Page 29 of Training Rain
Staying perfectly still, she calculated how far away the knife in her pack was to her hand and if she could get to it before the enemy noticed.
Another man rushed through the leaves and snow. Yas growled and a man screamed. The man holding her down let up, maybe to help his friend. Rain took her chance, grabbed the hunting knife from the pocket on the side of her pack and slashed up and back while twisting her body.
She felt the blade cut through fabric and down to flesh. The hard metal of a gun barrel pressed against her forehead.
“Fucking bitch.” Her attacker was in his mid-thirties. Brown hair poked out from under his ski cap and his expression twisted with hatred and pain. Blood dripped from a long gash in his arm and stood out against the white of his BDUs.
She dropped the knife.
A big pile of snow fell near her left leg.
He twisted toward the danger.
Rain grabbed the knife, swung her arm up and sank the tip deep into his neck.
He turned back with wide eyes before falling on his side and going still as death took him.
Pushing his leg off her, she scrambled away just as Jess trotted over with Yas.
She looked at the spots of snow clumps all around them. “Are you making the snow come down from the treetops?”
“You needed a distraction and I was not going to get to you in time.”
Amazing.“And the dead oak that fell at the perfect moment?”
He shrugged. “Telekinesis can be quite handy at times. It’s not just for party tricks, you know.”
He pulled her into a tight hug. “You did great.”
She looked down at the man who had tried to kill her. She didn’t feel the sense of remorse she’d expected. A part of Rain wished it hadn’t been necessary to take a life, but her sense of logic told her there had been no options.
Jess handed her a towel out of his pack. “You’d better wipe that blood off you,cher.”
Until that moment she hadn’t realized the wetness on her face was the other man’s blood. She wiped her cheek and used the snow in an attempt to get most of the blood off her white jacket. It would never all come out.
Twenty yards away another man lay dead with his throat ripped out. She looked down at Yas. The dog’s big eyes stared sadly up at her and the small amount of white fur around his mouth was stained a dark red. Rain knelt down and cleaned him up as well, all the while petting him and telling him what a good dog he was. Somehow she knew the dog had saved her life. She could never have defeated two attackers.
The men must have abandoned their ATV and tracked them through the thick woods on foot. Another lay dead with a bullet hole in the center of his chest. Empty eyes stared back at her as she passed.
They reached the park road without any other signs of pursuit. Maybe the enemy had given up or maybe they had killed them all. Either way, she was glad to be out of the woods, though without the tree cover the snow was deep.
Yas gave a low growl just before she heard the sound of an engine coming up the road. They dove off the road and into a ditch before the plow blade of the truck came into view. She felt and heard Jess release his breath and relax.
“Park ranger.” He stood up and walked to the road waving.
Rain and Yas followed toward what she now saw was a white truck with a green stripe down the sides. It clearly had a National Forestry symbol on the door. The driver was alone, male and though he stopped as soon as he saw them, he didn’t immediately get out of the truck.
Jess stopped about fifteen feet from the vehicle’s front bumper and the two men watched each other for a long moment. It was the first time Rain had ever wished she had the ability to read human thoughts or emotions.
She came up next to Jess and waved to the ranger.
A moment later, he opened the car door and stepped out, putting his brimmed hat on. Likely in his late forties, he was graying though still appeared fit. He was nearly as tall as Jess and had a holstered handgun strapped to his belt. His hand rested on the hilt. His blue eyes were creased with a spider web of time and his thin lips were drawn in a line. He looked briefly at the pillar of smoke drifting up above the trees. It still poured from the cabin a few miles away. He wore no coat, maybe because he was in the car. On his breast pocket a gold pin read “Ranger Roger Bailey”. “Morning. You folks shouldn’t be up here this time of year.”
Rain waited only a beat to see what Jess would say. He just watched the ranger.
Rain patted Yas’ head. “I know, sir. We lost my dog up here a couple of months ago and this is the first chance we had to come back. I know it was against the rules to come into the park when it’s closed, but I just had to see if I could find him.”
The ranger looked at Yas as the dog licked Rain’s hand and leaned against her leg. “Is that blood on you, ma’am?”
