Night Hunter Read Free Page B

response to her garbled explanation. “Can you take me there?”
    She nodded. She wondered if he’d tell her to lead the way and asked herself if she could concentrate on driving well enough to pull it off. Fortunately, after telling his dispatcher or sergeant or whoever he was talking to what had happened, he indicated he wanted her to sit beside him in his vehicle.
    Although she was relieved to have found someone who’d know what to do, she swore he was barely going fast enough to justify having started the engine. She wanted to pound her fist against him and scream at him to hurry. Realizing she’d started shivering, she tried to determine whether he’d turned on the air conditioning, but her eyes refused to focus. Maybe the truth was that she couldn’t take her attention off what lurked at the edge of the highway long enough to concentrate on anything else.
    More likely the truth was that she still felt sexually stimulated.
    A man was out in that tangled vastness. Alone. Lost. Dependent on her when, damn it, she had no idea what to do.
    “There.” She pointed. “I hope—oh no. He’s not… He’s still in there, isn’t he?”
    The patrolman—he’d said his name was Todd something—pulled over to the side of the road. She was out of the car before he’d unstrapped his seat belt. Belatedly, she remembered to look down to where the motorcycle tire tracks should be. The sky had lost its deep plum hue, and the sun was regaining control, but despite the improved conditions, she saw nothing, heard nothing except what lived and breathed deep in the wilderness. She fought the stupid impulse to yank off her clothes and plunge into that wilderness.
    “You’re sure this is where it happened?” Todd asked.
    “I’m sure,” she said, irritated. Her nerve endings, the tips of her fingers and base of her throat and pit of her stomach told her that this was the spot where she’d stood not so long ago.
    She had to give Todd and the highway department their due. Todd called for backup, and two other patrol vehicles soon arrived. All told, five uniformed officers scoured the side of the highway for a half mile in either direction. When they wandered afield of where he’d disappeared, she couldn’t blame them. After all, the ground bore no signs to indicate a man on an out-of-control piece of machinery had been here.
    Still, she was so sure that when Todd pointed out that, given the lack of evidence, they’d concluded there’d been no accident, she practically had to be dragged away. She climbed into the patrol car, but kept her eyes fixed on where he’d disappeared until she could no longer see the forlorn spot.
    When Todd deposited her back at her vehicle, he assured her a tracking dog would be brought in for one final search. Then he suggested that because of the heavy downpour, she might have imagined what she’d seen. She nearly yelled at him that a man’s life was at stake here, but he and four other trained men had spent two hours trying to find some sign of her elusive rider.
    After giving Todd her home phone number, she got into her car, but instead of heading toward Fort Lauderdale where she was expected, she pulled a U-turn.
     
    “I know I saw you. You’re real! Damn it, I know you exist.”
    A large truck and trailer barreled past, the blast of air swirling her limp hair about her face. Mala grabbed the dark length with one hand and held it against the nape of her neck. Fighting a deep sense of failure, she tried to reassure herself that someone would report the man as missing, and she’d be vindicated. But the only thing that mattered was that a man—strong and young with a lifetime ahead of him—was out there somewhere.
    Trapped.
    Trapped? She recoiled from the thought, but couldn’t argue it away. Logic said he must be injured or dead. Otherwise, why hadn’t he stumbled out?
    However, something she couldn’t put a name to told her that neither of those things was true. Like a caged animal,