the main site. A trip she’d now make with only Trevor for part-time backup, since George would be in hospital.
The lodge’s burned-out shell rose in front of her, wrapped in a maze of yellow police tape. Her chest ached as if someone had reached into her center and hollowed it out. Her mind spun with the list of jobs she needed to get done before she left to spend the night on a friend’s couch. But before she did anything, she should probably take a few minutes to settle her heart. She turned right and wound her way through the thick woods to the south of the camps. Then she started climbing.
Her legs felt like sandbags. The sprinkler system and fire alarm had both failed. A brief conversation with someone from the insurance company told her they’d be investigating two possibilities: major electrical fault and arson. Which was worse? The idea the camp was in such bad repair that it had become a dangerous firetrap? Or that someone had intentionally tried to destroy the camp, her home? Both were unthinkable.
She took a deep breath and pushed her body through the branches. The toes of her boots dug hard into the steep, narrow trail. Her mind pushed prayers to the tip of her tongue. Thanking God that George was alive and resting in hospital. Thanking God that the fire hadn’t spread to the forest. Thanking God that Luke Wolf had been there...
As Luke’s name crossed her lips, suddenly the blue-gray eyes of the teenaged boy who’d once stolen her heart among these trees filled her mind. She grabbed a narrow trunk with one hand to steady herself as she suddenly remembered what she’d done—
Just before she’d passed out, she’d asked the man who’d caught her if he was the same guy she’d known as “Louie.”
What had she been thinking? It had been years since she’d stopped wishing that boy would ever return and apologize. Let alone feeling a flutter of hope every time she knew a man named Louie, Louis or Lou was about to