Red After Dark (Blackwood Security #13) - Elise Noble Page 0,126

behind. Black brought up the rear.

“Three people came through,” Pale said. “Two females in tennis shoes, one male in boots. They were all running.”

“Do the sizes of the women fit Bethany and Rune?” Black asked.

“I’d say so, yes.”

The going was slow. Rain hammered down, splashing through the tree canopy in big, messy drops, reducing visibility and threatening to wash away any clues. It was a race against time. We took several wrong turns and had to backtrack, and although I didn’t let on to anyone else because Alaric was still listening in, I began to worry that we were too late. The Smokies covered hundreds of thousands of acres. If we lost the trail, it’d be like hunting for a contact lens in the ocean.

Pale stopped at the top of a near-vertical slope. Even I could see the broken branches, the crushed leaves where someone or something had crashed through. Fucking hell. They went down there?

He responded to my unasked question. “Pass the rope.”

We hadn’t gone much farther when Pale stilled. Not the “let me work out which way” hesitation I’d seen from him several times, but the instant rigidity of “fuck, there’s a problem.” I raised my scope and looked past him.

What the…? Was that Ridley? Judging by the size and body shape, it was definitely a man, and who the hell else would be running around in the wilderness at this time of night? Well, not running, exactly. He was just lying on the ground face up, arms by his sides. A ploy to lure us closer? Or was he injured?

I followed Pale’s lead and faded back into the trees, and we covered the last forty metres at a snail’s pace, careful not to make the slightest sound. I could feel Black and Ana behind me, but I couldn’t hear them or see them.

A branch cracked. I resisted the urge to whip my head around and turned slowly instead, gun raised, finger hovering over the trigger. Did Ridley have an accomplice? After he’d killed two of his men, I’d kind of figured the rest would bug out.

Two eyes stared back at me. The interloper shared many characteristics with Ridley’s goons—he was ugly, hairy, and he weighed about two hundred pounds—but he was only three feet tall with tusks and a snout.

The wild hog stared at me. I stared back.

Shit.

I’d never got into a punch-up with a pig before, and I didn’t particularly want to start now. Did they attack humans? Remind me to insist on a proper briefing next time I decided to schlep through a forest at night.

I risked a glance sideways. Ridley’s hands were empty. No weapon that I could see. Black came forward, darting the last few metres in case Ridley moved. But he didn’t.

With the main threat neutralised, I fired a warning shot into the ground at the hog’s feet. If Beth and Rune were still alive, I didn’t want to kill them with a stray bullet. The beast turned tail and ran, hurtling through the undergrowth and vanishing into the darkness.

Phew. Crisis averted.

Black checked Ridley’s pulse. “He’s still breathing.”

Unceremoniously, he flipped the motherfucker onto his front and pressed on the back of his head with one boot. Ridley woke up a bit, gurgling into the puddle, but he didn’t seem to have the strength to fight back properly.

“We’ve found Ridley,” I informed everyone not present.

“Alive?” Alaric asked.

“Just a minute…” Ridley had stopped moving, and this time when Black felt for a pulse, he smiled. “No.”

“What about Beth and Rune?”

Pale was on the move again already, and this time we had one significant advantage. It didn’t matter how much noise we made.

“Beth? Rune? Are you there?”

CHAPTER 50 - BETHANY

PERHAPS WE SHOULD have stayed in the cellar after all. Rune was drowsy, my ankle had swollen to the size of a melon, and even if we could have kept walking, the rain clouds had covered up the stars and we had no idea which way to go. And it was cold. Freezing. I was soaked through, and my teeth wouldn’t stop chattering. I hugged Rune tighter as we curled against the base of a gnarled old tree.

“Stay awake,” I whispered to her. “Just a little longer.”

“I’m so…so tired.”

We needed a miracle now. More than once, I’d almost drifted off, and I knew that if I fell asleep, I’d never wake up. If we died out here, would anyone even find our bodies? Or would we get eaten by one of the creatures that we could