Read Online Moving Target by Elizabeth Lowell - Free Book Online Page A

back suggested all the things that she had wanted to say, Go to hell being foremost among them.
    “Too bad Granddad was in such a pissy mood,” Garrison said. “She’s quite pretty in a fey sort of way. Nice ass, too.”
    “Get your mind out of your crotch.”
    “Not until I’m at least as old as Granddad.”
    “You’ll never see the day,” Warrick said from the interior doorway. “Call Rarities Unlimited. It’s time for them to start earning their retainer. That blackmailing little bitch will regret trying out her teeth on me.”

Chapter 8
SAN JACINTO MOUNTAINS
EARLY THURSDAY MORNING
    H ead thrown back, muscular neck bulging, the bighorn sheep stood on a dry, rocky ridge and sniffed the wind for danger. There was man smell on the air, but it was a familiar odor to the ram. That particular scent had never meant danger to the small herd. On the contrary, sometimes the smell might mean that a salt lick would appear nearby. In the desert, salt was a treasure, almost as necessary for life as water or food or ewes.
    The ram blew out air, rubbed his head on one front leg as though to rearrange the massive, curving weight of his horns, and began grazing again. Four ewes foraged nearby. Their woolly bellies protected and warmed the next generation.
    Sixty feet away, Erik sketched rapidly to catch both the wariness and the acceptance of the wild sheep. The land around him was steep, desolate, rocky, and dry. It was also much more accessible than the sheep’s summer range. The bighorns had been driven to lower elevations by the coming of winter storms. A recent snowfall had made their normal haunts icy and covered over everything edible, but the only other sign of water was a wisp of cloud curling down from the highest peaks.
    Today there was rain on the other side of the mountains, the wet side where clouds piled up and darkened until they shed life-giving silver tears. But there wouldn’t be any water at lower elevations on the Palm Springs side of the peaks, Erik’s side. It took a bigger storm to push rain over mountains more than two miles high.
    The wind blew hard enough to make Erik glad for the Pendleton shirt he was wearing. The sheep came equipped with their own wool, but he had to import his. The thought made him smile while he added a final stroke to the sketch, turned over a new page, and began drawing quickly again.
    He had spent much of the night poring over the maddening copies of pages from the Book of the Learned. No matter how much, how little, or what kind of light he had used, he could only make out occasional phrases written by a man long dead.
    The thought that this time I will see her drives me like a starving wolf . . .
    May Christ forgive . . .
    I cannot . . .
    . . . cursed mist, let me by!
    On another page he had fretted and worried over a note concerning the marriage of a young woman, Caoilfhionn of the Mist, to the son of Simon and Arianne, called Ranulf of the Rowan. The birth of a shared grandson to Dominick le Sabre and Duncan of Maxwell was noted. A full harvest received prayerful thanks. The arrival of three books from a Norman duke was celebrated. A place or a people called Silverfells was either cursed or mourned, perhaps both.
    The fragments were maddening. He had worked until he was cross-eyed and bad tempered. Then he had checked for anything new from Rarities on tracing the provenance of his pages—Shel’s response was succinct and obscene—before he had finally fallen asleep.
    Three hours later he had awakened restless and filled with adrenaline. He had dreamed of flying like a peregrine, coursing like a staghound, holding on to a violet-eyed sorceress who burst into flame that heated without burning. The colors had been vivid, the language that of his specialty, twelfth-century British, which was a mix of Norman French, Anglo-Saxon, and the exuberant patois that ultimately became known as English.
    Too restless to sleep any more, he had pulled on hiking clothes and