Cover of Night Read online

  He left then and climbed to where Billy was positioned, the movement made more tortuous because he knew damn good and well that some of those old deer hunters could have their scopes on him, waiting for a good shot. He had to make certain they didn’t get the chance, even though he didn’t think it likely any of them would have the firepower to reach out this far. But then, he’d been surprised by how close Creed had managed to get last night; he wouldn’t let himself get caught twice.

  Billy was exhausted, since Teague hadn’t been able to relieve him any during the day; he rolled away from the prone rest position he’d held for hours and lay sprawled on the rough ground. “Thank God. You feeling any better?”

  “I’m here. Seen anything interesting?”

  “I get the feeling there’s been a lot of movement going on behind cover. Blake and Troy think the same thing. Sometimes I’d catch a glimpse of something, but never enough to tell what it was. And always behind good, solid cover, so I know I wasn’t looking at a dog or a cat.”

  “You fire to make ’em keep their heads down?”

  “A couple of times yes, a couple of times no. Goes against the grain to waste ammo.”

  Teague knew what he meant. He settled with his rifle on the blanket Billy had spread on the ground over some leaves and pine needles to make the long watch more comfortable. His spare battery for the thermal scope was at hand, as well as a thermos of coffee and a pack of snack crackers if he needed to keep his energy up. At least tonight wasn’t as cold as last night had been, so he wouldn’t be shivering and shaking, which would play hell with his headache.

  “Nobody tried to retrieve the bodies,” Billy said, sounding troubled. “That bothers me.”

  “If they’re going to, it’ll be tonight. They’ll have waited for dark.”

  “They have to have figured we got special scopes, that’s how we could hit ’em last night.”

  “Yeah, but maybe they’ve worked out something movable they can hide behind. We’ll see.”

  “You going to shoot if they go after the bodies?”

  Teague considered the question. “I don’t think so. Is Blake already in position?”

  “He relieved Troy about half an hour ago.”

  “I’ll radio him. Let them get the bodies. I don’t know what they’ll do with them, but I don’t think it’ll be pleasant, having all those dead people lying around attracting flies and turning black. Put a little more pressure on them.”

  “That it will.” Billy stretched, then got into a crouch and worked his way behind Teague, heading toward the tent. “Have fun tonight.”

  Teague carefully braced his rifle, then turned on the thermal scope and put his eye to it. Last night Trail Stop had been lit with thermal signatures; tonight there was nothing. The houses didn’t glow with heat, and none of the brightly lit little figures were running around making perfect targets of themselves. Considering how his head felt, he hoped the night stayed just as quiet as it was now.

  Cate checked the glowing hands of Cal’s watch, which he’d lent her, since hers wasn’t luminous. Eleven thirty. She pulled her blanket more securely over her shoulders and stared up at the cloudy sky, glad the night was cool but not cold. She would have preferred a nice bright moon, too, but her eyesight had long since adjusted to the darkness, which wasn’t total. She wouldn’t want to walk anywhere; she couldn’t see that well, but she could make out darker shapes and shadows. So long as nothing moved, and she didn’t hear any crashing sounds, she was good.

  Cal slept on his side on the thin pad he’d brought, blanket pulled up to his chin. They were keeping watch, for this first night at least, since they could have been seen working their way toward this location. Cate had the first shift; since the midnight to dawn shift was the hardest, he’d said, he would take that one.

  He’d fallen asleep so fast, so easily, that she’d been disconcerted. She wished the light had been sufficient for her to watch him, but she’d had to content herself with listening to him breathe. He’d shifted position once or twice, but for the most part he’d been very still. As nothing happened to keep her alert, after a while she stopped starting at every rustle, every tiny scratch and scurry, as the night animals and insects went about their business. Instead, she thought about him.

  Cal had said Trail Stop was shaped like a paramecium. The odd word had gone around and around in her brain as she followed him down the steep slope toward the river. Cate remembered what a paramecium was, from high school biology, but the word choice alerted her to yet another facet that made up the complicated whole of the man.

  The past few days had been one revelation after another, until she felt as if she had to be the blindest, most oblivious person in Trail Stop. Until just a few days before, she had seen him as a sort of nonentity: painfully shy, inarticulate, but able to fix just about anything. He was definitely a jack-of-all-trades, but she’d discovered that while he might be a quiet man, he wasn’t shy at all; in fact, he was well-spoken, educated, and decisive. He’d been in the military, about which she knew next to nothing, but evidently he’d been in some kind of exclusive unit.

  Everyone else in Trail Stop seemed to have known all this. How could she not have noticed the disparity between the way she had looked at him and the way they saw him? Of course, they had known him far longer, but still—she felt as if she were still missing some big piece of the puzzle, some magic piece that would bring everything into focus.

  The thick end of the paramecium slanted downward, which was good for two reasons: it provided cover, and the sharp slant down to the river wasn’t as high. On the highest side, the bluff was sheer and a good seventy feet, but here at the eastern end it decreased to a mere forty feet, at a lesser angle, which meant they were able to get down without rappelling. Cal used a short-handled trenching tool to cut footholds in the dirt, and they both went down in a mostly upright position.

  That close to the river the roar of the water had made conversation impossible unless they shouted, so she’d concentrated on not falling as they negotiated over jagged boulders. There was no riverbank, not in the sense that people usually thought. At the water’s edge were rocks, period: big ones, little ones, rounded ones, and sharp ones. Some were solidly placed, some rolled underfoot. Some were slippery. Some were slippery and rolled, and they were the most treacherous. She’d had to make certain she had a secure grip with at least one hand before placing her weight on any rock. The pace was necessarily slow, so slow that she had begun to worry they wouldn’t be able to get to more hospitable ground before dark, but they’d made it to the base of the mountain just in time. Cal had found a protected slope and that was where they’d stopped.

  There was no semblance of camping. It was just the two of them, sitting on the ground in the dark, eating muesli from a plastic bag and drinking a little water. Then he’d unrolled the pad and lay down to sleep, leaving her alone with her thoughts.

  At midnight she said, “Cal,” and just like that, he was awake, without her having to shake him or repeat his name. He sat up and stretched, yawning.

  “How did you do that?” she asked, pitching her voice low because sound carried at night.

  “Do what?”

  “Wake up that fast.”

  “Practice, I guess.”

  She gave him his watch, and he strapped it back on his wrist while she stretched out on the pad. She had wondered if it would be as comfortable as it looked. It wasn’t. It was a thin pad on the rough ground, and she could feel every root and rock; still, it was better than sleeping on the ground, because it kept the chill away.

  She spread her blanket over her as he took a drink of water and sat down where she’d been sitting. She tried to doze off, if not immediately as he’d done, at least within five or ten minutes. Fifteen minutes later she was still fidgeting.

  “If you’re not still, you won’t ever get to sleep,” he said, sounding amused.

  “I’m not a good camper; I don’t like sleeping on the ground.”