"Thanks," Annja said.
The old man shrugged. "It was nothing. You climb well," he said.
"Thank you."
"But you shouldn't climb alone."
Looking around innocently, Annja asked, "Where's your partner?"
He shrugged. "I'm an old man. No one will miss me if I fall off the mountainside." He started up the ridgeline.
Having no other destination in mind at the moment, Annja followed. The compulsion that she only halfway believed in seemed to be pulling her in that direction anyway.
"What brings you up here?" the old man asked.
"La Bête," Annja answered.
Halting, he peered over his shoulder. "Surely you're joking."
"No."
"La Bête is a myth," the old man stated. "Probably a story made up by a serial killer."
"You would know about serial killers?"
"I would." He didn't elaborate. Instead, he turned and continued up the ridgeline.
"What are you doing up here?" she asked.
"Searching for something that was lost."
"You lost something up here?"
"No." The old man swung around a boulder and kept going up. "It was lost a long time ago. Hundreds of years ago."
"What was it?"
"Nothing you'd be interested in, my dear."
"I'm an archaeologist. I like old things." Annja instantly regretted her words when the old man turned around. If he was an old pervert, she'd just given him the perfect opportunity for an off-color remark.
"You?" he asked as if in disbelief. "An archaeologist?"
"Yes," Annja declared. "Me."
The old man blew a raspberry. "You're a child. What would you know about anything of antiquity?"
"I know that old men who think they know everything don'tknow everything," she said. "Otherwise childrenlike me wouldn't be discovering new things."
"Learning about them from a book is one thing," the old man said. "But to truly appreciate them, you have to live among them."
"I try," Annja said. "I've been on several dig sites."
"Good for you. In another forty or fifty years, provided you don't die of a snakebite or a long fall, perhaps you will have learned something."
A tremor passed through the ground.
Annja froze at once, not certain if she'd truly felt it.
The old man turned around to face her. His face knitted in concern. Irritably, he tapped his staff against the ground. "Did you feel that?" he asked.
"Yes," Annja said. "It's probably nothing to worry about."
"It felt like an earthquake. This isn't earthquake country."
"Earthquakes take place around the world all the time. Humans just aren't sensitive enough to feel all of them," Annja said.
The ground quivered again, more vigorously this time.
"Well," the old man said, "I certainly felt that." He kept walking forward. "Maybe we should think about getting down."
Annja stayed where she was. Whatever was pulling at her was stronger than ever. It lay in the direction opposite the way the old man had chosen. Before she knew it, she was headed toward the pull.
"Where are you going?" the old man asked.
"I want to check something out." Annja walked along the ridgeline, climbing again. A small trail she hadn't noticed before ran between bushes and small trees.
A game trail.
Despite the tremors, Annja went on.
Foulard's mood hadn't lifted. A burning need for some kind of revenge filled him. The woman, Annja Creed, had to be delivered alive to Lesauvage, but she didn't have to be unbroken.
He parked his motorcycle beside a new SUV. The five men with him parked nearby.
They dismounted as one, used to working together. Jean had been one of them, one of Lesauvage's chosen few.
Drawing his 9 mm handgun, Foulard took the lead. The other men fell in behind.
They went quickly. Over the past few years, they had learned the Cévennes Mountains. Lesauvage had sent them all into the area at one time or another. Foulard had been several times.
None of them had ever found anything.
Foulard truly didn't believe the woman had found anything, either. He hoped she hadn't. Once Lesauvage saw that she knew nothing, he would quickly give her to them.
Eagerly, Foulard jogged up the trail. His face and arms still hurt, but the pain pills had taken off the edge.
When the first tremor passed through him, Foulard thought it was the drugs in his system. Then a cascade of rocks rushed from farther up the grade and nearly knocked him from his feet.
"What the hell is that?" one of the men behind him yelled.
"Earthquake," another said.
"We don't want to be on top of this mountain if it's about to come down."
Foulard spun toward them. "We were sent here to get the woman," he said. "I won't go back to Lesauvage without her."
The men just stared at him.
The ground quivered again.
"I'll kill any man who leaves me," Foulard promised.
They all looked at him. They knew he would.
Another tremor passed through the earth, unleashing more debris that sledded down the mountainside.
"All right," Croteau said. He was the oldest and largest of them. "We'll go with you. But make it quick."
Turning, Foulard kept his balance through another jarring session, then started to run.
The game trail looked old and, judging from the bits and pieces of it Annja saw along the mountainside, it went all the way to the top.
The ground heaved this time, actually rising up and slamming back down beneath Annja's feet. She dropped to all fours, afraid of being flung from the mountainside.
"This way," the old man shouted. "Come back from there before you get yourself killed."
This is insane, Annja thought. She felt the earth quivering beneath her like a frightened animal.
"Don't be foolish," the old man said.
Frustrated, Annja took out her Global Positioning System device. She took a reading.
Twenty-four satellites bracketed the earth. Every reading taken by the device acquired signals from at least twelve of them. When she returned to the mountains, she'd be within inches of the exact spot where she now stood.
Returning the GPS locater to her pack, she turned and started back down the mountain. The compulsion within her surged to a fever pitch with a suddenness and intensity that drove her to her knees in an intense attack of vertigo.
"Are you all right?" the old man asked.
She wasn't. But she couldn't speak to tell him that.
Without warning, she was no longer on the mountaintop. She stood in the middle of a blazing fire. Pain threatened to consume her.
Her whole life she'd suffered from nightmares about fire but, for the first time, it was happening while she was awake.
"Girl!" the old man bellowed.
"Girl!" he roared again. Panic strained his features. Some other look was there, as well. Perhaps it was understanding.
Annja didn't know. The nightmare abated. She focused on the old man.
Forced to use his staff to aid with his balance across the heaving earth, he came toward her. He held out his hand. "Come to me. Come to me now!"
Feeling drained and totally mystified, Annja tried to walk toward him. Then the ground opened up at her feet. In a heartbeat, the earth shifted and yawned till a chasm twenty feet across formed. Rocks and grass and debris disappeared into the earthen maw.
Barely staying on her feet, Annja backed away. She didn't want to try leaping down into the crevasse. During a quake, the earth could close back together just as quickly as it opened up. If the earth caught her, it would crush her.