Page 85 of Coyote

I rested my hand on the stone next to her, not touching her, just letting her know I was there. She didn't budge.

I sat with her until the light went off the high peaks, because the second I got back somebody down there would want something from me.

I checked the water pan one last time, then turned and headed back out.

Forty feet down the trail, I stopped. A stone sat in the middle of the path with the dust wiped clean off one side. I crouched down, hands on my knees, my breath hitching. A mountain cat could've done that chasing rabbits down the ridge.

But then I looked up.

The tall grass above the trail lay flat and hadn't stood back up. A wild juniper branch hung twisted, the pale underside of its needles showing.

My skin pulled tight from my wrists to my shoulders.

They had come back.

No. Worse than that. Something had put that grass down more than once. It lay in layers, the kind that came from a body lying in the same hollow day after day. Somebody had bent that juniper and let it go and bent it again until the wood quit springing back. Boots had scuffed the dirt under the cut to powder in a patch the size of a man.

I held my breath, listening so hard that my ears rang.

No birds. Nothing in the scrub. The whole ridge sat silent.

Shit.

If I ran and it was a cat, it would have me from behind before I cleared the rocks. If I stood still and it was a man, he'd have me either way. I had three inches of folding blade on my belt and forty feet of bare rock under me, and the mare was tied below with her cinch hanging.

I stood up.

They came out of the flat grass above and the cut below, both at once.

And for about a second and a half, I was actually glad.

A split second of pure, venomous relief. Finally. Let them try to put me in the dirt next to Miguel. Let them try to take me. I wanted the fight. I wanted to bleed for it.

But then I saw the short, heavy clubs in their hands. And not one of them was reaching for a holster. They wanted a captive.

I drew my knife anyway. It was a three-inch folding blade. It was laughable against five grown men on open ground, but I didn't have anything else.

The first one lunged, swinging a thick wooden bat at my temple. I ducked inside the arc of his arm, stepped in close, and drove the three-inch blade straight into the meat of his thigh. I twisted it hard pulling out. He let out a wet, strangled shriek, and his knee buckled under him. His blood came up hot over my knuckles, but it didn't matter.

Before I could clear the blade, a heavy blow caught me square across the shoulder blades. The impact rattled my teeth and sent me crashing to my knees. The gravel tore through my jeans, biting into my skin. I swung blindly behind me, catching another man's forearm and leaving a long, ragged gash, but then three of them hit me at once, burying me under a wall of suffocating weight.

I kept my eyes on the dirt. A heavy boot came down hard on my right wrist, pinning my hand flat against the jagged stone. Someone kicked the knife away.

Then the heel ground down and the bones snapped under it with a sound I felt in my teeth. The pain caught up and took my sight for a second, and when it came back I was looking at my own fingers lying wrong against the rock. I screamed, but I didn't stop fighting.

I couldn't use my hands, so I lunged forward with my jaw open and sank my teeth into the nearest ankle. I bit down through the heavy canvas of the boot, tearing until I tasted salt, dirt, and sweat, grinding my jaw shut until the man shrieked and kicked me squarely in the ribs. Another blow cracked against the side of my skull, and everything grayed out.

They dragged my arms behind my back. My broken hand throbbed with a rhythmic, agonizing heat, every beat of my heart sending a fresh wave of nausea through me as they zip tied my wrists and ankles. They left me face-down in the dirt, chest heaving, spitting gravel and blood onto the trail.

Face down on the trail with my hands behind me, I could have turned my head and looked. She was forty feet up in the dark with the lid off. If I looked, they'd follow it. They'd find her weaving at their voices, and one of them would put a boot on her head and never think about it again.

So I looked at gravel. I looked at their boots. I did not look up that hill.

Somebody walked up the trail without hurrying and stopped a foot from my face.

Zaroff crouched. He looked at the man holding his thigh together, and at the one with his forearm open. "He almost killed two of you with a pocketknife," he said to nobody in particular.

Then he took my jaw in his hand, turned my head into the light, and looked at my teeth long enough to count them. He let go and wiped his fingers on his jeans.