When the Wind Blows - James Patterson [46]
The girl had to be somewhere, but where? Where wouldIhide ifIhad to seek cover out here? How would an eleven- or twelve-year-old be thinking?
My curiosity about her was a living thing now. I had grown up in 4-H, been a Westinghouse Science Award winner, honors biology major, could have gone to medical school to be a people doctor, if I’d chosen to. I wanted to know anything and everything there was to know about the girl with wings. Who wouldn’t? Who could possibly resist?
The comfortable cool of the morning had given way to a typical, blistering-hot summer afternoon. My backpack was pretty full, and heavy, and I was eager to put it down for a while.
I heard Kit panting lightly beside me, and I was glad I wasn’t looking into his blue eyes right now.
Last night, I’d kissed him with my heart full of sentiment and the rest of me high on sixty-dollar brandy. There was something so different about him, a sensitivity I didn’t see in most of the men I knew, and which I hadn’t allowed myself to see at first.
Maybe what had happened to his wife and two children started it, but I kind of thought Kit had always been that way. On the other hand, as he’d said himself—you don’t know whoIam.
“What do you think?” he asked, when we reached an elevated point in the trail. “Which way do we head? You have any idea?”
Sure, I was full of ideas. “I vote for the southern slope of that hill,” I said. “If I were a runaway, maybe I’d hide where I could get a good view of the valley.”
“That slope?” he asked and rolled his eyes.
“It’s only two or three miles from here,” I told him.
He mouthed, “Only two or three?”
Cute. Funny. He definitely was that, but he had a serious side that I liked even more. The night before he had told me that he wasn’t a hunter, but I didn’t know much about what he was, did I?
“We can be there in a couple of hours if we put some real energy into it,” I said. “You’ll be surprised.”
“Aye, aye, Captain. Whatever you say.”
“That’s the spirit, Kit Carson. That’s how the West was won.”
After another two hours of slip-sliding and hoisting ourselves up and down rocky inclines, we finally arrived on the leeward side of the slope the town is named for: Bear Bluff.
“Let’s take a short break,” I said to the perspiring man alongside me. Actually, Kit looked even better with a sheen of sweat covering his body. I think he knew it, too. He was that rare person who was mildly cocky without being obnoxious. He was confident in himself, but there was also a touch of humility that I liked.
“You don’t have to coddle me,” he said and grinned. “I’m in decent enough shape—for a city boy.”
I laughed at his humor. Yes, you certainly are in fine shape, I was thinking to myself. City boy or not.
I eased out of my backpack and looked at my watch. It was a little before five in the afternoon. I dug a couple of navel oranges out of my pack and tossed him one. It was a wild throw but he caught it, anyway.
“Good hands,” I said, grinning like the fem village idiot. I kind of liked being goofy with him, though. I realized that I already trusted him enough to be my goofy self.
While we devoured the sweet juicy oranges, I looked around. I saw nothing too unusual, though. Some flattened grass where deer had probably slept. A shallow cave, too small to shelter a human. Turkey vultures circling above us turkeys.
What was I expecting to find up here?
A downy little bird-girl nest with a four-poster bed and an extensive Barbie doll collection?
Kit came up behind me. I smelled oranges and sweat. “Frannie,” he said softly. He really did have a nice voice. A smooth baritone. I could listen to him for hours, and I had just the night before.
“Yeah?”
He was pointing toward the steepest part of the slope. “Look. Up there. Isn’t that something?”
I turned my head in the direction of Kit’s pointing finger.
Just over a clump of fir trees and boulders halfway up the slope above us was a large flying