Page 27 of Scent of Evil
Stone’s broad yellow head was cocked to the side, and his hackles were up. That was enough to give Justin cause for alarm.
He rolled to his feet, pulled his weapon from the saddle bag, and strained to listen.
But he heard nothing, which wasn’t good. The usual sounds of creatures in the night—frogs, insects, mice, and opossums—had gone still. A telltale sign that a predator was nearby.
Raine awoke, glancing at him with a furrowed brow. When she noticed him standing there with his weapon in hand, she scrambled to her feet and pulled her own gun.
“Who’s out there?” she whispered, as Ginny was still amazingly asleep.
He shook his head and lifted a finger to his lips. He made sure to glance at Stone; their K9s were all trained on the universal signal to be quiet. If someone, like Decker, was out there, he didn’t want to give away their position.
Then again, their small fire may have already done that.
As if reading his mind, Raine kicked dirt over the embers. He eased out from beyond the rocky overhang, still listening.
When he heard the rustle of branches, he tensed. Either a big game animal was moving around out there.
Or it was Decker.
7
Holding her gun in a two-handed grip pointed at the ground, Raine made sure the fire was doused with dirt before moving silently to Justin’s side. She wanted him to know she would back him up as needed. He shot her a look of appreciation and cocked his head to listen.
She listened, too, but didn’t hear much beyond the thundering beat of her heart.
Surprisingly, Stone had stopped growling. The K9 stood at Justin’s side, though, his snout lifted to the air as he took in the scents. Raine wasn’t sure who or what was waiting in the darkness and found herself praying it wasn’t Decker.
Granted, she wanted to arrest him more than anything. But she didn’t want Justin, Ginny, or Stone to be hurt in the process.
If the intruder was Decker, she needed to make sure she could eliminate him as a threat before the situation spiraled out of control. No easy task in the middle of the night with nothing but wilderness surrounding them.
Then she heard the rustling sound Justin and Stone must have noticed earlier. She swallowed hard, easily imagining the sound had been made by Decker as he crept toward their location.
Justin pointed at her, then gestured to the left. She understood he wanted her to go that way, but the rustling noise had come from the right. It went against the grain to allow him to take the lead. Tracking Decker and arresting him was her job as a US Marshal.
Yet if it wasn’t Decker out there, Justin was better equipped to handle whatever animal was moving through the brush.
She nodded and quickly ducked behind him to head into the woods. It was the same area where she’d gathered sticks and branches, but in the darkness, it wasn’t easy to see where she was going.
In fact, nothing looked remotely familiar as she moved through the trees to get around to flank their mysterious visitor on the other side.
Her footsteps sounded incredibly loud to her ears. In contrast, she couldn’t hear Justin moving to the right at all. Just as she rounded the rocky outcropping, she noticed Stone was standing next to Ginny, his eyes seemingly locked on the area where Justin must have disappeared into the brush. Stone’s ears were pricked forward as he guarded her niece.
Her heart squeezed with a mixture of gratitude and fear. She couldn’t bear the thought of anything bad happening to Ginny or Stone.
Averting her gaze from the poignant scene, Raine focused her attention on the path before her. Moving as quietly as possible, she tried to see through the darkness, half-hoping, half-dreading getting a glimpse of Decker’s pale features.
The man had spent the better part of two years in jail. Her mission was to send him back for the rest of his miserable life.
A strange snorting sound came from the thick brush up ahead. She froze, straining to listen. It hadn’t sounded human.
A massive shape moved forward. Her eyes widened as she realized it wasn’t Decker at all that had caught their attention. It was the biggest bull moose she’d ever seen in her life. His enormous rack stretched up to the stars, and she found herself taking a hasty step back as if that alone might save her if the beast decided to lower his head and charge.
The moose made the snorting sound again and lowered his head a bit, shaking it from side to side as if annoyed with her. She wasn’t a hunter, but she remembered reading that a bull moose would be more aggressive during the rut.
September was too early for that, wasn’t it? Maybe not.
She took another step back, then another. She hunched down, thinking it might help to make herself look smaller and less threatening.
