Free More Than Magic by Donna June Cooper Page A

progress when he had heard what sounded like something crashing through the brush parallel to his track. Although he had known that no animal stalking him would’ve made that much noise, it had still distracted him, making him reach for his weapon and focus on that instead of on the faint trail Grace and the dog had left through the brush. Once he had established that it must’ve been a branch or small tree falling nearby, he had managed to find the track again and forged on.
    The second noise had been more like a rumbling growl, and way too close—Grace’s mountain lion? His gun had been out before he had spun around. However nothing had leaped out at him. Nothing was even in range of his senses that could have made that kind of noise, that close. Suspicious, he had stood there for a long while, taking in the forest around him. He wondered if he had imagined it. Finally holstering his gun, he’d found that the trail had disappeared completely.
    He hadn’t lost it. It wasn’t behind him, or to either side of him. After an hour or more of looking pretty far in all directions, he had conceded that it was gone, and he was lost.
    So now Nick sat on a convenient rock—there were a lot of those around—and leaned back against a stone outcropping, washing down an energy bar with coffee from his thermos and trying to convince himself that the overwhelming fatigue he felt was an aftereffect of the adrenaline. Yeah. That was it. He closed his eyes and let the cold from the stone seep into him.
    When you weren’t worried about being stalked by some invisible feline, this place was amazing. In the silence, he could hear a creek babbling not far off and, further still, what sounded like a waterfall. It felt cool and tranquil, almost healing. If he sat here long enough, perhaps whatever it was would extinguish the fever lingering in his gut.
    Then again, he was just as likely to go to sleep and provide Grace’s big cat with a nice snack. He opened his eyes at that thought.
    No, he didn’t plan to just disappear up here. He couldn’t do that to his mom or Alison. His damn job had done enough damage—too much time away, too many secrets. But his family at least deserved to know what kind of an end he came to. And besides, simply getting lost in the woods didn’t set a heroic enough example for his nephew to look up to.
    His laugh was more of a dry cough.
    Of course, neither did dying of some damn wasting disease. And he knew now it was back. Recess or intermission or whatever the hell it was, was over before it had begun.
    The smell of rotten eggs and cat piss slammed into his gut like the bad memory it was and he nearly fell as he scrambled to his feet. He closed his eyes and sniffed deeply, then again.
    “Gotcha.”
    Nick knew that smell far too well after waking from countless sweaty nightmares with the memory of those noxious fumes in his nostrils.
    A meth lab. A big one. And it was close.
    He felt a stab of disappointment. Just this once, he could have lived with his gut being wrong, but it seemed Dr. Grace wasn’t hiding anything more magical than a meth lab in these mountains of hers.

Chapter Four
    Scrambling to get everything back into his pack, which had tipped over, Nick sniffed the air like mad, checking the wind, trying to get a direction. His GPS unit, which hadn’t been working a minute ago, had suddenly acquired a signal, or was trying to. But he was in a shallow ravine surrounded by rocks. He would have to climb up to acquire enough satellites.
    His compass was working though. South. The smell was drifting from the south. Of course that didn’t mean much, since he had no idea exactly where on the map he was, but he could figure it out pretty accurately once he had the last trackpoint the GPS had dropped.
    Right now he wanted to reconnoiter and get a visual. Blundering into a working operation alone wasn’t what this case was about and likely wouldn’t answer any of his boss’s questions, but he could at