The Prof Croft Series: Books 0-4 (Prof Croft Box Sets Book 1) Brad Magnarella (ink book reader txt) 📖

he replied stiffly, gaining his feet. “I was preparing my own camp over there when I saw your fire. It made no sense to pass the night alone, so I decided to join you.”

“Which involved running here at full speed.”

“Walk? Run? What does it matter how I arrived?” he spat. “Though I am beginning to see my mistake.”

I studied his black slicker and lined it up with the shadows I’d glimpsed earlier, the snapping of branches, the feeling of being watched. “How long have you been following us?”

He blinked and straightened. “How dare you suggest—”

“Oh, spare us the dramatics,” I said. “That’s why you set out early, isn’t it? Not to get a head start, but to hide until we’d passed and then tail us. You don’t know the precise location of the monastery. Your plan was to let us lead you there and then run ahead and claim the discovery and anything inside for yourself. It was all going along just hunky-dory until the wolves turned up. And then your little scheme didn’t seem so cunning, did it?”

“You have been watching too many stupid American movies,” he muttered, even as he shot nervous glances into the forest.

“Very good,” James said, stepping between us. “The important thing is that we’re all safe. Now, how should we divide up the shifts?”

“After all this excitement, you boys need your rest,” Flor said. “I will take the first.”

“And I the second,” Bertrand announced. “Which leaves you to take the third, and you the fourth.” He pointed to me and James in turn, as though we were his teaching assistants.

“Can you believe this guy?” I said, anger climbing my neck. “You’re not even a prof—”

“That will work just fine,” James interrupted. After Bertrand had given a self-satisfied nod and begun unpacking his shelter, James guided me a few steps away. “Better he doesn’t know we’re onto him, hmm?”

I narrowed my eyes at Bertrand. I had never been able to stand officious jerks, especially lying ones.

“And why’s that?” I asked.

“Well, if he suspects we know his true story, he’s likely to behave more carefully, cover his tracks. Then we may never learn what he’s doing here. We keep a sly eye on him, and sooner or later he’ll slip up.”

I nodded reluctantly. “And Flor?”

“Oh, she’s on board. We had the same chat earlier.”

“No, I mean, shouldn’t we be keeping an eye on her, as well?”

“Why, you’re quite right,” James said.

I noticed that ever since we’d arrived at the campsite, her titanium case had never been more than an arm’s length away from her. I nodded at it now. “I’ll use my shift to see if I can get a peek at whatever’s she’s carrying. Maybe it’ll tip us off to what she’s doing here.”

“Careful, mate,” he said. “Minefield, remember?”

“Yeah, I’m used to those.”

8

I was awakened by muttered curses and red light against my eyelids, growing brighter. I had fallen asleep to a modest campfire, an ample reserve of wood stacked beside it. Now I squinted my eyes open to a furious blaze. One onto which Bertrand was dumping the final thick branches.

“What in the hell are you doing?” I hissed, kicking away my sleeping bag and unzipping my fly net. “You’re using up all the fuel!”

Bertrand acknowledged me with a tight glance before wiping off his hands and sweeping his gaze over the forest. When I focused past him, all the fight fell out of me. The wolves were back and crowding against the boundary between firelight and darkness, flashing eyes set in long, gray faces. There were more of them than earlier, and whether it was some trick of light, they looked like small bulls.

“They were closer before I fed the blaze,” Bertrand said.

“That’s genius, professor, but we’re out of wood now.”

I scanned our campsite, but we had cleared it of branches. The only fuel lay beyond the ring of predators, who watched silently. No more pack to call. They were all here.

I flinched when the fire snapped behind me and stove in slightly. As the orb of light shrank, the wolves inched nearer. The closest ones were only thirty feet away.

“Everyone up!” I called, rustling James’s tent and Flor’s tarp. “We’ve got company.”

James emerged first and looked around sleepily. “Well, I’d say.”

“Get your repellent,” I told him.

“I do applaud your ingenuity,” he said, arriving beside me. He peered from our bottles back to the wolves. “However, it looks as if the current advantage lies with our furry friends.”

I shook my bottle to stir up the pepper dregs. “You saw what this stuff did to the professor. It doesn’t take much. I say we release a few sprays into the wind, enough to warn them away.”

“Or more likely provoke them into an attack,” Bertrand said from behind us.

“Funny coming from a man who said they were harmless,” I growled.

James turned to me. “Bertrand does make a case.”

I checked my watch and did the math. “The sun doesn’t come up for another five hours. Our fire, whose exhaustion the brilliant professor here saw fit to hasten, isn’t going to last another two.”

The fire stove in again, and the wolves inched forward a foot. Several snapped at one another for position, fangs bright and lethal in the firelight.

“Hmm,” James said. “I see your point.”

We raised our spray bottles.

“Don’t,” Bertrand warned, his voice as taut as a guy wire. “They will attack.”

“Three squirts,” I said to James. “You fan yours out a little that way. I’ll aim a little more this way.”

“Got it.”

“On my countdown,” I said, my hand trembling. “Three… two…”

“No!” Bertrand leapt between us and brought his fist down on my forearm. The bottle fell to the ground. James’s grunt told me Bertrand had struck him as well. “I will not be a victim of your stupidity!”

He kicked my bottle away and wrestled with James for his.

I turned to where the bottle rolled to a stop, on the verge of the firelight. One of the wolves leaned forward to sniff it. Was it a