CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

Over the wind, Starr heard coyotes in the distance, and the response of another, closer pack. The sleet had turned to snow and the footing had changed from undulating earth covered with prairie grass to a steady incline that slowed her pace with the slip of shale and granite.

Now the wind carried another sound. A scream.

Starr’s entire body stiffened and she willed her ears to hear. She fumbled to pull her Glock from its holster with her frozen fingers and scrambled up the next incline, a game trail worn between outcroppings of rock that rose high on both sides. She kept her eyes upward as much as she could, but the lingering effects of so much weed and whiskey made her slow, lent soft edges to her perception, to the rocks, the trees. She hoped this new rush of adrenaline would override it.

Anything is possible, she thought. An ambush, a person, a predator. Then her feet no longer felt earth, and for one bewildering moment there was no gravity at all.

When reality kicked in, Starr was plummeting down a ravine. Instinct forced her to grab wildly at anything solid, and, somehow, she managed to slow her descent by gripping onto roots that had tunneled into granite cracks and found life.

She heard her Glock clatter to the bottom of the ravine. Fuck. It was impossible to tell how much farther she had to fall before she hit the bottom.

Then Starr let go.

The fall should have knocked the drunk right out of her, cleared the whiskey she’d been sipping all day. Starr lay for a long while on the rocky ground at the bottom of the ravine, the snow riding great gusts to land everywhere around her. Her thoughts roamed to dangerous places now that she was penned in by the ravine’s rocky walls on each side.

One hand went to her holster, and then she remembered. The Glock had fallen first. An image of the gun, the one she regularly took apart and polished with such care, bouncing down the ravine flashed in her mind. She felt a jolt of fear pulse through her abdomen, along with the heavy, painful squeeze of injury.

She moved her arms and then each leg, relieved when they responded, and took shallow breaths as the shock passed over her.

It was nearly dark now. She looked at the sky, then got on all fours, and, finally, to her feet. She left a shadow image in the snow, like she’d shed a layer of who she was.

It was okay, she decided, if it ended like this. She’d imagined her own death so many times but had ultimately been too…what? Scared? Lonely?

Maybe she’d been afraid that no one would care.

But the girl. She couldn’t leave the girl out there, somewhere, could she, if there was a chance she was alive?

She could smell the sharp metallic scents of cold and fear coming off her body, and her mind went to an early memory. A sunny day fishing with her father. Had it been on the rez? They were putting a worm on a hook. She was the worm now. Bait and bated, waiting for a bite.

In any case, this was going to hurt.

Starr shivered and slipped out of her backpack. A part of her was grateful she’d had the instinct to curl into a ball, so that when she’d hit the bottom of the rocky gorge, the pack covering her center mass had taken the brunt of the impact.

Even with this distribution of force, Starr still winced when she took a breath. Her back burned along the arc of her left shoulder blade. And now her right ankle was a problem, since it had twisted in the fall.

The snow, falling heavier now, clung to her lashes as she tried to tamp down the panic that was rising from her gut. She forced herself to think of roomy spaces somewhere overhead, to help ease the feeling of being closed in, of not having enough air to breathe. The ravine will eventually reveal a way up and out, she thought. It had to.

Gun or no gun, she had to keep going. She had to find Chenoa and get out of this fucking chasm. Starr leaned against the cold, slick rock wall. She felt the surety slipping from her, dissipating like the heat of her body.

Starr thought of her training: She couldn’t help anyone if she didn’t help herself. It was the first thing she’d learned in law enforcement, their version of you can’t pour from an empty vessel, and she’d stuck to it all these years. Well, not lately, but still.

Sometimes getting high fucked with her head. It had done more than that tonight, she thought, wincing as she stepped away from the wall and began picking her way over the rocky terrain.

It came to her suddenly that she’d heard a noise before she fell. It had been a wild sound, a scream. She thought of the nature shows her father had watched. There were creatures out here that could sound human. A bobcat? Mountain lion? Could it have been Chenoa?

Now that the adrenaline was wearing off, new aches were setting in that nearly overwhelmed her. Starr wished for her flask, somewhere in the pack she’d left behind. She couldn’t carry it with her ankle hurting the way it was. If the girl was out here, could she reach her in time?

Don’t count on it, she thought. It had been a stupid idea to look for Chenoa in this storm, and now she was in near darkness.

There was movement in front of her, and if she squinted, she could, barely, make out an outline. No, she thought, it can’t be.

Starr went still with shock, the paralysis of fear undermining years of training.

The buzzing began at the back of her neck, and before long it crested, reverberating up into her brain and chasing out every thought. Ahead, she saw the silhouette of a beautiful woman atop whose graceful head was a crown of antlers.

They watched each other for a long moment, and then the woman…the deer…Deer Woman, thought Starr’s deranged mind…Deer Woman slid an arm from her side, raised it and crooked a finger at Starr. Come, she motioned. Come.

Starr limped forward, so close that she could see the night sky reflected in Deer Woman’s pupils, every constellation scattered across an endless indigo blanket. When the stamping of hooves rang in her ears, Starr looked down to see a pair of delicate, deadly prints in the snow. Then Deer Woman turned so that she was no longer blocking Starr’s path, and took several steps away from her.

Deer Woman’s delicate neck shifted so that one knowing eye looked Starr’s way. The meaning was obvious.

Starr threw an exasperated look to the heavens and limped forward. She was going to follow Deer Woman, wherever she led.

There was no going back.