around a limestone hill.” He pointed in a westerly direction. “There’s a lot of caves all around the base of it. I’ve estimated the raptor center is roughly twenty miles from where we’re at right now. This country is like Afghanistan: desolate, and hardly anyone lives here at all.” He went over to the tree and shucked out his go-bag.
“We’re going to a cave?” she asked, frowning and yawning.
“Yes. It’s a good place to hole up for tonight. It’s too hot to try and make that trek. And I don’t want to travel in broad daylight and be seen by druggies. Besides,” he said, opening his go-bag, “we’re still coming out of shock, and I want to get some sleep tonight, get rested up, and we’ll leave about an hour before dawn when it’s a little bit light. If we maintain a hiking pace, twenty-minute miles? We can cover three miles in an hour. I figure, with rests in between, we’ll make that raptor place in about eight hours. If we start before dawn, it’s cooler and we’re less likely to be spotted. That means leaving around four a.m., and if all goes well, we should be at the raptor place by noon. We’d be avoiding the worst of the heat, which is around four p.m. How does that sound?”
She came over and sat down near him. “Why couldn’t we just walk at night?”
“Because drug running is active then. The night is dark, we’ve got a new moon, so no light to see the ground. We could fall into a hole and sprain an ankle, or worse, break a leg. I wish I had night vision goggles on me, but I don’t. Night travel isn’t an option.”
“Why couldn’t we just stay here, Chase? It’s so beautiful, shaded, and we have water.”
He grimaced. “There’s a well-used road on the other side of this stream,” he said, pointing across it. “I think the drug runners come in here quite often. I found a lot of plastic bottles, food wrappers, and stuff like that at certain places where I think they might make camp during daylight hours. We can’t afford to stay here much longer, Cari.”
Frowning, she asked, “Do they stay in caves on that hill?”
Shaking his head, he gathered up his toiletry articles and stood. “There’s no sign of them, and I checked it out for evidence of any type of human activity, as well as tire treads of vehicles, or footprints. There’s nothing.” He looked up at the cliff above them, about half a mile away from where they escaped the wrecked truck. “We’ll be a lot safer in one of those caves, Cari. I know it doesn’t sound like a good place to go, but it is.”
“Okay,” she said, giving him a worried look.
“I want you to keep watch,” he said, gesturing to the cliff. “Keep eyes and ears on it while I get out of these filthy clothes and take a bath in that stream like you did earlier.”
“Oh, it was wonderful! I felt so dirty!”
“Go sit on the other side of this juniper. If you see or hear anything? Come and get me, don’t shout or call me. Sound carries very easily in a canyon like this.” He gave her a teasing look. “Or, you can stay here and watch me get naked and go into the water?”
She grinned and waved her index finger in his direction. “What a tease you are!”
“You might like what you see, huh?”
Rolling her eyes, she laughed softly. “I’ve always liked what I’ve seen of you, Chase.”
“I like hearing the truth.”
“Thanks for giving me the space and privacy to bathe. I loved getting clean.”
He nodded. “I was tempted not to reconnoiter, but rather just sit somewhere and watch you undress and get into this water.”
“Now the truth really comes out.” She grinned and picked up her go-bag and headed to the juniper. “Let me know when you’re done, huh?”
“It’s going to take about half an hour,” he warned her. “I have to wash all my clothes, too.”
“That’s okay. I’ll stand watch.”
* * *
“Okay,” Chase said, walking up to her where she sat on the opposite side of the juniper, “I’m clean, and so are my clothes.”
She looked up and smiled, drowning in the longing she saw in his gray eyes. “The only thing missing is your Stetson.”
He made a mournful sound. “Yeah, it burned up in that crash. At least I have my baseball cap. We need to have something on our heads