Page 24 of Red Boar's Baby

“No idea.” She assumed he’d made an ill-advised dash for the sniper, but she couldn’t see him anywhere, and there was minimal cover on those brown and dusty-green hills.

Oh well, that was Caine’s problem. The helo was hers. Feeling horribly exposed, she opened the door while crouching, and then slung herself up into the pilot’s seat and slammed it after her. She wasn’t sure how well the helo’s acrylic canopy would protect her from a bullet, but at this distance it had to at least help.

Or maybe she wouldn’t even hear it shatter because the bullet would already be in her neck.

Her hands sped across the controls, going through motions she knew backward and forward. The chopper blades began to spin. Safety protocols said that passengers should always be still and safe in a known location when the rotor was in motion, but civilian protocols didn’t account for taking off under fire.

Diana opened her door and shouted, “Now! Stay low! Get in the back!”

Jessie and Fifi came running in an awkward scuttle that suggested they were trying to emulate Diana’s military crawl, or things they’d seen people do on TV, but weren’t doing a very good job of it. Diana divided her attention between them and the cliffside where she had seen the flash, but she saw nothing else—including any sign of Caine—and there were no more gunshots. Jessie flung herself into the backseat and Fifi climbed into the copilot seat, in defiance of orders, but at least she was inside and that was all Diana cared about right now.

“Seat belts,” she said tersely. “And Dramamine, there’s some in that compartment next to you, Fifi. I’m going to be flying low and making some big turns. I want to see if I can spot that guy.”

“Was someone actually shooting at us?” Jessie asked breathlessly from the back.

“We aren’t taking off without Agent Caine, are we?” Fifi asked, scrabbling where Diana had indicated. She dry-swallowed a pill from a tube and handed it over her shoulder to Jessie.

“Yes, but we’ll come back for him.”

As the helicopter left the ground, she felt instantly better. Maybe it was having a bird shift form—roadrunners could fly, if they had to, although they didn’t usually choose to—but she felt secure, back in her element and in control of the situation. If anyone shot at her, she could simply fly away.

She reminded herself that if their sniper had good aim, a shot in the air could very well be worse than a shot on the ground. It was harder to hit a moving target, though.

Just to keep on the safe side, she stayed fairly high as she swept across the hillside in a large circle, alert for anything moving below. She saw a couple of wild burros, spooked by the chopper, sprint across a ridge and down into a gully.

But there was no sign of anything human-shaped, Caine or anyone else. She took the helo around in a series of spiraling turns, examining the steep outcropping where she had seen the flash of light. Up close, it was less sheer than it looked from afar, with brush clinging to cracks in the rock and animal trails winding up and down its height. It looked like it might have caves; in fact she saw what might be the entrance to several, although it was hard to tell the difference between a cave mouth and the inky black shadows cast by the desert sun.

“So, uh, you weren’t kidding about the need, but I don’t think the Dramamine had time to take effect yet,” Fifi said faintly into the headset.

Diana glanced at her and saw that she was white other than a reddening flush of sunburn across her nose. “Don’t worry, I’m going to set down as soon as I find a place.”

She spotted a figure waving at them from the top of the cliff. When Diana did a cautious fly-by, it turned out to be Caine. Diana had no idea how he’d made it across the valley that fast. Whatever he turned into must be speedy. She circled slowly around the clifftop until she found a flat-looking place without too much brush and settled down in it.

“No luck,” Caine said after the noise of the helo died away.

“I didn’t think so,” Diana said, helping a shaky Fifi out. “It looked like there might be caves.”

“There are. Too damn many.”

“Did you find anything at all?” Diana asked. She guided Fifi to sit on a rock, where the intern put her head in her hands. Diana handed her a bottle of water.

“No. Can’t tell where the shots came from, except that it was somewhere over here.” Caine sounded disgusted with himself.

“I think it’s time to head in and report.” Diana glanced around; the feeling of exposure was no longer quite so intense, but she disliked being this close to the former location of whoever had been shooting at them a few minutes ago.

“You go,” Caine said. “I’m going to keep looking.”

Diana frowned at him. His cheeks and nose, like Fifi’s, were starting to redden slightly in the sun, and he looked uncomfortable, blinking rapidly behind the dark glasses. “Are you sure? You know there’s no cell service or roads up here, right?”

“I’ll be fine. Tell Costa where I am.” He took a water bottle from the helo, and without another word, trotted down one of the animal paths leading down the cliff and vanished almost immediately from sight.

CHAPTER8

“Someoneshotat you?”Costa started to rise from his chair, nearly dumping the baby onto the floor. She squawked in protest, and Costa sat down and maneuvered the bottle back into her mouth.

He had Diana on the big wall screen in his office, which meant that he was able to see she was fine—dusty and a bit tired-looking, with a couple of unfairly adorable leaves in her hair, but fine. Being able to physically see her was probably the only thing stopping him from pitching the baby into the arms of the nearest person he could find and running out of the office immediately.

Controlling the urge, he asked, “Is everyone okay? Where are you now?”

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