She hurried back deeper into the woods.
Safe for now. She had no idea about the time, but it must be close to morning. There was just enough light to see,
and to be seen
by the creepy bums in the woods.
She heard the movement close behind her. Someone was there. And they were coming fast.
Max turned—and realized too late that she had it all wrong. It was much worse than she’d thought. This was the end for her.
No way out of this.
The mountain lion was too close, less than ten feet away. It was gray and tawny brown, about five feet from head to tail,
easily two hundred pounds. It had stopped moving when she turned around.
The two of them began to play a survival game of dare to stare; dare to move first; dare to do anything except be scared out
of your mind, and
show
it in your eyes.
The cat started to growl, and she could see huge, powerful, stained yellowish-brown teeth. She couldn’t tell if it was afraid
of her, or if it had sensed something different about her, but the cat hadn’t pounced and killed her yet.
She wondered if she could run, and then maybe she could get up off the ground? If airborne, she might be okay. She might live
to tell about this.
The lion continued to growl under its breath. Its mouth was open a crack. Otherwise, they were both motionless, their eyes
still locked together. She couldn’t imagine how this stalemate could possibly end with a good result for her.
Max needed to take a breath. She was suffocating, which limited her choices. She really had to chance it.
She began to draw in a slow breath—when the cat pounced. It leaped at her with lightning speed. It
knew
exactly when to attack. Instinct!
Max yelled, but amazingly, the sound came from anger and fierceness, not fear.
She spun away—faster than she thought she could move, faster than she ever had before.
I’m fast—like this cat,
she thought, hoped, prayed, then
knew.
The large cat stopped and turned, seemingly with one fluid, powerful move. Its huge paws were like brakes in the dirt. It
seemed a little surprised, though.
Max sent a powerful swipe to the side of the cat’s head. The cat staggered sideways, but quickly came at her again.
Max showed a flash of wing, then pulled it away even faster. She swiped at the cat again, connecting solidly with jawbone.
She couldn’t believe how good it felt. The animal spun out of control.
This gave Max time to run a few steps, to take off into the air. In a rage at losing its kill the cat ran after her and jumped,
took off as if it too had wings. The big jaws snapped fiercely, but got only an air sandwich.
Max continued to climb stairs of air until she felt safe. Then she turned and looked down at the frustrated mountain cat.
She made a face. “
Meow,
” she mouthed, as she flew away.
K
IT AND I SEARCHED the dense, hilly woods high above the “Peak-to-Peak” highway. The “Peak-To-Peak,” Colorado Route 119 runs
along the top of the foothills and the beginnings of the
big
mountains to the west. It was pretty futile going. We were like bloodhounds who’d lost the scent.
I had never done this kind of thing before. It was weird for both of us, and even weirder that we were doing it together.
We looked pretty good, anyway. Kit had on a pair of green hiking shorts and not too much else. He’d already stripped away
a Dartmouth Law T-shirt to beat the sticky heat. I’d picked khaki shorts, mountain boots, and my lucky workout top; but so
far we hadn’t been too lucky.
The girl had to be somewhere, but where? Where wouldIhide ifIhad to seek cover out here? How would an eleven- or twelve-year-old
be thinking?
My curiosity about her was a living thing now. I had grown up in 4-H, been a Westinghouse Science Award winner, honors biology
major, could have gone to medical school to be a people doctor, if I’d chosen to. I wanted to know anything and everything
there was to know about the girl with wings. Who wouldn’t? Who could possibly resist?
The comfortable cool of the morning had given way to a typical, blistering-hot summer afternoon. My backpack was pretty full,
and heavy, and I was eager to put it down for a while.
I heard Kit panting lightly beside me, and I was glad I wasn’t looking into his blue eyes right now.
Last night, I’d kissed him with my heart full of sentiment and the rest of me high on sixty-dollar brandy. There was something
so different about him, a sensitivity I didn’t see in most of the men I knew, and which I hadn’t allowed myself to see at
first.
Maybe what had happened to his wife and two children started it, but I kind of thought Kit had always been that way. On the
other hand, as he’d said himself—
you don’t know whoIam.
“What do you think?” he asked, when we reached an elevated point in the trail. “Which way do we head? You have any idea?”
Sure, I was full of ideas. “I vote for the southern slope of that hill,” I said. “If I were a runaway, maybe I’d hide where
I could get a good view of the valley.”
“
That
slope?” he asked and rolled his eyes.
“It’s only two or three miles from here,” I told him.
He mouthed, “Only two or three?”
Cute. Funny. He definitely was that, but he had a serious side that I liked even more. The night before he had told me that
he wasn’t a hunter, but I didn’t know much about what he
was,
did I?
“We can be there in a couple of hours if we put some real energy into it,” I said. “You’ll be surprised.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. Whatever you say.”
“That’s the spirit, Kit Carson. That’s how the West was won.”
After another two hours of slip-sliding and hoisting ourselves up and down rocky inclines, we finally arrived on the leeward
side of the slope the town is named for: Bear Bluff.
“Let’s take a short break,” I said to the perspiring man alongside me. Actually, Kit looked even better with a sheen of sweat
covering his body. I think he knew it, too. He was that rare person who was mildly cocky without being obnoxious. He was confident
in himself, but there was also a touch of humility that I liked.
“You don’t have to coddle me,” he said and grinned. “I’m in decent enough shape—for a city boy.”
I laughed at his humor.
Yes, you certainly are in fine shape,
I was thinking to myself.
City boy or not.
I eased out of my backpack and looked at my watch. It was a little before five in the afternoon. I dug a couple of navel oranges
out of my pack and tossed him one. It was a wild throw but he caught it, anyway.
“Good hands,” I said, grinning like the fem village idiot. I kind of liked being goofy with him, though. I realized that I
already trusted him enough to be my goofy self.
While we devoured the sweet juicy oranges, I looked around. I saw nothing too unusual, though. Some flattened grass where
deer had probably slept. A shallow cave, too small to shelter a human. Turkey vultures circling above us turkeys.
What was I expecting to find up here?
A downy little bird-girl nest with a four-poster bed and an extensive Barbie doll collection?
Kit came up behind me. I smelled oranges and sweat. “Frannie,” he said softly. He really did have a nice voice. A smooth baritone.
I could listen to him for hours, and I had just the night before.
“Yeah?”
He was pointing toward the steepest part of the slope. “
Look.
Up there. Isn’t that something?”
I turned my head in the direction of Kit’s pointing finger.
Just over a clump of fir trees and boulders halfway up the slope above us was a large flying thing.
Not a hawk. Not a turkey buzzard.
It was
something,
all right.
The girl with wings!
She was soaring high above us, like a majestic eagle, only better.
“Oh God,” Kit couldn’t stop repeating as he watched her fly in slow, wide circles above us. “She’s for real.”
K
IT WAS ALREADY in shock, and flat-out awe, and maybe even in denial at what he had seen. He and Frannie started after
her
—a young girl, who looked normal in almost every way, except that she had wings and she could fly.
She was flying, and she was up about five hundred feet above them.
They
climbed
the hills after her.
They
crawled
up rocky inclines at times.
And they quickly found out that the shortest distance between any two points is—to
fly.
Kit stared up at the sheer face of the cliff and wondered how Frannie was able to find usable toeholds when he saw nothing
but slick rock and possible death, or at least major broken bones. He had put his T-shirt back on, as if that would protect
him if he fell.
He was no Neanderthal. It didn’t bother him when a woman did things better than he did, but this was getting a little ridiculous.
Frannie wasn’t just in good shape—she was in great shape. She was nearly Olympic-quality at this climbing hill-and-dale-and-mountain
thing.
He appreciated that she wasn’t rubbing it in too much. Actually, she was helpful and encouraging most of the time.
“Don’t look down,” she said to him. “Look at me.”
“I can do that,” he said. “I like doing that. Thanks for the tip. That actually helps some. Look at Frannie. Do as Frannie
does. See? Frannie isn’t falling to her death. You shouldn’t either.”
He pulled himself up the ledge toward where she stood above him. His hand found a thick root and he grabbed it. His toe found
a narrow crack and wedged in. He was doing okay.
Then he slipped.
He slid down several feet toward a rocky chasm.
Oh no, Jesus no.
He grabbed at a whip of a tree, bent the sucker almost double.
It held, thank God.
“C’mon, L. L. Bean, you can do this,” Frannie called to him from above. “Just be careful. Don’t lose your focus.”
Panting, afraid of becoming a bleeding pile of flesh and shattered bones, he slowly inched his way back up again. That was
the thing about Kit… he didn’t give up easily. He heaved himself over the lip of the rocky ledge. Normally, he’d have managed
a snappy comeback, but he didn’t have enough wind left in him to answer her.
“What’d you just call me?” he gasped eventually.
“What do you mean?”
Kit achieved a crawling position, then stood up. He lurched over to where Frannie was sitting on a rock, massaging her toes.
Nice toes, long and lean and very flexible.
“Why’d you call me ‘L. L. Bean’?”
She squinted up at him, shrugged her shoulders. “Your clothes, I guess. They’re brand-spanking-new, city boy. L. L. Bean–type.”
“You’re hurting my feelings.”
That cracked Frannie up. She bent at the waist and hugged her sides and laughed hard. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.
Kit looked at her and started laughing, which only compounded his wheezy, exhausted whoops into hysterics.
“It wasn’t
that
funny,” said Frannie, when she could finally speak again.
“I know,” he managed to say. “It wasn’t half that funny. But it
is.
Look at the two of us.”
Which sent them both into hysterical laughter again.
It was Frannie who recovered first. She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Then she hunted around in her pack, pulled
out a first-aid kit, and tossed it to him.
“Your stomach. There’s blood on your shirt.
Ooohh.
I can’t stand the sight of blood,” she kidded.
He doused the abrasion on his belly with alcohol without wincing. Frannie watched him. A cool expression on her face. After
he was finished with the alcohol, he said, “
Ouch,
” and grinned.
Kit looked around, searched the surrounding hills with his eyes. “Well, we sure didn’t catch up to her. She’s gone again.”
“I keep wondering who her parents are,” Frannie said. “Where the heck did she come from? Where does she live?”
There was no comment from Kit. Only dead silence.
Frannie stared hard at him.
“Wait a minute. You already know something about her, don’t you?”
Kit blew out air. “I knew something was going on. I uh, I
am
an FBI agent, Frannie. I told you that last night. That’s also why I’m here in Colorado. I’ve been working on this case for
three years.”
Frannie turned pale and stumbled over her words. “What? What
case
is that? Am I part of a
case
now?”
“Don’t go crazy, stay calm. Listen to me. It started in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at least I think that’s where it started.
A doctor named Anthony Peyser was performing experiments, trying to speed up human development, or so we believe.”
“You mean he was trying to effect human evolution, Kit? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
“Something on that order. We don’t know for sure.
I
don’t know for sure. Peyser and a team of students he handpicked were into something important. There was a breakthrough
of some kind. Then they got in serious trouble in Boston. They were accused of experimenting on humans—vagrants, street people,
occasionally a student who needed extra cash. The end justifies the means sort of thing. You’ve probably read about small
labs, even university research centers, accused of the same thing recently. The army has done some pretty bad things.”
“Yeah, I have heard about it. Who hasn’t? So you knew about this outlaw group of doctors all along. That’s why you believed
me about the girl, isn’t it?”
“I trust you—period. That’s why I believed you. How about trusting me a little now?” he finally said. “Deal?”
“We’ll camp here for the night,” Frannie answered.
She was tough when she had to be. But he sort of liked it.
I
NEEDED TO THINK about it some more, but I already suspected I was all right with what Kit had told me so far. Basically,
I
did
trust him. I liked what I saw in his eyes.