What Doesn't Kill Her Read online

  Sure, Kellen’s feelings for her daughter were a confused tangle, but one thing she knew—no one was taking the kid.

  Rae won’t burn. She won’t die. I won’t be responsible for another innocent death.

  Kellen took Rae’s face between both her hands and turned it to hers. “If you promise you’ll stay here, I’ll see what I can retrieve.”

  Rae’s damp brown eyes peered at Kellen. “You’ll save my princesses?”

  “I will try.” Kellen peeked at the open pink bag, its contents spilled all over the road. She was pretty sure the fate of at least one doll was grim.

  Kellen grabbed the suitcase with the head, her backpack and the pink bag, in that order. She paused only long enough to scoop up one doll with a dishcloth cape—somehow it seemed that Supercotton Dishcloth Princess deserved to be saved—and fling a bunch of other random stuff into the bag. She ran back to Rae, who was standing at the edge of the road and crying.

  “It’s okay. We saved almost everything. Look. You’ve got Patrick. You’ve got your blankie, here’s your superhero princess.” Kellen risked a glance at the van and the trees. “And the flames are dying down.”

  “I want my daddy!” Rae sobbed.

  Of course she did. “Him we don’t have.” Driven by the intense need to hide, to hurry, to run, Kellen pushed Rae up the rocky banks of the creek and away from the road. “But we’re superheroes, aren’t we? We’ll be fine on our own. Won’t we?”

  Rae caught her breath, shuddering as she tried to stop crying. “Y...yes.”

  “Who are we? ThunderBoomer and LightningBug?”

  “ThunderFlash and LightningBug,” Rae corrected.

  Kellen offered her fist to bump.

  Rae stared, then bumped it.

  “Wipe your nose.”

  Rae looked around for something to wipe it on.

  “On your sleeve.”

  “Grandma says I’m not supposed to—”

  “Out here, we’re superheroes and we don’t have grandma rules. When we get home—then we’ll put on our disguises and keep the grandma rules.”

  Rae wiped her nose on her sleeve.

  Kellen was getting pretty good at handling the kid. But she was dragging under the weight of the pink bag, her own backpack and the weight of the suitcase with the head. She looked around. They stood in a grove of tall hemlocks and fir, out of sight of the road. “We have to consolidate our belongings in my backpack.”

  “What do you mean?” Rae asked suspiciously; the kid was no fool.

  “I mean we have to put all the necessary stuff from your bag into mine so I can carry it.”

  “I can carry my bag.”

  “You can’t. You need to put all your effort into hiking.”

  “You can carry my bag.”

  “Can’t. It’s pink.”

  “I like pink!”

  “It’s bright and we’re superheroes...in hiding.”

  “I want my bag!”

  “We’ll stash your bag.”

  “I have to have all my princesses!”

  “Then you’ll have to leave Patrick.”

  “But I have to have Patrick!”

  “I won’t be able to carry it all.”

  “I can carry it.”

  And...they were back at the beginning. Kellen had lost track of the issues. The kid had her wound up in knots.

  Rae took a long breath, ready to fight or cry or—

  Kellen reached into Rae’s bag, grabbed the crumpled brown bag and pulled out the first thing she found. “Here. Eat this!” She shoved a muffin studded with cranberries into Rae’s hand.

  Rae debated for a moment, crying or eating, and eating won. She gobbled the muffin.

  Thank God. The rule was that an Army always traveled on its stomach. Kellen needed to remember—so did Rae.

  She stared at her child and for one painful moment she remembered Afghanistan and...

  A burned-out house. A melted coil of metal. The stench of desperation and death.

  God. God. Kellen had tried so hard not to get involved with Rae, to care so much she hurt herself...and the child. More than anything in the world, she didn’t want to hurt her own child.

  Rae stared at her. “Mommy, are you sad?”

  Was she crying? Kellen put her hand to her face. No. Her cheeks were dry. But somehow, Rae saw too much. “I’m okay. I’m just concerned about what we do next.”

  From down the road, they heard the sound of an approaching vehicle.

  “It’s Daddy!” Rae leaped to her feet.

  “Or it’s the bad guys.” Kellen grabbed her arm, pulled her down and tucked her close.

  “No, Daddy!”

  Wishful thinking, kid. “If it’s Daddy, we’ll see and come out of hiding. If it’s the bad guys, we won’t. Okay?”

  Rae struggled to answer.

  Kellen put her finger on Rae’s lips. “Let’s climb a tree. Do you know how to climb a tree?”

  “Daddy and Grandma won’t let me climb trees. Not since I fell out and hurt myself.”

  “We’re superheroes, and the tree-climbing is one more thing we’re not going to tell Grandma or Daddy.”

  * * *

  Verona stood in the door of Max’s room, watching him pack. “What’s happening?”

  “I can’t get Kellen. Her phone goes directly to voice mail. I called that bastard who set her up with the job and told him to bring her back. Brooks said he had no way to reach her, and when I told him Rae was with Kellen, he finally admitted it wasn’t the straightforward job he told me. The first courier is dead, Kellen and the guy she was with have disappeared into the mountains in a van and—” Max choked.

  “Why doesn’t he send in his team?”

  “He hasn’t got a team! He hasn’t got a staff! The MFAA is underfunded, barely hanging on as a federal department. I don’t even know if the guy who was killed was a part of the operation or somebody Nils hired!”

  Verona moved swiftly into the room and put her hand on his arm. “Max.” She shook him. “Max, listen to me. Kellen is a lousy excuse for a mother. But she had experience in the mountains. Right? In Afghanistan?”

  “Right.”

  “She’s loyal to her people, and I know without a doubt she would lay down her life before she allowed anything to happen to Rae.”

  He stopped packing and looked at Verona. “You’re right. But what if it doesn’t matter if she lays down her life? What if that’s not enough to save Rae? If the worst happens—how can I live?”

  Verona stared back at her son and saw anguish and a loneliness she had hoped was vanquished forever. Time to do more than offer words of support. “What can I do to help you get ready?”

  “I need food I can easily carry on an on-foot search. Toilet paper. Water filter. Headlamp.”

  “I’ll round up the camping gear.” She went to the door and paused. “Rae and I made banana bread yesterday. I’ll send a loaf. You can share it with Kellen and Rae when you find them.”

  12

  Mercenaries were like deer. They never looked up.

  Kellen sat on a tree branch, one arm wrapped around the tree trunk, one holding Rae with her hand over her mouth, and using all her powers of observation to figure out who they were and what they wanted. Thank God for her Rolodex brain. Thank God!

  There were two groups:

  GROUP 1: THE GREEDY BASTARDS

  THREE MEN WITH GUNS AND KNIVES HELD CASUALLY, AS IF THEY KNEW EXACTLY WHAT TO DO WITH THEM. FROM THE CONVERSATION, THEY WERE VERY SERIOUS ABOUT WANTING THE MUMMY’S HEAD AT ANY COST, AND THEY WOULD KILL KELLEN AND RAE IN AN INSTANT FOR THEIR CUT OF THE REWARD FOR THE HEAD. NO ONE BELIEVED SHE HAD DIED IN THE VAN FIRE (TOO BAD), AND EVERYONE BELIEVED THEY COULD CATCH HER, KILL HER AND RETRIEVE THE HEAD.

  GROUP 2: THE COLD-EYED MERCENARIE
S

  FOUR MEN AND ONE WOMAN, IN JEANS, DENIM BUTTON-UP SHIRTS AND JACKETS, NO WEAPONS IN VIEW, EXAMINING THE GROUND FOR TRACKS AND SPEAKING BRIEFLY AND SHARPLY TO GROUP 1 FOR RUINING THE TRACKS. THEY HAD A CLEAR HIERARCHY AND AN AGENDA THAT DIDN’T INCLUDE THE MUMMY’S HEAD. THEY WERE HUNTING A PERSON. THEY WOULD BE PAID FOR ACQUIRING OR KILLING...A PERSON.

  Observations:

  GROUP 1 DIDN’T BELONG OUT HERE; THEY WORE SHINY SHOES AND CITY GARB, AND A FEW HOURS ON THE FOREST TREK WOULD PUT BLISTERS ON THEIR HEELS, AND A NIGHT SPENT IN THOSE SUITS WOULD TEACH THEM HOW DIRT AND COLD WOULD STRIP A MAN OF AVARICE AND REPLACE IT WITH A NEED FOR COMFORT.

  GROUP 2 WERE PROFESSIONALS, USED TO DISCOMFORT, PREPARED FOR THE TERRAIN, READY TO KILL.

  It was Group 2 she feared, and as she watched, she remembered Roderick Blake’s lunge at her and his hoarse command, Run, bitch.

  Fine. Maybe she had made an enemy she didn’t know about. But Rae didn’t deserve this.

  Kellen watched them, hoped they would all die of a sudden terrible rash and knew they wouldn’t. Bad guys never conveniently perished. But eventually they divided up into two teams, four people in each team, both teams directed by one of the Cold-Eyed Mercenaries. Together they would go to meet their leader, whoever that might be, and get their next instructions. Then they would go on the hunt for the head, one team going one way, one team the other. Kellen’s job would be to evade them both.

  Kellen only relaxed when they left the clearing and Kellen and Rae were alone in the tree.

  Rae wanted to climb down right away.

  Kellen decided they should sit for another thirty minutes...and at minute twenty-six, she was rewarded with Horst, eyes fixed to the ground, wandering toward their tree.

  He looked as if he had been picked up and shoveled into the bad-guy vehicle without respect or ceremony. He walked hunched over, protecting his midsection, and Kellen reflected with some pride she must have broken a few ribs. But he wasn’t feeling quite as sure about her escape as his compatriots; he’d already dealt with her once and been outsmarted. So as he moved, he kept his gaze to the ground, watching for footprints and...damn it. He was circling the tree, and in a minute he would look up.

  Kellen had hung Rae’s pink bag on a short branch. Her own backpack was tucked between a branch and the trunk. She had opened the roller suitcase and pulled out the mummy’s head.

  But it wasn’t a mummy’s head. Not even close. It was heavy, a marble stone with its features obscured by Bubble Wrap and tape. The base was square; in the far distant past when it had been made, it had been meant to sit in a position of honor on a fireplace or a family’s hearthstone. Kellen knew it deserved to be handled with respect and consideration for its great age.

  But when Horst looked up, she flung it at him.

  He ducked and shouted.

  It hit his shoulder.

  From twenty feet up, Kellen leaped out of the tree and smacked him with her feet. She landed in a sprawl on top of him and to the side.

  He gave an abbreviated bleat and clutched at his belly. His body went limp.

  She leaped aside, stumbled, turned to observe him. Was he faking it, preparing to lunge at her and drag her down?

  No. He was lying on his back, his face up, his eyes rolled back. He didn’t twitch. She’d knocked him unconscious and if she was lucky, one of his broken ribs had pierced some vital organ. Not that she was feeling vindictive...

  “Mommy! Are you all right?” Rae’s whisper pierced the quiet of the forest.

  Kellen gave her the thumbs-up, hoped Rae knew what that meant, spent a few moments clutching her hip where the roof tile had pierced, then gathered herself and went over to Horst’s prone body. She kept her pistol pointed at his head as she rifled through his pockets and found a carefully folded paper, printed from a hand-drawn map, that showed the real route to the Restorer. “You two-faced son of a bitch,” she said quietly.

  “What did the two-faced son of a bitch do?” Rae had slipped down the tree and sat on the branches six feet up.

  Kellen debated whether she was supposed to give Rae the no-profanity speech, and decided she needed to give it to herself. “He lied about where we were going.” The map showed nothing but the actual path up the mountain to the Restorer when what Kellen actually needed was a ranger station.

  “He’s a bad man,” Rae observed.

  “Yes. He sold us out. That’s the worst kind of traitor. But now I know the right way to go.” Surely on the way, they’d see a sign for a ranger station. Maybe they’d even run into a ranger.

  Maybe hope springs eternal.

  Kellen lock-clicked the safety on her pistol, grabbed Horst under the arms and dragged him toward a tree, smaller than the rest, and sat him against the trunk. “Rae, toss me down my bag.”

  Rae clambered back up the branches and got Kellen’s backpack. She tottered under the weight, then dropped it from twenty feet up.

  Kellen leaped aside as it smashed to the ground. “Right. Thank you.” The breakfast cookies had just disintegrated into cookie dust. She pulled a couple of long nylon zip ties off the side of the bag, and with a few quick yanks, she secured Horst’s wrists behind the tree trunk. He wasn’t getting away anytime soon.

  But when he had looked up into the tree, he had paused for a mere second in absolute astonishment. He had seen Rae. He knew she had a child with her. When his team found him, he was going to blab.

  Yet Kellen couldn’t kill him, not in cold blood and certainly not in front of Rae. She would simply have to hope no one stumbled onto him for a couple of days. Once she reached the Restorer whose name, if this map was to be believed, was Zone—sure, Zone—she would send someone to free Horst from the tree and arrest him for attempted theft and murder.

  She stepped away, watched Horst’s head loll on his chest and went back into his pockets. She still didn’t find her phone, and somewhere along the line he’d lost his pistol, but he had a short push-button-operated stiletto strapped to his belt and she secured that. She supposed a normal mother wouldn’t consider the possibility of training Rae to use it, but if she could teach Rae enough knife work to survive...well. Childhood innocence was all well and good, and Kellen would do everything in her power to preserve it, but mostly, she wanted to give Rae a chance to live.

  Rae had to live.

  Kellen gathered the dirty Bubble-Wrapped mummy’s head. She secured it to her bag with more long zip ties, then looked up at her bespangled daughter. “Toss Mommy down your bag. We’ve got to get moving.”

  The pink bag thumped to the ground, and Rae jumped into Kellen’s arms. Kellen put her on her feet, and they set off into the woods.

  * * *

  Two hours later, Horst heard the sound of a vehicle on the road. It slowed to a stop, probably to examine the burned-out van. As soon as the door opened, he shouted for help. He kept shouting until he heard footsteps crunch across the pine needles toward him, and he started talking as soon as the man came into sight.

  “I’m a bounty hunter. There’s a woman loose in the woods, she’s a criminal, she jumped me and tied me up here. She’s armed and dangerous. You need to cut me free so I can go after her.”

  The guy nodded. Weird guy, dressed in pressed khakis, a long-sleeved golf shirt, hiking boots and a felt fedora.

  Horst realized this guy must be a Californian and probably wouldn’t be carrying anything as practical as scissors or a knife. “Are you lost?” Horst asked him.

  “I’m exactly where I belong.” In the shadowy woods, Mr. Fedora was not exactly easy to see. He was white, with a healthy tan, but Horst couldn’t see the color of his eyes, only that they glittered beneath the brim of his hat. “Which way did this dangerous criminal go?”

  “I don’t know.” Depended on whether she had found the real map. He’d figure that out as soon as he got his hands free. “I was unconscious when she left. But I
can track her.”

  “If she jumped you, healthy specimen of a man that you are, she’s in good shape.” He had a pleasant voice, modulated, easy to listen to and without a discernable accent. “What makes you think you can catch her?”

  For the first time, Horst felt a niggle of worry. This guy was observing him too closely, asking too many questions and smiling ever so slightly. “Come on. Cut me loose. I need to get going.” He waited to hear the guy say he didn’t carry anything sharp.

  But the guy pulled out a pocketknife from his khakis and flipped out a blade, about two inches long and honed often and well if the curve of the steel was anything to go by.

  “Thanks, man.” Horst watched him walk around behind the tree. “I’ve gotta tell you, I’ve been worried no one would find me until it was too late and I was just a skeleton tied to a tree.” Horst laughed, a little giddy at the idea of freedom.

  “Can you move back firmly against the trunk?” the guy asked.

  “Sure.” Horst scooted so his spine was flat against the tree, then held his hands up behind him to make them easy to reach. “Feels like she used nylon handcuffs. Is that it?”

  The guy mashed his knee on top of Horst’s bound hands, driving them into the dirt and making Horst’s head slam against the wood.

  Ouch! “What are you doing?”

  Two strong hands reached around the trunk. One grabbed Horst’s chin and jerked it up and back. Horst had one moment of clarity, one moment to yelp in terror and struggle, before the guy’s other hand, the one with the knife, slid firmly across his throat, slitting him from jugular to jugular.

  The killer pulled his hands back. But not soon enough. Blood sprayed his wrists.

  He grimaced at the mess on his sleeves, and without a backward glance at the incompetent fool, he returned to his car, a silver Lexus NX Hybrid, and changed to a clean short-sleeved golf shirt. Getting behind the wheel, he drove up the steep and narrow gravel road to meet his new team—and give them their new directive.