Ranger (The Bugging Out Series Book 5) Read Online Free Page A

if I would retain any dexterity to manage a proper strike to ignite it.
    This one had to take.
    I guided it gently toward the low scoop of shavings, bringing the flame to the bits of magnesium. In contact with them. A few glowed. A few more sparked. Would there be enough purity in the likely mixture of metals in the alloy to allow a full and satisfying burst of heat and fire?
    “Yes...”
    I breathed the word as the pile began to blaze, a slow-motion inferno building. A blinding pulse of hot white erupted, spreading to the kindling. Bits of wood from the mantle blackened, then began to burn.
    I had a fire. I had made a fire.
    For the next ten minutes I nurtured it, feeding small lengths of kindling and scavenged wood into the growing fire until the larger logs I’d arranged began to smolder. Then burn.
    I spent no time warming myself further right then. Instead I did what any outdoorsman would do—gathered more wood. More than I thought I would need. When I had a stack half as tall as me I let myself huddle close to the hearth, stripping my clothes off and hanging them from a jagged bit of wood on the mantle. They dried as the chill was slowly driven from my body.
    Lightning struck outside. Thunder followed. Rain poured. I listened to the storm and curled up on the stone extension of the hearth, bathing in the wonderful warmth. Giving thanks that I was alive. And that I might stay alive.
    Great flames leapt into the chimney. Smoke would be jetting from its outlet above. There was a chance I would give my presence away to the stranger I’d seen, but I thought it a small chance. The downpour would smother and prevent the spread of the scent beyond a few dozen meters. If he was closer than that, then he already knew exactly where I was.
    “Who is he?”
    I asked myself the question as I tried to stay awake long enough so that I could put my clothes on again when they had dried. Whoever he was, was it possible that he was unrelated to the situation I now faced? Could he not have been involved in my abduction?
    “It doesn’t make sense,” I said to the fire.
    And, I realized, at the moment, it didn’t matter. And if it did, if he did, what mattered more was making it through the night and finding my way back to Elaine and my friends in the light of a new day.
    I took my now dry clothes from where they’d hung and slipped into the meager protection they provided from the elements. Outside, the storm built. Rain sprayed at a severe angle into the cabin, drenching the floor just a foot from where I’d found refuge close to the hearth. I hugged my body and pressed against the warming stone surrounding the fire, feeding fresh logs into it as the night took hold.
    “You’ll make it,” I told myself. “You’ll make it back to her.”
    The words were both encouragement and promise. Sleep began to summon me. My eyes grew heavy. I was cold, but not in danger of succumbing to the elements anymore.
    You’re going to wake up in the morning...
    That further assurance came without spoken word. Existing in my thoughts. Precisely where other musings raged.
    What happened? Is Elaine all right? Who did this? Who was the stranger?
    I fell deep asleep with my mind screaming dark thoughts and fears.

Four
    S ometime just after dawn my eyes opened, snatched from a dream abruptly. So quickly that what had lived as I slept seemed to exist in my waking world for a moment.
    Ranger... Ranger... Ranger...
    I had been dreaming about Neil.
    Ranger... Ranger... Ranger...
    The words repeated in my head as I lay there, shivering, the fire reduced to small licks on the glowing remains of the logs. I pulled myself into a ball and slid as close to the shrinking fire as I could without being burned.
    Black is white. White is black.
    More words from my friend. He’d said that to my face in the moments before he’d been spirited away in a stealthy chopper with Grace and Krista at his side.
    You can’t trust anyone.
    That, too, he’d emphasized. The