Looking at the nearby hills again, he spotted a cellular tower or three, and took another reading on the compass. He set his kit down and removed a battery powered, solar backup, wifi system. He figured about eight feet up on the tree would work. He handed Lizzie a bottle of water. “When you get your breath back, we have a signal,” he said.
Liz
Liz wasfit and in good shape for a woman with leftover lung damage but at the top of the peak she dropped the backpack, fell flat on the ground, drank another bottle of water, and poured the last drizzles over her face through the netting of her hat. Her chest was heaving, her heart was pounding, she was wet with sweat, and if she didn’t have Toto to find, she might just lay there and die, toes curling up like the Wicked Witch of the East.
Most witches hated it, but early on, before she understood the social impact of the film, the Wizard of Oz had been one of her favorite childhood movies, especially the flying monkeys. At age four, she’d wanted a flying monkey as a pet so bad she’d cried when her mother brought her a puppy. She pulled off the hot sweaty hat and searched out Eli.
He was staring out over the surrounding area with a pair of good quality binoculars. A full minute or three later, her breathing finally settled into an even pattern, one without the rasp of extreme exertion, and Liz sat up. Her jacket was full of twigs, seeds, leaves, and forest floor junk. Her hands were blistered even through the gloves from grabbing tree trunks to ease her way down and pull herself uphill, and her fingernails were grubby from all of the above. Her walking stick was dark from dirt.
Eli handed her a bottle of water and she drank it down fast with a murmured word of thanks. He made a little grunting sound of acknowledgement and told her they had a cell signal. When her mouth wasn’t so dry, Liz dialed the hospital and put her cell on speaker so Eli could hear. He was getting ready to do something with some kind of gizmo, but he stopped to listen.
It was a newsworthy and unsurprising conversation with the hospital operator. The woman informed her that she could not be put through to Golda. Either confidentiality concerns had kicked in or there was no such patient as Golda Ainsworth Holcomb.
When she ended the call, Eli asked, “Shall I get Alex to do some digging on her?” Alex was Eli’s brother, the younger Younger, a kid with a police record for hacking, a degree on the way from Tulane, and a job as the number one IT guy for the Dark Queen. If anyone could find where Golda was, what she wanted, and anything she might be hiding, it was Alex. He could probably dig up dirt on Saint Peter.
“Please,” she said. “Molly will have all the info on the Ainsworth clan. Make sure Golda is really Golda.”
“You didn’t check before you took the job?”
There was no censure in his tone, but she wanted to bristle anyway. “I had a photo from last year on a witch website. I compared when I saw her in the hospital. She had put on a few pounds, but then so have I.”
Eli grunted again and called his brother. The phone call was just like the man: efficient, spare, and devoid all but the most basic of details.
When all the phone calls were done, Eli, moving with grace and ease of breath that she envied right now, sat beside her. After a while, he asked, “Why would someone give you two K cash, up front, and a magical thingamabob, and send you out into the wild? Where’s the dog now? Assuming there is a dog? Assuming we’re actually on its trail. We’ve seen no tracks, no dog scat.”
Liz reached to her waist and unclipped the carabiner, holding the crystal up to the light. There was hardly any magic in the quartz anymore, which was surprising, since it was supposed to have a twenty-four hour charge, but the little power still present indicated a location down the far side of the ridge they had just climbed, into a ravine that led to the bottom of the gorge.
She pointed downhill and said, “It’s moved toward us a bit. Maybe half a mile away as the crow flies, but way back down the mountain, on the other side of the ridge.”
“And your evil-sense?”
“I’m not feeling anything now,” she said, “except a case of sore muscles.”
He nodded and stood, grabbing the gizmo he had been fiddling with. She watched as Eli climbed a low tree, attaching the device to it at about eight feet off the ground. It had black wand that he pointed down the hill, and other parts that he was careful to align according to his compass.
While he worked, so did she. Sliding the backpack straps free, Liz retrieved her battery stone—what she called the chunk of granite that carried stored energy like a battery—and placed the crystal on it to recharge. The dog was still in the same general area, so she put the quartz back in the silver box to preserve the refurbished energy levels.
He swung down from the tree and alighted in a bent-kneed, soft landing. All he needed was the red cape.
“There’s a runnel of water and a good campsite about two hours away,” Eli said. “I just installed a portable wifi system pointing downhill and up toward the towers behind us and the other side of the gorge. It might give us some access to the outside world. You up for another couple hours of Rehab?” He grinned suddenly and it was blinding, lighting his entire face.
Her heart skipped a beat or seven at the sight.
He added, “I’ll see if I can massage the soreness out of your muscles after we get camp set up.”
For the first time since she got sick, she saw a wicked little twinkle in his dark eyes. He just had to wait until she was slick with sweat, smelled like a dockhand, and was so tired she could barely move. The man was an idiot.
Chapter Four
Eli
There was no trail.He checked all around, even up into the trees for overhead threats. The tree canopy was both too high and too low to allow him a direct line of sight down, but this was no different from a hundred other ops or training exercises where he’d been dropped in, given an objective, and expected to find his way out.
Except for Lizzie. She had been athletic enough before the battle that had nearly killed her, but not being able to breathe deeply put definite restrictions on the amount and type of exercise she could do. She should probably be lifting weights and stretching, maybe some MMA, and swimming for her cardio. Not running, not yet. No matter what her pulmonologist said.
He wondered how insulted she would be if he suggested a workout regimen for her. That might be one of the things that civilian women got pissy about, thinking he was talking about weight or being out of shape. He thought she looked good with the few extra pounds she’d put on. All in the right places. But again—not something he could say to a woman. A buddy would get it without all the angst. But a woman? He blew out a breath. Best to keep his mouth shut.
Just ahead and down, between them and the campsite, was a stand of laurel, thick and impenetrable. Too wide to go around. Laurel was a low-growing plant, most never getting more than fifteen feet in height, with big leaves and twisted branches. They grew in stands so dense they were a bugger to get around and through. But they provided good cover from airborne predators, which meant animals liked them. All sorts of critters denned and slept in the cover and there were often trails down to water. He was optimistic he could find an animal trail that led in the general direction of the campsite. Again, he checked everything around and over them. He checked his cell. They still had a signal thanks to the wifi in the tree. He had a feeling it would disappear as he traversed the downward ridge covered with the laurel.
