Page 26 of Deadly Strain

She should have died, too. She should have been able to protect and help those men, yet every one of them now lay dead in the helicopter’s carcass, their blood coating the smoking broken bones of the aircraft and the greedy sand beneath it.

She was the reason those men had gotten into that doomed machine.

Their deaths were on her hands.

She and Sharp might not get out of this predicament alive either, and there was nothing she could do about it. Except follow Sharp’s instructions.

Grace wiggled deeper into the sand, closed her eyes, and let exhaustion pull her into the dark pit of sleep.

A sound woke her.

She blinked, and it took a moment before she remembered everything that had happened. The sound reached her again. A sliding, kind of swishing sound. Something or someone was closing in on the entrance of the cave.

Her hands moved before she could decide what to do, the Beretta poised and ready.

A voice floated through the night with a whispered stealth she could only dream of someday accomplishing. “Doc?”

“Sharp.” She let out the breath she hadn’t known she was holding, and her arms fell to her sides. Hope warred with dread, making her hands shake, but she managed to holster her weapon.

What had he discovered?

Were they followed?

Were they safe?

She had no strength left, no armor for her feelings and no skills left to cope with the meltdown she could feel beginning inside the core of her soul.

He slipped inside the cave, but crouched at the entrance, anchoring branches and foliage he must have taken from brush and bushes, creating a screen to hide them. He planted them carefully, using one small branch with small dark green leaves to sweep away the evidence that a human put them there.

“Where did you get all that?” she asked quietly.

“Here and there.” He moved back from his handiwork and took a look at it. With a nod, he took off his backpack, set it aside, then pulled out something from one of the large pockets along the leg of his pants. At first, she thought it was a small square of fabric, but he unfolded it until it was large enough to cover most of the cave’s opening.

She leaned forward, trying to make out what it was. “Is that...some kind of mesh?”

“Camo mesh, yeah,” Sharp said, as he anchored a corner of it on one side of the opening with a small nail he fished out of a different pocket. He did the same with the other side.

He eased back and studied the entrance. “That should do for camouflage. The branches with the mesh behind it will make this opening look like solid rock.”

“How many men are looking for us?”

“At least three groups.” His response was a sigh she felt more than heard. “I went back to take a look at the crash site.”

When he didn’t continue, she asked, “And?”

“It was being watched, while others were searching.”

“Any good guys?”

“Not that I could see.” He turned to her. “But we’re safe here. I laid a couple of false trails that crossed their own well-worn paths. Tracking us will have them running into each other.”

It took her a moment to digest his answer, but when she did, nausea threatened again. “We can’t go back, can we?”

“Not now. Not if we want to stay alive.”

“Will they look for us?”

“Yes. Someone killed those men. They’re looking for a survivor. But since you did such a good job of walking in my footprints, there’s only one set. Same as my false trails.”

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