Footprints

5

“How long have your people lived here?”

Joey picked his way along the path without making a sound. Annja marveled at his ability to stay quiet. He was very much every bit his namesake.

“Hundreds of years. We’re a splinter group of Apache.”

“Apache? I thought that tribe was from the Southwest,” Annja said.

“It was. We came up north to escape the persecution of the Spaniards and the white man. It took us a long time to find a suitable home, but this was it. We had a need to remain hidden until such time as we could prosper.”

“Has that happened yet?”

Joey shrugged. “There’s always the future to look forward to. Life on a reservation doesn’t offer very many Native Americans a lot of hope. Crime’s rampant. Kids drop out of school. It’s a mess.”

“You lived on one?”

“Me? Nah. I visited a cousin one summer. It was all I could do to hope for September to hurry up and get there so I could come home and go back to school. Not the kind of place I’d choose to live, you know?”

“So you live here?”

“Sure. My grandfather takes care of me. My parents died in a car accident when I was really young.”

Annja ducked under a tree branch. The wind had died down some and she lowered her voice since shouting wasn’t necessary anymore. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t really know them. It makes me sad to think of them sometimes, but my grandfather is all the family I need. Him and the animals who live here.”

“I don’t blame you. I never knew my parents, either.” She nodded at the trail. “You really know your way all over these parts?”

“Yep. I’ve been running around here for about five years now. My grandfather insists I come out here to practice my skills so they aren’t lost. He was a scout for his tribe when he was young.”

“That must have been a long time ago.”

Joey nodded. “Yep.”

“And he taught you how to do all of this stuff? The tracking? The stalking? All of it?”

Joey paused and studied the ground. “Skills like that are what made my people such a tough enemy. They’re also what protected us when we needed them. My grandfather says it’s my duty to ensure they never die out. When I have a son, I’ll teach them to him, as well. Just the way it goes, I guess. Stuff gets passed on this way like it has for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.”

“Incredible,” Annja said. “You’re very lucky to have someone like your grandfather in your life.”

“Yep, he’s pretty cool. He once walked from Alaska to South America. He called it the spirit journey where he learned how to beat his own limitations. Eventually, I’ll probably do something similar. Kind of a rite of passage for my tribe.”

“How many of you are left?”

Joey ran his hands over the ground. “Your friend passed this way about an hour ago.”

“Really?”

Joey glanced at Annja. “She’s stumbling, though. You see how her footprints are staggered? There’s not a rhythm to them anymore. She’s in danger, most likely from the wind and the rain.”

“You’re certain these tracks were made about an hour ago?”

“I might be off by fifteen minutes or so, given the degradation of the track from the weather, but yes, it’s pretty accurate.”

“Can you find her?”

Joey frowned. “Be a lot easier if she was in better shape. As it is, she’ll be unpredictable. Her footwork will make it tough to follow her along a set course. In her state she might easily stumble and fall and we’d never find her.”

“We’ve got to try,” Annja said. “Lead the way.”

“Can you keep up? I’ll move faster if I know you can hang with me as I go along.”

“Don’t worry about me. If I can’t keep up, I’ll call out and ask you to slow down.”

Joey eyed her. “Okay, then. Let’s go.” He turned and started moving quickly. With his body stooped lower, Annja watched him move at a crouching run, checking the ground every few minutes for more signs and then continuing on.

Annja kept pace pretty well for a while, but then her own stamina took a bit of a hit. She felt herself starting to grow weary from the fast pace. Joey kept moving. Annja forced herself to push on, concerned that Jenny could well be dying somewhere close by.

Joey paused. “You okay?”

Annja bent over and breathed deeply. “Fine. Why?”

“I can hear you panting. You sound like a train huffing along back there. Honestly, I thought you were in better shape.”

Annja frowned. “I’m in fine shape, thanks. I’m a bit tired, though.”

“You want to rest?”

“No. Jenny needs us.”

Joey pointed to a nearby tree. “Stay there and get some rest. I’ll go on alone and find her. When I do, I’ll come back and lead you there. Right now someone needs to make sure she’s okay.”

“I’m slowing you down, aren’t I?”

“Yep.”

Annja nodded. “All right, then. Go.”

Joey turned and vanished into the night. Annja watched him disappear and then leaned her head back. The trunk of the tree behind her felt solid and somehow comfortable. Within a few moments, her eyelids dipped shut and she fell asleep.

And then she felt herself being shaken.

“Annja!”

She popped her eyes open. Joey’s face was close to hers. “Come on and wake up, sleepyhead.”

Annja got to her feet. “You found her?”

Joey nodded. “About a mile farther on. She was in a bad way but I got a fire going and huddled her up close to it. Hypothermia, I’d guess. The rain and wind probably took her down, but she should be okay. I made some pine-needle tea for her to drink, to warm her from the inside out. She was coherent when I left.”

“What did she say?”

“I guess she went back to camp and found it deserted.”

Annja frowned. Of course there was no way she could have let those kids stay in danger with gunmen threatening them. She had to break camp and send the students away. Jenny would understand, Annja felt certain of it.

“So what happened? She just went hiking around, looking for us?”

Joey shook his head. “Nah, she says she found her way back to the trailhead. She assumed something must have happened that made the camp leave. She was trying to get to town when the storm came down. Totally disoriented her. Before she knew it, she was in a bad state.”

“Thank God we found her,” Annja said. “She might have died otherwise.”

“Definitely,” Joey said. “Another thirty minutes and she would have been a goner.”

He led Annja over the trail and down a steep precipice. Bits of shale and gravel broke free, skittering along the path toward the muddy lower ground. Annja thought she could hear something in the distance.

“Is that a waterfall?”

Joey nodded. “Yep. Better to see it in the daylight, though. At night it’s not the same thing. Unless, of course, there’s a full moon. Then it’s pretty spectacular.”

“I’ll have to remember that. How much farther along is she?”

Joey stopped and pointed through the trees. “There. You see the fire? She’s right there.”

Annja couldn’t see Jenny but she could make out the glow of the firelight. So could anyone else who might be out tonight. “You think that was such a good move? That fire’s like a spotlight.”

“It was either that or your friend dies,” Joey said. “I thought saving her was a little more important than being stealthy about it.”

Annja nodded. “You’re right, sorry. It’s just I can’t help thinking about those guys roaming around in the night, looking for someone to kill.”

Joey waved his hand. “Those guys are probably back in their tents, sleeping off a drunk. I saw an empty beer can in one of their jackets.”

“What about animals? Would any of them attack Jenny if they knew she couldn’t defend herself?”

“Highly unlikely. Cheehawk is about as big a predator as we get around here and he wouldn’t bother her.”

“Mountain lion?”

“Last report was from twenty years back,” Joey said. “Long before my time. And I’ve explored these woods well enough to think that if there was one around, I would have run into him.”

“Okay.”

Joey led her farther down the trail and then the ground sloped upward again. “How she made it as far as she did is pretty amazing. I would have guessed that she’d lie down close to the waterfall, but she apparently wanted to get to high ground and try to use it as a navigational aid.”

“Jenny’s made of tough stuff,” Annja said. “She knows how to handle herself.”

“Well, weather can break anyone down,” Joey said. “Even with training and various other tools, the weather can still beat you. You’ve got to respect it. She should have just hunkered down and gotten shelter and waited out the storm.”

“Good advice,” Annja said. “I’ll make sure she gets the message.”

Joey smirked. “I already read her the riot act. She knows she screwed up. But she’s looking forward to seeing you.”

“So am I,” Annja said. “Is it much farther?”

“Just over the next rise.”

Annja smiled. It would be good to see Jenny again, even if she was in a state. At least she was alive. That was the important thing. All they had to do was get her back to town so she could be checked by a local doctor to make sure she had no lingering problems.

Joey ducked off the trail.

“She went this way?” Annja asked.

Joey nodded. “As I said before, in her condition, her travel wasn’t orderly. The stumbling kept her going along downhill, but once she started to climb, she veered from the trail and ended up a few yards off the beaten path, so to speak.”

“How’d you find her, then?”

“I cast around looking for her tracks and found them. As I got closer, I could hear her murmuring something and that was it.”

“Lucky the wind died down enough so you could hear her.”

“I can filter the effects of the wind on my ears,” Joey said. “It’s an old trick I learned a long time ago from my grandfather. It helps to always be able to hear even when the wind is screaming.”

“That grandfather of yours is something else.”

“Just old family traditions, Annja. Nothing more.”

“So you say.”

Joey pointed. “It’s just over the next hill there. I moved her out of the wind and got a fire wall built to reflect the heat back on to her. Then I covered her up with a bunch of pine boughs. She should be nice and toasty by now.”

Annja crested the hill with Joey still in the lead.

Joey stopped abruptly. “Hey…”

Annja came up behind him. “What’s the matter?”

Joey pointed down the hill. “What the hell?”

Annja looked. She could see the fire with its flames still eagerly eating their way through the wood. The fire wall and pine boughs were also nearby.

But Jenny was nowhere to be seen.

6

“Where is she?”

Joey shook his head. “She was here, I swear it! I left her right there. She was sound asleep. Exhausted. There’s no way she could have just gotten up and walked away.”

“Are you sure?”

Joey eyed her. “Of course, I’m sure. You don’t think I had something to do with this, do you?”

Annja had to remind herself that Joey was only fourteen years old. The way he carried himself, he seemed so much older. But did it make any sense for him to somehow hurt Jenny? She frowned. Of course it didn’t.

“Sorry. I guess I’m used to too many people in my life not being what they claim to be.”

Joey scampered down the slope and began checking the area around the pine boughs. “There are no tracks here.”

“What? How is that possible?”

He pointed. “You can see the impression her body weight made on the bed of pine boughs. That’s where I left her. But look at the ground. There’s nothing much here to read. Even for someone like me.”

“Is it possible she just got up and walked away?”

“Not without leaving some type of sign. I’d be able to read it, especially since I’ve grown pretty familiar with her track type. There’s nothing here. It’s like she just up and vanished.”

Annja looked around. The approach to the knoll was fairly well sheltered. Would the gunmen have been able to spot the fire and mount a kidnapping so quickly? And if they had, shouldn’t there be some type of track for Joey to find?

“This doesn’t make sense. She’s got to be around here,” Annja said.

Joey shook his head. “Impossible. She’d need to have a stride like King Kong in order to walk away without me having anything to follow. No way. She’s not here—she somehow got snatched by someone skillful enough to erase their tracks like they weren’t even there. And that’s some major skill. I don’t know anyone but my grandfather who could pull it off.”

“And yet someone clearly has.”

“Yep.”

Annja frowned. “My real concern right now is that Jenny might be in some serious trouble. She might be close to death again, being away from the fire.”

Joey nodded. “Well, whoever grabbed her, they at least had the good sense to take the tea I made for her. It’s gone, too.”

Overhead, the storm clouds finally broke apart and drifted away, illuminating the area with moonlight. Annja was amazed at how much better she could see the surrounding area now. It was almost, but not quite, like being out in the daylight.

“Well, that will help,” Joey said.

“How long did it take you to get her settled before you came to see me?”

“About twenty minutes to get her squared away, and it was long enough for me to make sure she was in a good state. I would never have left her otherwise.”

“I believe you,” Annja said. “And how long did it take for you to get back to me after you left Jenny?”

Joey shrugged. “Under ten minutes. It’s not that long a haul for me.”

Annja nodded. “Still that means someone had plenty of time to get to her while you were fetching me.”

“Maybe she got swiped by a UFO,” Joey said. “That would explain the absence of tracks. They could have used one of those beams that lifts people right up into the spacecraft.”

Annja smirked. “You get a lot of UFOs around these parts?”

Joey shook his head. “Unfortunately, no. This place can be a real bore sometimes.”

“All right, so that means whoever grabbed her had to be extremely capable at stealthy movement.”

“And strong,” Joey said. “Jenny wasn’t exactly light as a feather.”

“For you,” Annja said. “A grown man might have had an easier time of it.”

Joey frowned. “I’ll be grown up within two summers. It’s not such a big thing.”

Annja winced. She’d clearly struck a nerve with Joey. Teenaged boys only want to be men and she’d belittled that with her comment. “Joey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insinuate that you were weak or anything.”

“No big deal.” But she could see that Joey was smarting from the comment.

Annja looked around. “So what do we do now? I mean, Jenny’s not here. And if we have any hope of finding her, we’ll have to do it soon. I’m at a loss as to how we should proceed.” She looked at him closely. “These are your woods. I’d be grateful for your advice.”

Joey smiled. “Thanks.”

“Well?”

Joey nodded. “Okay, we can try to search for her, but I don’t know how much good it’s going to do. Without a track, I’m not much use. I haven’t really learned how to spirit track yet.”

“What’s that?”

Joey shrugged. “You’ll think I’m being weird.”

Annja smiled. “Did you see that sword earlier? What exactly was normal about that thing?”

“Not much.”

“Exactly.”

Joey sat down. “Well, spirit tracking is when you try to tune in to the person’s thoughts or spirit. You use that to guide you to them. My grandfather says it’s one of the ultimate tests that a true scout can undertake. Learning how to do it, you can kinda tune in on them anywhere.”

“It’s not limited by distance?”

“Nope. The process isn’t one I’m really familiar with, though. I still need a lot of training before I can pull it off adequately.”

“What about your grandfather?” Annja asked.

Joey sighed. “That guy can do anything.”

“Then maybe we should get him out here to help us.”

“Yeah, that would be the best thing to do, but my grandfather’s not able to walk anymore. He wouldn’t be able to come out here unless we drove him.”

Annja frowned. “What happened to him?”

“He got hit by a car crossing the street. Paralyzed him from the waist down. He hasn’t been the same since.”

A stiff breeze blew across the hill, chilling Annja. Jenny was somewhere in the woods, probably still in pretty bad shape, and there wasn’t a thing they could do about it. All that seemed likely was that she had a cup of pine-needle tea and little else.

“This is not how I expected to be spending my trip,” Annja said.

Joey pointed to their left. “My grandfather lives about four miles that way. If we hurry, we can reach his place in a little over an hour. But it’s not an easy trek. And I’m a little worried that you might not make it.”

“I’m not waiting here for you,” Annja said. “The last time I did that, Jenny vanished and I’m not taking the chance that whoever took her won’t come back and get me, as well. That’d just make your job that much harder.”

Joey shook his head. “Yeah, like if someone tried that on you, you couldn’t just whip that blade out and slice them apart.”

“It’s not that simple,” Annja said. “If they surprise me, for instance.”

“Like I did?”

“Yeah, like that. Then it becomes much harder to defend yourself. Plus, I’m cold and exhausted. If you leave me here, I’ll fall asleep in no time. And that would also make me vulnerable.”

Joey shrugged. “Suit yourself. But you’d better be able to keep up with me. Your friend’s life depends on me moving fast. If I can reach my grandfather’s house and get him to spirit track Jenny, then we should be all set.”

“He’ll be able to tell us where she is?”

“Almost definitely.”

Annja took a deep breath. “Then we’d better get going.”

Joey took a moment to orient himself and then set off at a brutal pace. Annja couldn’t believe how fast he moved and seemingly without getting tired. He wound his way up hills and down tight trails bordered by steep drop-offs. Streams ran parallel to their progress and, in places, the pines dipped so low that Annja had to duck repeatedly to avoid getting her eyes poked out.

Her breathing came fast and hard and, despite being bone cold earlier, the pace of the trek heated her up until she started to sweat. She could feel the rivulets running down her back and face. Her breath bellowed huge clouds of steam with every exhalation.

But still Joey kept moving.

Annja realized at some point that they weren’t on the main trail any longer. Joey was using what looked like animal runs and smaller paths that would have been invisible to her eyes if she’d been here alone. But to Joey they were the back roads and side streets of the wilderness landscape. And he knew how to use them effortlessly.

“You really do know this place, huh?”

Joey nodded. “I’ve had the time to explore it, fortunately. But there’s still plenty that I haven’t seen. It keeps me excited about it.”

Annja kept moving, focusing on the welfare of Jenny to keep her motivated. If they didn’t manage to somehow find her, then that would weigh heavy on Annja’s conscience. She just hoped that Joey’s grandfather would be able to somehow tune in to Jenny’s mind.

After a solid hour of travel, Joey drew himself to a halt. He took a deep breath and then seemed to smell the air. Annja came up alongside him and took the moment of rest gratefully.

“I don’t think I’ve ever moved so fast in my life.”

Joey smiled. “Quite the workout, isn’t it?”

“I’ll say. Are we close?”

Joey closed his eyes. “Quiet for just a moment, okay?”

“Okay.”

Annja watched as Joey turned his head slowly from side to side until he locked in on one direction. He stayed quiet for two minutes and then opened his eyes. “You ready to go again?”

“Uh…sure.”

“Good.” Joey took off, motoring across the valley in front of them. At the base of the next hill, he leaned forward, putting all his weight onto his thighs. Annja copied his lead, and instantly her thighs screamed in protest. She was asking them to bear a lot tonight, but it was all for Jenny.

She had to keep going.

Joey crested the hill and then turned onto a new track. The number of trees seemed to be dwindling and thinning out. Annja felt a change in the air.

Civilization.

They had to be close.

Forty yards farther on, Joey stepped out of the woods onto a paved road.

“Where are we?” Annja asked.

“Close,” Joey said. “Very close. This is the main road that runs from town out to the trailhead.”

“I don’t recognize it.”

“You wouldn’t have traveled this stretch coming from town.”

Annja nodded. “Your grandfather lives out here by himself?”

“He’s got me with him when I’m not out running around on my own.”

Annja kept pace with Joey, determined not to let him wear her down entirely. “You’ve got a lot of freedom for someone as young as you are.”

“You understand that, though, don’t you? The importance of being free. Not a lot of people do. I look at some of the other guys I know and their parents are terrified that they’ll get hurt so they keep them away from anything that might possibly harm them,” Joey said.