The Shaman Part 10

The trip saved her life and cost Rusty his. The shotgun blast was closer this time and lifted Rusty clean off his feet, slamming him back against a tree. Charlie watched his flying backward in slow motion. "FBI," she screamed, scrambling toward Rusty. "Hold your fire!"

The blast had caught him in the middle of his chest, peppering his throat, as well. Blood was oozing from dozens of holes in his neck and chest. He'd been wearing a jacket, but he was a broad man.

He coughed, spitting up blood, looking at her with a pleading, bewildered expression. "You're going to be all right," she said automatically. "Hold on. I'll get help."

The words were barely out of her mouth when the girl screamed again. Charlie whirled, leading with her gun. The teenage boy, his shotgun now aimed at the dirt at his feet, was still gaping at her and Rusty in horror. His girlfriend, half in and half out of the truck, was staring at something racing toward them from the brush in front of the truck. As Charlie watched, something huge leapt from the woods. The boy turned, almost in slow motion, bringing his shotgun up to fire. Charlie raised her own weapon. Before she could fire, the thing slashed the boy across the face and throat. Blood spurted in every direction as the boy's jugular was severed. The thing leapt over him and into the woods on the other side of the clearing even as Charlie laid a bead on it and began firing, over and over. Jumping to her feet, she raced after it, firing until she'd emptied her clip.

Gasping for breath, she stopped abruptly when she realized she was out of ammunition. In front of her, she heard it thras.h.i.+ng through the woods beyond her view.

She grabbed her radio. "The perp's headed just north east of the trail. We've got two down here-a teenager and Agent Stephens."

The boy was dead long before help arrived. Rusty managed to hang on until they'd made it to the clinic and through hours of surgery, but he died on the table. Charlie merely nodded when the surgeon they'd brought in gave her the news. She thanked Chief Brown. He'd radioed ahead to get a surgical team in. Dr. Bob was a general pract.i.tioner, he knew, and wouldn't be able to handle it, and it seemed doubtful they could get Stephens to a big hospital fast enough.

Greywolf drove her back to her hotel, where she called the director with the news. He would handle all of the arrangements that needed to be made, contact Stephens' family, and get back with her Monday, he said, on what the next step would be.

"Did he have family?"

Charlie turned and stared at Greywolf blankly for several moments. She hadn't even realized he'd followed her into the room. She sat down on the bed. "I don't know. I've worked with him for almost two years, and I don't know."

Greywolf studied her for several moments and finally got up and crossed the room. Settling beside her on the bed, he pulled her against his chest. She resisted at first, but it felt good just to be held. She hadn't realized how cold she was until the heat of his body enveloped her. "I saw it."

"It?"

She clutched his s.h.i.+rt, looking up at him. "It wasn't a man."

Chapter Fifteen.

"You're upset," Greywolf said soothingly.

Anger surged through her abruptly. "You're d.a.m.ned right I'm upset. But I know what I saw. That ... thing ... was no man! At first, I thought it was. It looked like a man wearing an animal skin. But it didn't move like a man, John. It moved like an animal."

Greywolf stiffened. "Could you see it well enough to describe it?"

Charlie got up and began to pace. "We were using field gla.s.ses with night vision, but when we heard the screams we left them-we should've had the goggles. It was dark as h.e.l.l in the woods, but the truck was parked in a clearing. I was still bending over Rusty when the girl screamed. I saw-something, really more like shadows, at first-coming through the brush-something huge. My first thought was that it was a bear. It was standing up right, running, but I realized it couldn't be a bear. They can walk upright, but they're clumsy. The run on all fours. This thing was running-fast. It leapt into the clearing-fifteen, maybe twenty feet-caught the boy before he could raise his gun, almost taking his head clean off. Then it leapt over him and into the woods. I was chasing after it, firing...." She broke off, picturing the scene in her mind.

"I hit it. I think I hit it. I heard it fall and then get back up."

"Maybe. And maybe it just stumbled."

"I'll know in the morning."

"Yes. In the morning-we'll go back, check it out. Right now, you need to sleep."

She was weary. She felt like she was ready to drop, but her mind was running on overtime, racing. Images kept flitting through her mind, like a movie reel in fast forward, zipping to the end and then starting over again.

She didn't protest as Greywolf removed her jacket, then her gun and holster and pushed her to the bed. She sat, watching him as he squatted in front of her, feeling strangely detached as he removed her shoes and ma.s.saged her feet one by one. Finally, he crawled onto the bed beside her and tugged her down, gathering her close against his chest. She lay stiffly at first, but slowly, as he stroked her back in a soothing, almost hypnotic caress, she felt herself relaxing.

Strangely enough, it was the first time he'd touched her that she wasn't instantly on fire with arousal. Instead, she felt something equally alluring and as rare as the fiery pa.s.sion he generally inspired in her, warm, safe, comforted.

It was the first time he'd touched her at all since the night he'd entered her room and confronted her. She'd been both relieved and disconcerted that he'd kept their relations.h.i.+p impersonal after that, always polite but coolly distant, as if they were in fact strangers, not merely pretending to be. She'd caught him studying her a few times, but his expression had always been unreadable and he had taken great pains to avoid even the most casual touch.

She'd told herself she was relieved that he seemed to have moved on, but she wasn't. She regretted loosing what they'd had together.

She didn't want to think about regrets, though. She wanted to think about how to catch the b.a.s.t.a.r.d that had killed four teenagers ... and her partner.

"I saw it," she murmured as she descended to the edge of sleep. "It was ... so strange...like a man and a puma fused together ...."

"Skin walker."

They found the girl the following day when they returned to the scene to recover whatever evidence they could find. Charlie was studying the clearing around the truck, searching the ground for prints when one of Brown's officers let out a yelp of alarm. She was on her feet in an instant, whirling toward the sound.

"Victim!"

Everybody went stock still, exchanged a glance of stunned surprise and then surged toward the officer.

The girl was sprawled on her back, her arms on either side of her head. Her clothing had been shredded from her body. Her legs, bent at the knee, were splayed wide. The men gaped at her for several moments, and then looked away uncomfortably.

Charlie moved forward to examine her more closely.

Her throat was crushed, like the other girl, but she hadn't been gutted. Charlie stood, backed away a little and began searching the ground around the girl. A discarded condom lay on the ground between her legs. Pulling an evidence bag from her belt, Charlie looked around for a stick and fished the condom from the ground, holding it up to study it a moment before she bagged it. She looked up at Brown. "No s.e.m.e.n. Looks like they were caught in the act. You better send somebody to look for the boyfriend."

Brown nodded and motioned to two of the men. Charlie stood up, staring toward the clearing, trying to piece together what had happened. After a moment, she moved back toward the truck, taking care not to disturb the broken brush the perp had left when he'd rushed the boy. When she was standing beside the truck again, she turned and looked toward the car where she and Rusty had been. She could just make out a patch of dark color.

They'd been listening to vehicles pull in, park, then start up and leave all night, seen headlights. She didn't remember seeing the truck's headlights, though. Either she'd been looking in another direction when they pulled in, or he'd switched the lights off before he turned in.

She remembered hearing the engine shut off, though. Less than a minute later, the scream, the first two gun blasts. The boy had been reloading when they jumped from the car. She replayed the scene in her mind.

"They caught him in the act-that's why she wasn't butchered like the others. The girl in the truck saw him, screamed. The boy grabbed his gun and jumped out of the truck, pulling off two shots. The perp ran, but not far.

"He came back to kill the witnesses. Why? It was dark. They couldn't have gotten a very good look at him."

She realized the officers had all stopped to look at her.

"They knew him?"

Charlie stared at the man for a long moment, feeling excitement flood through her. "He knew them ... well enough that he recognized them, or the truck. He didn't want to take the chance that they'd recognized him."

Brown frowned at her, his hands on his hips. "We figured it had to be somebody on the Rez or living near it."

"Yes, but we a.s.sumed he was hanging out here-that it was more a crime of opportunity than that he was actually stalking his victims. We missed something. We must have."

As they were packing up to leave, she stopped Brown. "He'll strike again ... soon."

Brown shrugged it off. "He got one last night. And he knows we're on to him now. He could be halfway across the country by now."

"He didn't finish," Charlie said tightly. "The kids interrupted his orgy. He didn't get his 'fix' and he's not going to be able to restrain himself. He'll hit again, soon--maybe even tonight."

Brown studied her a long moment and finally clapped her on the shoulder. "I know it's been rough-with your partner dead-You need to take a rest, step back from this a little."

Anger surged through her, but she saw it was a waste of time trying to talk to him. He'd made up his mind, thought he knew more than she did-He'd dismissed her as a hysterical female, like men always did if a woman showed any sign of emotion whatsoever.

Striding to her car, she climbed in and slammed the door, staring at the hood of the car blindly while she

allowed her mind to play back all the data she'd collected. She glanced at Greywolf as he climbed in beside her, momentarily distracted.

It occurred to her that he'd been ghosting her, always distant, but always there.

"That word you said last night-skin walker-What did you mean by that?"

Greywolf said nothing for several moments. Finally, he sighed, turning to stare out the window. "The old man mentioned it-the day we were questioning witnesses. It's superst.i.tion."

Charlie frowned. "The one that lives near the hillside? The one that said he'd seen a puma?"

Greywolf looked at her. "He didn't say he'd seen a puma. He said he saw a skin walker. I said it was a

puma."

"So-you're saying you lied to us?"

He frowned. "You wouldn't have believed me if I'd told you."

"Maybe not, but I'd at least like the consideration of an honest answer," she said tightly.

"In the old days, we believed it was possible to absorb the powers of one's enemy. The skin walkers

were shaman who could steal the powers of the animal skins they wore." "Like that thing I saw, you mean? It wasn't just a man wearing an animal skin. It moved with him, like it was part of him-a puma skin."

He nodded.

"So-either we've got a maniac running around that thinks he's a puma-or we have someone capable of actually becoming part man, part puma."

"I found a blood trail. Looks like you were right. You hit him."

Charlie stared at him a long moment. "Would a skin walker have stronger powers of healing than an ordinary puma?"

"You're not taking this seriously, are you?"

Charlie gave him a look. "When I asked you how you managed to get past security in the parking garage, you told me you'd shadow walked. I didn't take it seriously then. You spoke as if you were joking. I thought you just meant that you'd kept to the shadows and avoided detection. But you were in my room. You left it with every door and window locked. Either you walked through the wall-like a shadow-or you're a h.e.l.l of a magician."

Greywolf said nothing for several minutes, finally he looked at her again. "Am I a suspect?" She studied him, slowly, thoroughly, her heart thudding painfully in her chest. "It never once crossed my mind."

She started the car and headed back, stopping at Greywolf's ranch to drop him off.

He was reluctant to get out of the car. "What have you got in mind?"

"At the moment? Nothing. I need to think. I need to be alone to think."

He didn't look like he believed her, but after a moment, he climbed out. He was still standing in the yard, watching her, as she reached the road and headed for the clinic.

She wasn't really surprised to discover that no one had checked into the clinic with a gunshot wound, but she was disappointed. Either she'd hadn't wounded him badly enough to drive him to a clinic for help, or he was trying to doctor his own wound. Greywolf hadn't found much blood, so she was leaning toward the former.

She thought of the evidence bags in her trunk as she left. Brown had volunteered one of his men to deliver it to the agency, but she saw little point in it. She fully expected to be called back on Monday morning-and that was the earliest anyone was likely to begin examining them anyway. She could drive up and deliver them, but they'd just end up in the evidence room until Monday morning anyway.

Returning to the hotel, she grabbed the box from the trunk and carried it to her room. Pouring the contents in the middle of her bed, she sat with her back to the headboard, picking up each, examining, dropping it back in the box and checking the next.

Not surprisingly, they'd found a number of condoms in the area. The lab was going to have their work cut out for them sorting through them all. Evidently, the kids paid more attention to the 'safe s.e.x/planned parenthood' posters than they'd paid to the posters she'd put up-Actually, Rusty's death was proof that they hadn't completely ignored the warnings.

She deeply regretted that they hadn't adequately considered the possibility that the teens, instead of staying away, would go armed.

In the end, she supposed it wouldn't have made much difference if they had considered it. They'd heard the gun shots. Instead of rus.h.i.+ng up on the kids, they should've approached more carefully, but then both of them, she supposed, had been focused on the catching the killer before he got away-not on the kid with the gun.

It had been a stupid, stupid thing to do-and Rusty, who'd had more experience than her and should've known better-had paid for it with his life.

Shaking the thoughts off, she poured the evidence bags onto the bed once more. Instead of picking them up, she spread them out, staring at them. Four condom wrappers had been recovered. She stared at them, trying to figure out why they seemed significant.

Abruptly, like a falling stack of dominos, everything fell into place.

There wasn't a single brand name condom in the lot.