Lawman On The Hunt
Cindi Myers
A lawman and a woman from his past must battle the Colorado wildness if they're to outwit a terrorist…Shocked and angry to find his ex-fiancée hooked up with the domestic terrorist he's after, special agent Travis Steadman rescues Leah Carlisle—and then arrests her as an accomplice. But Leah claims leaving him for the terrorist was not the betrayal it seemed. Fleeing into Colorado's mountain wilderness with the ruthless gang in hot pursuit, Travis leads Leah on a grueling trek to safety. Their ordeal leaves him in awe of her strength and resourcefulness—and quickly sparks rekindled passion. Attraction aside, the sexy lawman knows he has to forget the past and put his trust in Leah. It might be the only way to bring down a killer.
“You okay?”
“Yeah.” He raised his head, then sat up. The ledge they had come to rest on was safe enough for some of the tension to ease out of him.
She struggled into a sitting position and glared at him. “What did you think you were doing, tackling me that way? You could have been killed.”
“I had to save you.”
She wiped away a smear of blood and mud on her cheek. “No, you didn’t. You’d be better off without me. You could move faster on your own.”
“No, I wouldn’t be better off without you.” He shifted to kneel in front of her and grabbed both her arms. “I never was.”
He told himself he deserved the wary look she gave him. He had certainly given her plenty of reasons to not believe him, to be afraid of him, even. He smoothed his hands down her arms, then gently pulled her to him. “I need you, Leah,” he whispered. “I always have.”
Lawman on the Hunt
Cindi Myers
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CINDI MYERS is the author of more than fifty novels. When she’s not crafting new romance plots, she enjoys skiing, gardening, cooking, crafting and daydreaming. A lover of small-town life, she lives with her husband and two spoiled dogs in the Colorado mountains.
Contents
Cover (#u79ab6058-ea05-53a4-97c4-93bcc36b8c2f)
Introduction (#u8fdb6ef8-3d2a-5cfd-a9d8-ec8bcca02ec7)
Title Page (#uaac08f50-b426-5574-a324-1e1d9fad628a)
About the Author (#udba1b26e-659b-5da3-bd99-4128c5a532ee)
Chapter One (#ulink_e3fb5f7c-795f-59ad-8668-0d14d293ac89)
Chapter Two (#ulink_57706400-b55e-5b7e-88fc-c904daf299ad)
Chapter Three (#ulink_2b519ec4-8ec3-5ffd-b9e7-359e7069a0f9)
Chapter Four (#ulink_b60b69af-54c3-5ff3-93ad-38a5c0b5296e)
Chapter Five (#ulink_197d24ff-4a4c-5d28-90b0-cd6c6bd086aa)
Chapter Six (#ulink_cee3131a-d502-5311-9273-87db2f2a38af)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One (#ulink_25a5a200-2ec1-56d4-bf76-0aa4a4cf18c8)
Special Agent Travis Steadman studied the house through military-grade field glasses. Situated on a wooded escarpment above a rushing stream, the sprawling log home afforded its occupants a sweeping view of the snow-dusted Colorado mountains and the golden valley below. Sun glaring on the expanse of glass in the front of the house prevented Travis from seeing inside, but the intel reports told him all he needed to know. The two men and one woman who had rented the house two weeks ago looked like wealthy second-home owners enjoying a quiet mountain retreat, but the FBI suspected they were part of a dangerous terrorist cell.
“One car leaving. Looks like Braeswood and Roland.” The crisp words, from fellow agent Luke Renfro, sounded clear in Travis’s earpiece.
“I see them,” he replied as a black Cadillac Escalade nosed out of the steep driveway. Through the side windows he could make out Duane Braeswood’s sharp-nosed profile and Eddie Roland’s bullet-shaped shaved head. “They’re turning left, toward the highway to Durango.”
“Here comes the woman and her driver,” Luke said. “I wonder why she didn’t go with them.”
“Maybe she’s going shopping. Or to get her hair done.” Travis tried to keep any sign of tension out of his voice, even as he raised the glasses again to focus on the Toyota sedan that halted briefly at the bottom of the drive. He could just make out the silhouettes of the male driver and the woman beside him, but he didn’t need the glasses to fill in the details about her. Leah Carlisle was twenty-seven years old, with thick dark hair that curled when she didn’t straighten it, which she usually did. Her brown eyes, the color of good coffee with cream, were wide-spaced and slightly almond-shaped, and she could convey a score of different emotions with merely a look. She had a good figure, with a narrow waist and a firm butt, and small but round and firm breasts that were wonderfully sensitive. She enjoyed sex, and the two of them had been really good together...
He lowered the glasses and pushed the thoughts away. Leah’s car also turned left, toward town. Maybe she was going to meet up with her partners in crime in Durango. He ground his teeth together, fighting the old anger. To think she had left him to be with scum like Braeswood and Roland.
“Did you say something?” Luke asked. “Transmission’s a little fuzzy on my end.”
Travis feared he had growled or made some other sound to signal his frustration. He needed to get a better grip. Only Luke, his closest friend, knew about his former relationship with Leah, and he had kept this information to himself.
Travis had admitted to their boss, Special Agent in Charge Ted Blessing, that he was acquainted with Leah. After all, they were from the same hometown, and it wouldn’t take a genius to figure out they had gone to school together. But no one knew he had planned to marry her. “Looks like she’s headed to Durango, too,” he said.
“Give them ten minutes, then we move in.” Blessing’s voice, deep and sonorous as a preacher’s, shifted Travis’s focus to the mission. He and Luke and Blessing and the other members of Search Team Seven were moving in for a “sneak and peek” at the interior of the cabin. They had wrangled a warrant that gave them onetime permission to go inside, look around and plant a couple of bugs that would, they hoped, provide the evidence they needed to arrest and convict Braeswood, Roland and Leah of terrorist activities.
The Bureau suspected the trio had ties to a series of bombings that had exploded at two major professional bicycle races around the world. Blessing and his team had stopped a third bombing attempt in Denver last month, but the bomber had died before he could give them any more information about his connections to these three.
Travis stowed the binoculars and prepared to move down from his lookout position in the rocks across from and above the house. When the signal came, Luke and Blessing would move inside with the rest of the team and Travis would station himself at the end of the driveway, alert for the premature return of the house’s occupants.
“Recon Three, you hear me?” The flat, Midwestern accent of Special Agent Gus Mathers came across with the question.
“You’re loud and clear,” Travis answered.
“Best-case scenario, we’ve got an hour,” Mathers said. “I don’t like the looks of that drive—too steep and narrow, and situated in the curve of the road like it is, we won’t have much warning if someone comes. You’ll have to stall them at the bottom of the drive. Tell them we’ve got an explosive fuse or something.”
“An explosive fuse?” He made a face. “What’s that?”
“I don’t know, but it sounds good, doesn’t it? Something you wouldn’t want to interfere with. There’s nothing in these folks’ backgrounds that shows they know anything about electricity. Just do what you can to keep them back if something comes up.”
“Nothing will come up,” Travis said. “Even if they drove to Durango and immediately turned around and came back, it would take them an hour.”
“Better to be prepared. And let us know if you see anybody else suspicious.”
“I know my job.” And like everyone else on the team, with the exception of their commander, Blessing, he knew all the players in this case—even ones who were on the periphery or merely suspected of having some tie. The Search Team Seven members were all “super recognizers”—agents who literally never forgot a face. Travis hadn’t even realized other people shared his peculiar talent until he had been recruited by the Bureau. He could see someone once, in person or on video or in a still photo, and pick them out of a crowd months later. The Bureau hoped the team would prove useful in identifying suspected criminals before they acted. So far, they had had a few successes, but this terrorist operation was their biggest operation yet.
“Okay, we’re going in now.” Special Agent in Charge Blessing gave the order.
Travis waited while a utility van with the logo of the local electric company moved slowly down the road and turned into the driveway of the log home. As soon as they reached the house, Luke, Blessing, Mathers and the three other team members inside would pile out and go to work. Mathers and Special Agent Jack Prescott, who had trained with the Bureau’s TacOps team before transferring to Search Team Seven, would replace the living room and bedroom thermostats with identical units that contained listening devices, while Luke and Special Agent Cameron Hsung swept the premises for any incriminating evidence. Luke would download the hard drives from any computers onto a portable unit, and Hsung would photograph anything else that looked suspicious.
When Travis was confident the rest of the team was in place, he slipped across the road to the front of the house. Dressed in khaki cargo pants and a long-sleeved khaki shirt with the logo of the electric utility over the breast pocket, he would appear to anyone watching to be a utility worker repairing a malfunction or inspecting equipment. He knelt in front of the electrical box at the end of the drive and pried off the cover. He pretended to study its contents, though he was really scanning the approaches to the house. One hundred yards ahead on the same side of the road, a paved drive led to a glass-and-cedar chalet, the log home’s closest neighbor. A retired couple lived there. The intel reports noted that they didn’t go out much.
A soft breeze rustled in the aspens that lined the road, sending a shower of golden leaves over him. Another month and they’d have snow here in the high country. Already the highest peaks of the San Juans showed a light dusting. Leah would be happy about that. She had grown up in Durango and liked to ski. Was that why the trio had ended up here, after abandoning the house they had rented in Denver, only a few days before their friend Danny had tried to set off a bomb at the Colorado Cycling Challenge bike race?
“Hello! Is there a problem with the electricity?”
Wrench raised like a weapon, Travis whirled to see a slender man with a head of hair like Albert Einstein step from the shrubbery beside the road and stride toward him.
“Our sensors indicated some bad wiring.” He lowered the wrench and delivered the line smoothly, though he had no idea where the words had come from. What sensors? Did electrical wiring have sensors? “We’ve got a crew up at the house checking it out.”
The man glanced up the driveway, a worried vee between his bushy eyebrows. “I saw the van from my house. Did Mr. and Mrs. Ellison give you permission to enter their home while they’re away?” he asked.
Ellison was the alias Braeswood had adopted in Denver and was sticking with here in Durango. The “Mr. and Mrs.” made Travis wince inwardly. Leah hadn’t married the guy, had she? Six months had scarcely passed since she returned Travis’s ring.
He realized the old man was waiting for an answer. “It’s less disruptive for us to do the work while they’re out of the house,” Travis said. Undercover Tactics 101: know how to bluff.
The man’s frown morphed into a glare. “I didn’t ask whether or not it was convenient for you. Did you get their permission?”
“I’m sure my supervisor spoke to them,” he said. He made a show of focusing once more on the interior of the utility box, though every nerve was attuned to the old man and his reaction. All he needed was for this guy to decide to phone the utility company and ask about the group of “workers.” Or worse, this nosy neighbor might decide to call Leah or her “husband.” Even thinking the word made his stomach churn.
“Does this have anything to do with the power outages we had last week?” the man asked. “I called twice to report them, and the woman on the phone said they would check things out, but you all are the first workers I’ve seen.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know the answer to that.” Travis tried to look friendly and humble. “I’m new on the job.”
“I thought as much,” the man said. “You’re going to electrocute yourself if you tear into that box with an uninsulated wrench like that.”
Cursing his own ignorance—and the TacOps unit for not doing a better job of briefing him—he dropped the wrench and took out a pair of pliers, the handles bound in green insulating rubber.
“I’m not sure Lisa would be happy to have you all in her house while she’s out,” the man continued.
So he knew her as Lisa. Close enough to her real name to avoid confusion. Or maybe the old man had misremembered. No, I’m sure she wouldn’t like having us in her house, Travis thought. He glanced down the road, which was empty, then sat back on his heels and looked up at the man. “I thought I heard they just moved in,” he said.
“That’s right. They’ve only been here a couple of weeks. But I made a point of going over to meet them. I think it’s always a good idea to know your neighbors.”
So he didn’t go out much, but he definitely kept tabs on everything. That might make him a useful witness in court one day. “Uh-huh.” What could he say to get rid of this guy?
“Her husband was a little standoffish, but she was sweet as could be. As beautiful inside as she is outside.”
Yeah, she fooled me into thinking that once, too. He turned back toward the electrical box. “It’s been great talking to you,” he said. “But I’d better get back to work. We should be out of your way pretty quickly.”
“All right.” The man leaned closer to peer at him. “Duke G. What does the G stand for?”
“Graham.” Travis glanced at the name embroidered into the shirt. He had no idea who Duke Graham was. It was merely the name someone in the props department for TacOps had chosen.
The old man moved back up the road and turned into his driveway. Travis stood and walked up the driveway a short way, until he was sure the neighbor was out of sight. Then he pulled out his phone.
“What is it?” Gus answered halfway through the first ring.
“The next-door neighbor was over here nosing around. I’d hurry it up if I were you.”
“We’ll wrap it up as soon as we can, but we don’t want to abort if we don’t have to. We aren’t likely to get another warrant.”
“Just thought I’d give you a heads-up.”
“Thanks.” He disconnected, and Travis pocketed his phone and returned to the end of the driveway.
Five minutes later, his knees were beginning to ache from crouching in front of the utility box when a white Toyota sedan came roaring around the curve and swept into the driveway. Travis didn’t have time to leap out of sight into the bushes or pull out his phone or weapon before the car screeched to a halt and the passenger window rolled down. Leah stared at him, but said nothing. She appeared stunned.
Her hair was longer than he remembered, and she was maybe a little thinner, but she was still as beautiful as ever. He hated the way his heart ached when her eyes met his. She had dumped him with no explanation and had never looked back. He had thought that betrayal had burned away all the love he had felt for her, but apparently there was enough feeling left that he could still hurt.
He stood and moved toward her. He had one job now, and that was to keep her away from the house until the team finished their work. “Hello, ma’am,” he said, his voice flat, betraying nothing.
She gripped the edge of the window with both hands, her knuckles white. She wore red polish on her nails to match the scarlet of her sweater, but some of the polish was chipped. Unlike her. She was usually perfectly put together. “Who are you?” The driver—a burly man who wore a knit cap pulled low over his forehead—leaned across Leah to glare at Travis.
“There’s a problem with the power,” Travis said, still watching Leah out of the corner of his eye. “We should have it repaired shortly.”
“I don’t believe you.”
Time seemed to speed up after that. The driver reached under his jacket. “Down, Leah!” Travis yelled as he drew his own weapon. She shoved open the passenger door and dropped to the ground as he and the driver exchanged fire. Travis dived for the cover of the electrical box as Leah rolled toward the ditch. The driver revved the car and veered off the driveway, crashing into the underbrush.
In the silence that followed, Travis studied the slumped figure of the driver and decided he had been wounded, or maybe killed. He needed to check on the man in a minute, but first he had to deal with Leah. She crawled to him. “Travis, what are you doing here?” she asked.
“Maybe I wanted to see you,” he said. “Maybe I wanted to ask why you couldn’t even bring yourself to say goodbye to my face.”
Two bright spots of color bloomed on her pale cheeks, as if she were feverish. “I thought it would be easier if I left quietly.”
“You left me a letter. A freaking Dear John letter, like some bad movie cliché.” The diamond engagement ring he had given her only six weeks before had sat beside the letter, another bullet to his heart.
“I really don’t think we should be talking about this.” She glanced up the drive toward the wrecked car. “I have to go.”
He moved in front of her. “I think it’s past time we talked.” This really wasn’t the best place for this conversation, but he couldn’t keep the words back. “I loved you. I thought you loved me. We were going to be married, and then one day I get home and all I’ve got left of you is a note on the kitchen counter.” The note had read I’m sorry, but I’ve changed my mind. Please don’t come after me. This is for the best. Love, Leah. The “love” had trailed off at the end, as if her hand had shaken as she’d written it.
She wouldn’t look at him, staring instead at the ground. Her hair was coming undone from its ponytail, and she had a streak of dirt across her cheek. “Sometimes things aren’t meant to be,” she said.
“Are you married to Braeswood now? Or should I call him Ellison?”
She jerked her head toward him, her eyes wide. “No! Why would you think that?”
“The neighbor called you Mrs. Ellison.”
“Oh, that. That’s just...” But she didn’t say what it was. He filled in the blank. Her cover story. The lies they told to hide their terrible purpose here.
“I get that you don’t love me anymore,” he said, letting that harsh truth fuel his anger. “But I don’t understand this. Do you know what Duane Braeswood and his friend Eddie do? They’re terrorists. They kill people. It’s fine if you want to hate me, but do you hate your country, too?”
She bowed her head and closed her eyes. “I know what they do,” she said softly. “And I don’t expect you to understand.”
“You’re right, I don’t understand.” He leaned toward her, his face so close to hers he could smell her perfume. An image flashed in his mind of her naked, her body soft against his, his nose buried in the satiny skin of her throat, inhaling that floral, feminine scent.
He blinked to clear his head, and the blare of a horn yanked him back to the present. He looked past her, down the road, where the Escalade was barreling toward them. “I have to go,” she said, and turned as if to run.
He snagged her arm and dragged her with him into the underbrush, seconds before the Escalade screamed into the drive.
Chapter Two (#ulink_a44139ce-7fdf-578b-b2bf-eef5bc06cda6)
Travis had a glimpse of Duane Braeswood at the wheel, his face a mask of rage, as the SUV flew by.
He retreated farther into the underbrush. One arm wrapped around Leah, holding her to his chest, he used his free hand to pull out his phone. “Abort!” he shouted as soon as Gus answered. “Braeswood and Roland are here. And two other guys. I didn’t get a look at them.” They had been only dark figures in the backseat of the SUV.
Gunfire reverberated in the trees before he had the phone back in his pocket. “Let me go!” Leah pleaded, and struggled against him.
“You’re under arrest.” He pulled a flex-cuff from his back pocket and wrestled it over her wrists.
“No!” she wailed, but he cut off the cry by pulling out his handkerchief and stuffing it in her mouth. She glared at him, her brown eyes almost black with rage.
“Don’t worry, it’s clean,” he said. “The last thing I need is you letting the others know where I am.”
He debated binding her ankles also and leaving her out here in the woods, but if the fight moved in this direction, she might get caught in cross fire. Besides, he didn’t trust her not to find a way to escape. Better to keep her with him.
He dragged her up the steep slope toward the house. The blasts of gunfire became almost constant as they neared the building, and when they reached the edge of the clearing his heart twisted at the sight of a khaki-clad figure slumped in the drive. He couldn’t tell which member of the team had been hit, but knowing they had lost one of their own was enough to make him want to get back at these guys.
He checked his weapon. The Glock wasn’t going to be of much use at this range. What he wouldn’t give for a sighted rifle right now. He would sit here and pick the bad guys off as they exited the house.
He looked at Leah again. Tears glistened on her cheeks, and he had to harden himself against the pain in her eyes. “Killing a federal agent is punishable by life in prison,” he said. “You can be convicted of felony murder even if you didn’t fire the shot, simply by your association with these killers.”
Something flickered in her eyes—regret? Fear? He once thought he knew her better than anyone, that he could always read what she was thinking. But that was obviously only one of the many things he had been wrong about when it came to her.
He turned away from her to study the house again. Several windows had been shot out. At one, long drapes fluttered in the breeze. The gunfire had ceased, but he thought he heard someone moving around in there. What was the best way for him to help the agents inside? Braeswood and his men would probably expect an attack from the front, but if he could get around back he might be able to reach his trapped fellow agents.
“Is there a back door?” he asked. “Another way inside?”
She nodded.
“How do I get to it?” He pulled the handkerchief out of her mouth so she could answer, but remained ready to stuff it back in if she started to yell.
“There’s a path through the woods, on the side,” she said softly. She nodded toward the west side of the house. “The door leads into the garage. There’s a back door, too, but it leads from an enclosed patio. You can’t get to it without being seen from the house.”
“Right. Here we go then.” He started to stuff the handkerchief back in.
“Don’t,” she said. “I won’t say anything, I promise.”
“Since when can I trust your promises?” He replaced the handkerchief in her mouth, ignoring the hurt that lanced him at her injured look.
He took her arm and led her around the house toward the back door, keeping out of sight of anyone inside. His phone vibrated and he answered it.
“Recon Three, this is Recon One. Where are you?” Blessing spoke in a whisper, but his voice carried clearly in the silence around them.
“Outside the house. West side.”
“They’ve got us pinned down on the second floor. Looks like a rec room. Did you say there’s four of them?”
He looked to Leah for confirmation. Four? he mouthed. She nodded. “That’s right. Braeswood, Roland, and two others,” he said.
“It’s too high up to jump out of the window, though it may come to that,” Blessing said.
Leah tugged on his arm. He shook her off, but she tugged harder, her expression almost frantic. “Hang on a minute,” he said, and pressed the phone against his chest to mute it.
He jerked the gag from her mouth. “What is it?”
“If they’re in the rec room, there’s a dumbwaiter,” she said. “In the interior wall, behind the panel with the dartboard. It goes down to the garage.”
He pressed the phone to his ear again. “Check the panel behind the dartboard,” he said. “There’s a dumbwaiter that goes down to the garage.”
“Won’t they know to block it off?” Blessing asked.
Leah shook her head. Travis muted the phone again. “They know about it, but I don’t think they’ll think about it,” she said. “I’m the only one who uses it, when I unload groceries.”
“I’ve got the woman with me,” Travis said. “She says she’s the only one who ever uses the dumbwaiter—Braeswood and the others won’t remember it.”
“You don’t think she’s setting a trap for us?” Blessing asked.
“I don’t think so.” Maybe that was his old image of Leah, fooling him, but he had to trust his instincts now.
“Then we’ll have to chance it.” Blessing sounded older. Bone-weary. “If you can, station yourself to lay down cover fire.”
“There’s a side door in the garage that leads outside. I’ll cover you there.”
He and Leah repositioned to conceal themselves as near to the garage as he dared, taking cover first behind a propane tank, then behind a section of lattice fencing used to block trash cans from view. He half reclined, bracing his right hand on the fence. “Get down behind me,” he ordered her.
“If you have another weapon, I can shoot it,” she said, reminding him that he hadn’t replaced her gag after his phone call with Blessing.
She knew he carried a small revolver in an ankle holster. She had certainly seen him remove it enough times when he had come home to his Adams Morgan townhome where she had spent many nights. “You may have played me for a fool before,” he said. “But I’m not a big enough idiot to give a wanted felon a gun.”
Anger flashed in her eyes and she opened her mouth, then apparently thought better of whatever she had been about to say and remained silent. “Get down,” he ordered.
She did as he asked, reclining in the dirt behind him. The warmth of her body seeped into him, along with an awareness of the jut of her hip bone and the curve of her breast. He forced his attention back on the door. “Come on,” he muttered. “Let’s get this show on the road.”
Long minutes passed in silence so intense he imagined he could hear the hum from the power line that connected the house with the transformer at the road. He pictured the team assembling in the garage, arriving one or two at a time via the dumbwaiter designed to carry parcels up from the garage to the living quarters. They would wait until everyone was in place before they made their exit.
“Why haven’t they come out yet?” Leah whispered, when he judged twenty minutes had passed. Too long. Braeswood and company would be wondering why things in the rec room were so quiet.
“I don’t know,” he said.
Just then, the door from the garage eased open. Blessing’s face, dark and glistening with sweat, peered out. Then the door burst all the way open and men poured out.
The first bullets thudded into the dirt around them, followed by the sickening sound of ammunition striking flesh. Heart racing, Travis scanned the area and located the source of the shots. Cursing, he fired off half a dozen quick rounds at the man stationed behind the tripod-mounted machine gun on the deck overlooking the garage. The felons must have figured out what was going on in the rec room and stationed themselves to ambush the agents as they emerged from the garage. Travis was too far away to get a good shot at them. All he succeeded in doing was attracting the shooter’s attention.
“Go!” Travis shouted, and pushed Leah ahead of him. “Run!” She started running and he took off after her. They fled the hail of bullets that bit into the trees around them and plowed the leaf litter. When she stumbled, he pulled her up and dragged her farther into the woods, running blindly, praying they wouldn’t be struck by the bullets that continued to rain around them.
He didn’t see the edge of the bluff until it was too late. One moment his booted foot struck dirt, the next the ground fell away beneath him. The last sound he remembered was Leah’s anguished scream, echoing over and over as they fell.
Chapter Three (#ulink_ae5d48ab-de30-5e43-8c62-b0681a20515b)
Leah had thought she was ready for death. In the past six months there had been times she had prayed to die. But falling off that cliff, gunfire echoing around her, the ground rushing up to meet her, she wanted only to live. Her hands bound behind her by the cuffs, she had only Travis’s strong arms to save her as he wrapped himself around her. She buried her face against his chest and prayed wordlessly, eyes closed against the fate that awaited.
They hit the ground hard. Her head struck the dirt and she rolled, a sharp ache in her shoulder. Stunned, she lay slumped against a tree trunk, aware of distant shouts overhead and the sound of the rushing creek below.
Travis! Frantic, she struggled to sit and looked around. He lay ten feet down the slope, his big body still, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead. Crawling, half sliding on the steep grade, she made her way to him. “Travis!” she called. She nudged him with the toe of her shoe. “Travis, wake up.”
The shouts overhead grew louder. She looked up toward the house, but trees blocked her view. Had Duane and the others seen them fall? Would they come down here to look for them? She leaned down, her face close to his, so that she could smell the clean scent of his soap, mingled with the burned cordite from the weapon he had fired. “Travis, you have to wake up,” she pleaded. “We have to get out of here before they find us.” Duane would waste no time killing them, as she had seen him kill others before. She nudged him with her knee. “Travis, please!”
He groaned and rolled away from her, clutching his injured head.
She scooted after him. “We have to get out of here.” She kept her voice low, fearful Duane and the others might hear. The shouts had died down, but maybe they were only saving their breath for the climb down.
He groaned again, but shoved himself into a sitting position and studied her, his gaze unfocused. “Leah? What happened?”
“Duane was shooting at us and we went over the cliff.” She glanced up the slope again, expecting to see Duane or one of his thugs barreling toward them. “We have to get out of here before they come after us. Please, untie me.” She half turned and angled her cuffed hands toward him. Her shoulder ached with every movement, but she couldn’t worry about that now.
He frowned at her, his vision clearing. “I remember now,” he muttered. Some of the hardness had returned to his gaze, and she knew he was recalling not just what had happened moments before, but the ugly history between them.
“Please cut me loose,” she said. “I can’t move in this rough terrain with my arms behind my back like this. I promise I won’t try to run away.” He was her best hope of finally escaping from Duane Braeswood and his ruthless gang.
Travis hesitated, then shifted to pull a multi-tool from a pouch on his belt and cut the flex-cuff. She cried out in relief, then pain, as she brought her arms in front of her.
“You’re hurt.” He was on his knees in front of her, concern breaking through the coldness in his expression. “Were you hit, or did it happen in the fall?”
“I landed on my shoulder.” She rubbed the aching joint. “I’m just a little banged up. But you took a nasty blow to the head. You’re still bleeding.”
She reached toward the gash on his forehead. He shied away from her touch. “I’m okay,” He shoved to his feet, stumbling a little as he fought for balance. “Where are we?”
“Above the creek that runs below the house.”
“Which direction is the road?” he asked.
“That way, I think.” She pointed to their left.
“What’s in the other directions?” he asked.
She tried to visualize the area, but in the two weeks since they had relocated here, she had spent most of her time in the house, or running errands in Durango. Duane never left her alone, and he would have laughed in her face if she had expressed a desire to hike in the woods behind the house, though she had grown up hiking and camping very near here. “I’m not sure. It’s pretty rugged country. Duane had a map in his office of the Weminuche Wilderness area, so I think we’re very near there.”
“So no houses or roads?”
She shook her head. “Maybe some hiking trails, but nothing else. Wilderness is, well, wild. Undeveloped.”
A gust of wind stirred the aspens, and a tree branch popped, making her jump. “We have to get out of here before they come after us,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t they be more interested in going after the rest of the team?” he asked, even as he ejected the magazine from his gun and shoved in a fresh one. “They don’t even know who I am.”
“They’ll have figured out I’m with you.” She stood and brushed dry leaves from her jeans. “Duane won’t let me get away.”
“Because you mean so much to him.” No missing the bitterness behind those words.
“Because I know a lot about the things he’s done and I can testify against him.” And because he never let anyone cross him without making sure they paid for their betrayal. She started to move past him, but he snagged her arm.
“We’re not leaving,” Travis said. “We’re going back up there.”
She stared at him. “We can’t go back. They’ll kill us.”
“I’m not leaving until I’m sure the rest of the team is all right.” He holstered his weapon again and started up the slope, tugging her with him.
She gazed longingly down the slope toward the creek. “Try to run and I’ll shoot you,” he said.
The hardness of the words sent a chill through her. She could scarcely believe this was the same man who had once treated her with such tenderness. She couldn’t blame him for hating her, though he would never understand how much she had suffered, too.
They scrambled up the slope, on their hands and knees at times. As they neared the top, he angled off to the side, and she realized he intended to approach the house obliquely. If they were very lucky, Duane or one of his men wouldn’t be waiting for them at the top.
When they were almost to the top, he looked back at her. “Stay down,” he said. “Don’t come up until I tell you.”
She wished she had a weapon, to defend herself and to help defend him. But he would never believe that was all she intended. “Be careful,” she called after him as he completed the climb to the top, but he gave no indication that he had heard her.
She pressed her body to the ground, willing herself to be invisible and trying to hear what was happening above her. But the only sounds were the rustling of aspen leaves, the flutter of birds in the branches and the constant rush of the creek. A chill from the cold ground seeped into her, making her shiver. She had dressed casually for her shopping trip in town, in jeans and hiking boots and a light sweater, an outfit suitable for hitting the grocery store or the mall, but not for tramping around outdoors, where the fall air held a definite bite.
She wished she had warned Travis about the cameras Duane had positioned all around the house, so that when he was inside he could see anyone who approached from any angle. She should have told him about the two guns Duane carried at all times, and about the razor-sharp knife in his boot. She had seen him cut a man’s throat with that knife once, an image that still haunted her nightmares.
Falling rocks and dirt alerted her to someone’s approach. Relief surged through her when she recognized Travis returning. He scrambled down toward her, moving quickly. “The others are gone,” he said. “Come on. We’ve got to get to the road and meet them.”
She hurried to follow him, slipping in the loose dirt and leaf mold, scraping her hands on rocks. Two-thirds of the way to the creek, he stopped against a tree, both hands searching in his pockets. “I can’t find my phone,” he said.
“Maybe you lost it in the fall.” She leaned against the same tree, a smooth-barked aspen, and tried to catch her breath.
He looked around, then began making his way across the slope, in the general direction of their original landing place. “Help me look,” he said. “I’ve got to call the team and let them know to wait for us.”
She followed him, scanning the ground around them, then dropping to her knees to feel about in the dried leaves and loose rocks. “It’s not here,” she said.
“It has to be here,” He glared at the ground, as if the force of his anger could summon the phone. He turned to her. “Give me yours, then.”
“I don’t have a phone,”
“Don’t lie to me. You always have your phone with you.”
The woman he had known had always carried her phone with her, but she was a different person now. “Duane didn’t allow me to have a phone,” she said.
His brow furrowed, as if he hadn’t understood her words, but before he could reply, a shout disturbed the woodland peace. “They’re down here!” a man yelled, and a bullet sent splinters flying from a tree beside her head.
Travis launched himself at her, pushing her aside and rolling with her, down the slope toward the creek. He managed to stop them before they hit the water, then pulled her upright and began running along the creek bank. “Is the road this way?” he asked.
“I think so.” She had a dim memory of a bridge over the creek a mile or so from the house.
Crashing noises and falling rock telegraphed their pursuer’s approach. Travis took cover behind a broad-trunked juniper and drew his weapon, but after a moment he lowered the gun. “I can’t get a clear shot and there’s no sense letting them know for sure where we are. Come on.” He tugged her after him once more.
“How do you know your friends will be waiting for us?” she asked as she struggled to keep up with him.
“If they aren’t, we can flag down someone else to help,” he said.
No sense pointing out that the road leading into the private neighborhood of mostly vacation homes didn’t receive a lot of traffic, especially on a fall weekday. If they could avoid Duane and his men, the road did seem the best route for escape. Maybe the only route.
She didn’t know how long they ran, climbing over rocks and skirting thick groves of aspens and scrub oak. They splashed through the icy water of the creek, soaking her shoes and her jeans to the knees, and crawled up the muddy creek bank. Her shoulder ached with every movement and she panted from the exertion, but still the road eluded them. She needed to stop and rest, but they couldn’t afford to give their pursuers any opportunity to overtake them.
“There’s the bridge, up ahead,” Travis said, and she wanted to weep with relief.
“Are your friends waiting for us?” she asked.
“I can’t see yet.” He stopped, bent over with his hands on his knees, panting. Mud streaked his face and arms, and his pants, like hers, were wet almost to the knees. Blood matted his hair and had dried on his face, yet he was still the handsomest man she had ever known. She had been attracted to the tall, broad-shouldered Texan from the moment they met, in the halls of the San Antonio high school where she was a new student. Though they had gone their separate ways in college, they had stayed in touch, and when they both ended up living and working in Washington, DC, they had begun dating. She had been sure they had been on their way to a happily-ever-after, but Duane’s arrival in her life had changed all that.
“I’m going up to take a look,” Travis said, straightening. “When I give you the signal, come on up. And don’t try anything. I’ll have my gun on you.”
He had added that last warning to deliberately hurt her, she was sure. “I told you, I won’t try to run away,” she said.
“Yeah, well, you’ve lied to me before.”
He began climbing the bank. When he was halfway up, the roar of a powerful engine and the crunch of tires on gravel announced a vehicle’s arrival. It stopped on the bridge and car doors slammed. Travis moved faster, probably eager to greet his friends.
She saw the danger before he did, the familiar pale face with the hawk nose and the thinning dark hair combed over, dark eyes peering out from beneath heavy brows. Duane didn’t see her, focused instead on the man scaling the bank. Fear strangling her, she watched as he pulled a gun from inside his coat and took aim.
“Travis, run!” The scream ripped from her throat, and she lunged toward him as the blast of the gun shattered the woodland stillness.
Chapter Four (#ulink_88d62483-7d22-5ee2-aeb8-5d4cc8729dbd)
Leah’s scream propelled Travis to one side, so that the bullet tore through his shirt, grazing his ribs. Pain momentarily blinded him as he rolled toward the creek, landing with a splash in the icy water. More shots hit the water around him until he reached the shelter of the bridge. Plastered against the concrete piling, he waited for more gunfire or for the shooter to climb down after him.
The expected hail of bullets came, but this time the shots weren’t intended for him. The shooter had turned his attention to Leah, who huddled behind the thick-trunked juniper as the gunfire tore at the bark. The sight of her trapped that way drove Travis to act on raw instinct. He pushed himself away from the bridge piling, deliberately exposing himself to the shooter above. “Over here!” he shouted, and fired three shots in rapid succession.
When the shooter turned his attention to Travis, Leah ran. But not, as he had hoped, away from danger, but toward it. She catapulted toward him, slamming into him and driving him farther under the bridge. He wrapped his free arm around her and sheltered her between his body and the bridge piling. “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance?” he muttered.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave.” She touched his torn shirt. “You’re hit. You’re bleeding.”
He pushed her hand away. “Nothing serious.” Though he could feel blood seeping from the wound. “How many of them are there?” he asked.
“It depends if Duane left someone back at the house,” she said. “There are four altogether—Duane, Eddie and two who just arrived yesterday, Buck and Sam. I never heard their last names. But I don’t think Duane would have wanted to leave the house unguarded, so he probably left Sam there.”
“Why Sam?”
“I overheard Eddie teasing him about not being a good shot. His specialty is technology.” She glanced over her shoulder. “They’ll come down the bank in a minute,” she said.
“I’ll kill them when they do.” He readied the gun to fire.
“They’ll wait until you run out of ammunition. They won’t give up.”
A rock tumbled down from the road, gathering momentum as it rolled, landing with a splash in the water. “They’re coming down,” she said, and buried her face against his chest.
He inhaled deeply, making himself go still. He had to shove aside the fear and call on all his strength. He had no control over what Duane and his thugs did, but he was in charge of his own actions. He raised the Glock and lined up the sights on where he thought the shooter would show himself, then took another breath and let it out slowly.
The echo of the gunshot against the concrete of the bridge made his ears ring, but the sight of the shooter staggering backward let him know he had done some damage. He had no time to bask in this victory, as a second man followed the first, this one armed with a shotgun capable of gutting them both with one shot. Travis retreated farther behind the bridge support, pulling Leah with him.
“We’re going to have to run for it,” he whispered, his mouth so close he was almost kissing her ear.
She stiffened. “That’s crazy.”
“Crazy enough to work. And it’s our only chance.” Already, he could hear someone moving down the other side of the bridge. “Climb onto my back and hang on tight,” he said. “If I go down, keep running on your own, but until then, don’t let go.”
“I’ll slow you down,” she said. “Leave me here. I’m the one they want, anyway.”
He was no longer certain of her relationship to Duane, but he wasn’t going to let her go back to that killer. “You’re still my prisoner,” he said. “I’m not going to give you up to him.” He slipped the revolver from the ankle holster, then turned his back to her. “Climb on. Keep your head down.”
She jumped onto his back, her arms around his neck, her legs wrapped around his waist. The weight was awkward, but not impossible. “When I give the word, scream as loud as you can,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just do it. Scream as if you just saw the biggest, nastiest-looking spider you can imagine.” She had always been terrified of spiders.
“All right.”
The revolver in one hand, the Glock in the other, he watched the bank to his left. When a second shooter dropped into position there, Travis said, “Now!” and charged forward.
The keening wail she let loose echoed beneath the bridge, a high, sharp note that pierced his ears, but as he had hoped, the sound startled the two shooters as well. They hesitated a fraction of a second, long enough for Travis to gain the advantage. He charged toward the downstream shooter, both guns blazing. The man fell back. At the same time, the upstream man couldn’t risk firing, for fear of hitting his boss.
He stuck to the bank at the edge of the water, feet sinking deep in the gravel and mud, staggering as if fighting his way through molasses. Leah had fallen silent, her face pressed against his neck, her fingers digging into his shoulder. He turned to fire at the men, then pulled at her legs. “Can you run?” he asked.
“Yes.” She nodded, her hair falling forward to obscure her face.
“Then we’re going to run, as fast and as far as we can.”
She was swifter than he would have expected, keeping pace with him as they zigzagged through the trees. He led the way up a slope away from the creek, deeper into the area she had identified as wilderness. The shooters had run after them, but they were slower and clumsier, stopping from time to time to fire in Travis and Leah’s general direction. After what could have been a half an hour or only ten minutes, the sounds of the gunfire and their pursuers’ shouted curses faded away.
Travis risked stopping near a downed pine tree. Leah collapsed onto the fallen trunk, holding her side and gasping for breath. Several moments passed before either of them spoke. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life,” she said.
He holstered his weapon and sank down beside her. “I think we’ve lost them for now.”
She shook her head. “Maybe. But they’ll be back. They’ll hunt us down.”
“How can you be so sure?” She talked as if she knew these men so well, but how could that be, when she had only been with them a few months? He had known her for years and would have sworn he knew everything about her, and yet he had never seen her betrayal coming.
“They’re ruthless,” she said. “When Duane decides he wants something, he’ll stop at nothing to get it. He’ll steal, kill and use people every way you can imagine. He’s an expert at it.” The grief that transformed her face as she spoke made him want to pull her to him, to comfort her. But he held back.
Instead, he looked around them, at the trees crowded so close together there was scarcely room to walk. The sky showed only in scattered puzzle pieces of pale blue between the treetops. He thought the creek was somewhere to their right, but he couldn’t be sure, having lost his bearings in their frantic flight. “Do you have any idea where we are?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve never had much of a sense of direction, remember?”
He almost smiled, remembering. Her propensity for getting turned around and lost had been one of their private jokes. At the entrance to a mall department store she would address him with mock seriousness. “I’m going in, but if I don’t come out in an hour, you’ll have to come in after me.”
That particular trait of hers wasn’t so funny right now. “Let’s hope Duane and his gang don’t know where we are, either.” He stood and offered her his hand. “It’s going to be dark in a few hours. We need to find a safe place to spend the night, but before that, we need to get back to the creek. Without water, we won’t make it out here very long.”
“Then what?” she asked.
“Then we have to find our way out of here, back to civilization and a phone.” And they had to do it while avoiding the men who were out to kill them.
* * *
WITH NO WATCH or phone to consult for the time, Leah had no idea how long it took them to locate the creek. But by the time they stumbled and slid down the bank to the narrow stream, she was exhausted and thirsty enough that she was tempted to simply stretch out in the icy water and let it wash into her mouth.
But common sense—or maybe simply an overwhelming desire to stay strong enough to get out of here alive—stopped her. She grabbed hold of Travis’s arm to stop him as he knelt at the water’s edge. “We have to boil the water before we drink it,” she said.
Hair tousled, face streaked with mud and blood, he looked like a man who had survived a street brawl. “How are we supposed to do that? And why?” He looked around. “I don’t see any factories or even houses around here.”
“The water is full of giardia—a little bug that will make you very, very sick. I had it once at summer camp and I know I never want to be that ill again. If we boil the water or treat it somehow, it will kill the parasite.”
He sat back on his heels and scanned the bank around them. “There’s plenty of fuel. I don’t suppose you’ve taken up smoking since we last met?”
“No.” She scanned the area, then looked back at him. “What kind of supplies do you have on you, besides your gun and ammunition and that multi-tool you used to cut off my flex-cuff?”
He hesitated, then emptied his pockets onto the ground between them—a wallet with his ID, a few credit cards and some cash; badge; the multi-tool; and the Glock and a magazine with ten bullets, plus an empty magazine. The revolver and half a dozen bullets for it. A Mini Maglite, a small notebook and the binoculars. Her mood lifted when she spotted the Maglite. “We can use this,” she said. “Now all we need is something to boil the water in. Look around for a tin can.”
“We’re in the wilderness,” he reminded her, as he refilled his pockets.
“Trash washes downstream from other places,” she said. “And it lasts a long time in this dry climate.” Already, she was headed upstream, studying the bank.
Fifteen minutes later, she had almost given up when she spotted the soda can wedged in the roots of a wild plum growing along the banks. She crawled down and retrieved the can, then stopped to pick the few withered and spotted fruits left in the almost-leafless branches. She hurried with her finds downstream, where Travis was studying a deep pool. “There’s fish in here, if I could figure out how to catch them,” he said.
“Good idea.” She held up the soda can. “If you cut the top off of this with your multi-tool, we can use it to heat water.”
“Did you find matches, too?” he asked, taking the can.
She grinned. “I still remember a few lessons from playing around in the woods as a kid,” she said.
While he cut the top from the soda can and straightened out the dents, she gathered dry pine needles and twigs. Atop these, she added shredded paper from his notebook. Then she pulled a pack of gum from her pocket. “What are you going to do with that?” he asked.
“You’ll see.” She unwrapped the gum and offered him the stick. He took it and popped it into his mouth, then she carefully tore the wrapper in half lengthwise, then pinched off bits out of the middle until only a thin sliver of paper-backed foil connected the two wider halves. “Now I need the battery from the Maglite,” she said.
He unscrewed the bottom from the Maglite and shook out the battery. “I see where you’re going with this, I think,” he said. “You’re going to make a spark.”
“You got it.” Gingerly, she pressed one end of the gum wrapper, foil side down, against the negative end of the battery. “This is the tricky part,” she said. “I don’t want to get burned.” Holding her breath, she touched the other end of the foil to the positive end of the battery. Immediately the center of the foil began to brown and char, then burst into flame. She dropped the burning wrapper onto the tinder she had prepared, and it flared also. As the twigs caught, she began feeding larger pieces of wood onto it.
“Where did you learn that?” Travis asked.
“My best friend’s older brother showed us when we were kids. He accidentally set the woods behind his house on fire doing that one time, but mostly we just thought it was a neat way to start campfires. I haven’t thought of it in years.” She looked around. “I think we’re ready for the water now.”
“I’ll get it.” He returned a few minutes later, carrying the first can, along with a second. “I found this,” he said. “We can heat twice as much water.”
He nestled the water-filled cans among the flames. The metal blackened and the water began to steam. Several minutes later, it was boiling. “It needs to boil ten minutes,” she said. “We’ll have to guess how long that is.” She took one of the dried plums from her pockets. “I found these. If we cut off the bad spots, they should be okay to eat.”
“I have to have water before I can eat anything,” he said. “But we’ll try them later. I had no idea you were so resourceful in the wilderness.”
“I told you my family spent a lot of time camping when I was a kid. We lived not that far from here before we moved to Texas.”
“Where you acted like just another music-listening, mall-going city kid,” he said.
“I was a teenager. I wanted to fit in.” Most of all, she had wanted to impress him—and he had seemed so sophisticated and cool. Or at least, as sophisticated and cool as a sixteen-year-old could be. Back then, she wouldn’t have admitted to knowing how to start a campfire or forage for wild food for anything.
“Did Braeswood know you were from around here?”
She focused on the boiling water, though she could feel his gaze burning into her. No matter how she tried to explain her relationship with Duane to Travis, he would never believe her. He had made up his mind about her the day she betrayed him. She didn’t blame him for his anger, but she wasn’t going to waste her breath defending herself. “He knew,” she said. She had been shocked to discover how much Duane already knew about her when they met. But that was how he worked. He mined information the way some men mine gold or diamonds, and then he used that information to buy what he wanted.
Travis shifted and winced. Guilt rushed over her. “I forgot all about your wound,” she said. “How is it?”
“It’s no big deal.” He started to turn away, but she leaned over to touch his wrist.
“Let me look,” she said. “Now that we have water, I can at least clean it up.”
He hesitated, then lifted his shirt to show an angry red graze along the side of his ribs. Now it was her turn to wince. “That must hurt,” she said.
“I’ve felt better.”
She glanced back at the water. “Where’s that handkerchief you were using to gag me?” she asked.
He pulled it from the pocket of the cargo pants.
Carefully, she dipped one corner of the cloth into the boiling water, took it out and let it cool slightly, then began sponging at the wound. “It doesn’t look too deep,” she said. She tried not to apply too much pressure, but she felt him tense when she hit a sensitive spot. As she cleared away the blood and dirt, she became aware of the smooth, taut skin beneath her hand. He had the muscular abs and chest of a man who worked out—abs and chest she had fond memories of feeling against her own naked body.
“I think it’s clean enough now,” he said, pulling away and lowering the shirt with a suddenness that made her wonder if he had read her thoughts.
She handed him the handkerchief. “You can clean that in the creek,” she said. “The water has probably boiled enough. If we put it in the creek, it will cool down faster.” She pulled the sleeves of her sweater down over her hands, intending to use them to protect her hands from the hot metal.
“I’ll get that,” he said, and lifted first one can, then the other, off the fire with the pliers from his multi-tool.
She followed him to the creek, where they waited while the water steamed in the cans. “As soon as we drink these, we should heat more,” she said. “And try to find some food.”
“I’m not comfortable spending the night by the creek,” he said. “If Braeswood and his men are hunting for us, they’ll know we have to have water. How well does he know the area?”
“He knows it pretty well.” She closed her eyes, picturing the maps of the Weminuche Wilderness he had taped to the walls of the room he used as his office. When she opened them, she found herself looking right into Travis’s blue eyes. That intense gaze—and the mistrust she saw there—made her feel weighted down and more exhausted than ever. “He had maps of the area,” she said. “He planned to escape through the wilderness if the Feds trapped him at the house.”
“Why did he come back when he did?” Travis asked. “We should have had plenty of time to search the place and get out before any of you returned from Durango.”
“The neighbor, Mr. Samuelson, called Duane. He said some utility workers were up at the house, but they looked suspicious. Duane had made a point of making friends with the old man. He asked him to report if he saw any strangers around the house. He used the excuse that he had a lot of valuables that burglars would want. After he got off the phone with Samuelson, Duane called my driver, Preston Wylie, and told him to take me back to the house and he would be right behind me.” If she and Wylie had reached the house first, she had considered asking the strangers, whoever they were, to take her with them. But she dismissed the idea almost as soon as it came to her. She knew Wylie had orders to kill her if she tried to get away. Duane almost never left her unguarded, but the few times he had risked it, he had made it very clear that he would hunt her down and kill her if she ever left him. He had the men and resources at his disposal to find her, probably before she had gotten out of the state. She had resigned herself to being trapped with him forever.
Then Travis, of all people, had pulled her from that car and risked his life to help her get away. Maybe he only saw it as protecting a prisoner, but the result was the same. No matter if he hated her, she would always be grateful to him for taking her away from an impossible situation.
“What can you remember about that escape route Braeswood had planned?” Travis asked. “Are there back roads or trails he intended to follow? A hideout where he thought he could hole up for a while?”
She shook her head. “I don’t remember anything. I only saw the map a few times, and I didn’t pay much attention to it then. He certainly didn’t share his plans with me.” If the time had come to flee the house, he would have assigned a guard to drag her along with them, one more piece of baggage he considered necessary, at least for the moment.
“I guess he didn’t like to mix his personal relationship with his professional ones,” Travis said.
“I think the water is cool enough to drink now.” She ignored the gibe and plucked one of the cans from the stream and drained it. Even warm, it tasted so good going down. As soon as she had drained it, she refilled it and carried it back up to the fire. “I’m going to look for something to eat besides those plums,” she said.
“I’ll come with you.” He added his refilled can to the fire and followed her.
“I told you, you don’t have to worry about me running away,” she said.
“Right now I’m more worried about you getting lost.”
“I’ll be okay, as long as I follow the creek.”
He fell into step behind her. “What are we looking for?” he asked.
“Berries, cattails, more plum trees. There are edible mushrooms, but I don’t know enough about them to risk it.”
“If I had line and a hook, I could try fishing.”
“We could try to make a string from grass or vines,” she said. “And you could try my earring hooks.”
“Maybe I’ll give it a go later, after we’ve found a safe place to camp.”
She paused beside a small shrub and began pulling off the bright red fruit. “What are those?” he asked.
“Rose hips.” She bit into one and made a face. “They’re supposed to be full of vitamin C. They taste pretty sour, but they’re not the worst thing I ever ate.”
He took one, bit into it, then spit it out. “I don’t want to know the worst thing you ever ate.”
In the end, she collected two more plums, a handful of rose hips and some wild onions. “I sure hope you can catch a fish,” she said. “This isn’t going to get us very far.”
“I’m determined to find a way out of here long before we have to worry about starving,” he said. “Let’s go back and get the water, then find a place to stay tonight. Then we need to figure out a route away from here.”
They headed back downstream. She smelled the smoke from their little fire long before they reached it. Not good, if Duane was tracking them. She hurried to retrieve the cans of boiling water and set them aside to cool. “We’ll need to scatter these ashes and cover them with dirt, then leaves, to hide the fact that we were here,” she said.
“I’ll get a branch or something to dig with,” Travis said, and moved off into the woods.
For the first time since they had stopped by the creek, Leah began to feel uneasy. They had remained in one place too long. It wouldn’t be that difficult for Duane to follow the creek in the direction he knew they had fled. Another man might have left them to die in the wilderness, but Duane didn’t take those kinds of chances. He was successful because he believed in controlling all variables. She was a variable he was most determined to control.
Footsteps behind her alerted her to Travis’s return. “The water’s cool enough to drink now,” she said, gingerly picking up the still-warm can. “Let’s empty them and take them with us.”
Strong hands grabbed her roughly from behind. The can of water slipped from her grasp as she felt a sharp sting, and then the pressure of a razor-sharp blade held to her throat. Duane’s gravelly voice whispered in her ear, “Where’s your friend the FBI agent?”
Chapter Five (#ulink_9abe4cc8-967c-5a91-b5a1-b4d37ec1e582)
Travis fought his way through a tangle of vines and was reaching for a stout stick that might serve as a shovel when a strangled squeak made him freeze. It might have been the distress cry of a mouse or a bird, it was so faint, but instinct told him the noise came from Leah, and she was in trouble.
Carrying the stick like a club, he moved as swiftly and silently as he could back toward the campfire. His first view of the area was of Braeswood holding Leah, but this wasn’t a loving embrace. Rage momentarily blinded him at the sight of the knife at her throat.
“I...I don’t know,” she stammered, in answer to something Braeswood said. “He was angry with me. He left.”
“Liar!” Blood ran in a thin line down the pale column of her neck. Travis had to grab hold of a tree trunk to keep from lunging forward. Setting the stick carefully aside, he drew the Glock from the holster. All he needed was one clear shot.
“No sign of him, boss.” One of the other men—probably Buck—joined Braeswood and Leah beside the smoldering fire.
“Where’s Eddie?” Braeswood asked.
Buck made a face. “He’ll be along in a minute. He’s out of shape.”
Duane unsnapped a radio from his belt. “Bobcat Two, do you read me?”
“I’m here, boss.”
“Any sign of those Feds?”
“Negative.”
“You got our location on GPS?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Meet us at the pickup point in two hours with the rest of the team. We should be finished here by then.”
“I’ll be there.”
Braeswood repocketed the radio. “By the time the Feds get back to the house, there won’t be anything left for them to find. And we’ll have taken care of Leah’s friend.”
“Maybe he really did leave her,” Buck said.
“He was here.” Braeswood nodded to the two cans of water nestled in the coals. “He probably went to get more wood or something.”
“He’s wounded,” Leah said. “Why waste your time with him? He’s just another dumb Fed. If you leave now, you’ll be out of the country before anyone even knows.”
“Shut up.” Braeswood shook her. “Don’t think I won’t kill you right now if you don’t stop annoying me.”
“Maybe I’d rather die than spend any more time with you.”
The crack of his palm striking her face echoed through the trees. Her head snapped back and she cried out again. Travis braced against a tree trunk and sighted along the barrel of the Glock, but Braeswood was still too close to her. Travis needed a plan for dealing with the second thug, too. And the third one who might arrive soon.
Leah moaned and slumped in Braeswood’s arms, body limp, eyes closed. The sudden weight of her made him stagger back. He nudged her shoulder with the butt of his gun. “Wake up. I didn’t hit you that hard.”
A noise to their left, like a large animal stumbling through the underbrush, drew their attention. “That’s probably Eddie,” Buck said.
It probably was, Travis thought. But none of them could see him yet, so he saw his chance. “Luke!” He shouted the name of his fellow team member. “Over here!”
The others froze, long enough for Travis to get off a good shot at Buck, who staggered, then dropped to his knees and toppled over, blood spreading from the bullet hole in his chest. Travis turned his attention to Braeswood, who was struggling with Leah. She had come out of her stupor, which Travis suspected had been faked, and had taken advantage of the distraction to pull away from Braeswood. He still had hold of her arm, but he had dropped the knife, and she kicked and scratched at him, making it impossible for him to draw his gun.
“Braeswood, let her go.” Travis stepped from the edge of the woods, his Glock leveled at the terrorist. Braeswood released Leah and went for his own weapon. She fled into the trees to their right.
Travis’s first shot missed, as Braeswood dived behind a tree. He returned fire, bullets biting into the trees around Travis, forcing him to take cover also. A few seconds later, a second round of shots narrowly missed him. Eddie had arrived and was firing from behind a fallen pine.
Travis flattened himself in a dip in the ground and debated his next move. He had maybe half a dozen bullets left for the Glock, and a few for the revolver. Not enough to outlast these two. And Leah was out there somewhere, running. If he made a mistake and ended up getting killed, she would be alone, with Braeswood and his men after her.
Stealthily, he began crawling backward through the underbrush. When he judged he was out of sight of Braeswood and Eddie, he stood and ran, choosing a course he hoped would intersect the one Leah had taken.
He heard her long before he saw her, crashing through the woods like an animal fleeing in panic. He increased his own pace and waited until he spotted the bright red of her sweater before he called out. “Leah! It’s me, Travis. Wait up!”
She darted behind a tree, then peered out cautiously at him. Tears streaked her face, and her lip was swollen where Braeswood had hit her. When Travis reached her, he pulled her close, crushing her to him. Seeing Braeswood strike her had destroyed his determination to keep some physical distance between them. “Are you all right?” he asked.
She nodded, her face pressed against his shoulder. The subtle floral scent of her perfume tickled his senses, stirring emotions he wasn’t ready to examine too closely. “I’m okay,” she said, out of breath. “Scared. A little shaken. But okay. What about you?”
The concern in her eyes when she lifted her head to look at him made him tighten his hold on her. “I’m okay.” Though the memory of her with that knife to her throat would haunt him for a long time to come.
She jerked in his arms as a crack, like a stick snapping underfoot, sounded in the distance. “They’re coming after us,” she said, panic widening her eyes. “I told you, he won’t give up.”
“We’ve got to keep moving.” He took her hand and led the way, moving as fast as they could in the dense forest, following animal trails and the paths of old fires, uncertain of the direction they were traveling. Was it true that people who were lost in the woods tended to walk in circles? Did that mean they could end up accidentally stumbling into Braeswood and the others?
Leah tripped on a tree root and went flying, landing on her hands and knees in the dirt. “I can’t keep doing this,” she said as Travis helped her up. “I’m too exhausted.”
Before long, he would be too worn out to go much farther, as well. His side where he had been shot and his head where he had fallen earlier both throbbed, and he had noticed Leah wincing every time she moved her shoulder. He had been betting they could outlast Braeswood and his men, but maybe that had been foolish thinking. The hatred or greed or whatever force that motivated the terrorist was a powerful driver. “We’ll have to find a place to hide,” he said.
She nodded and closed her eyes, struggling to catch her breath.
He scanned the ground around them and spotted a dead pine tree, uprooted in some past storm. The roots stretched into the air above the hole where they had once been planted. “Over here,” he said, and led her to the hole. It was large enough to accommodate two people. He helped Leah down into the depression, then dragged a tangle of branches and vines over it. After scattering leaves to hide their footsteps, he slipped into the hole behind her and tugged the last branch into place.
“Do you really think they won’t see us?” she asked.
“We’ll see them first.” He grasped the Glock and peered out of their makeshift shelter. If Braeswood or one of his men did try to attack them here, Travis would have the first chance to get off a good shot.
Minutes passed, their breathing growing more regular and even. Then the unmistakable sound of footsteps on the forest floor grew louder. Leah clutched at him, but said nothing. Seconds later, Eddie Roland appeared, followed closely by Braeswood. Both men were armed—Braeswood with his pistol, while Eddie had traded his handgun for a semiautomatic rifle. The two men moved deliberately, studying the ground around them.
“I know they came this way,” Braeswood said. “I saw their tracks.”
“It’s hard to follow anything in this heavy underbrush,” Roland said. “We need a dog. They can track anything.”
“We don’t have a dog, idiot,” Braeswood said. “They can’t have gotten far. The only place Leah ever walked was on a treadmill.”
At the mention of her name, she pressed her face more firmly against Travis’s chest. Her silken hair tickled his chin, the sensation at once foreign and achingly familiar. In the silence while the two men above them searched, he became aware of her heartbeat, strong and rapid against his own.
After a while, he couldn’t hear their two pursuers anymore. “I think they’ve moved on,” he whispered.
“We should wait in case they come back,” she said.
“We will.” He settled more comfortably into the bottom of the hole, though he kept his eyes trained on the opening above them, and his ears attuned for any sound of approach. “Try to get some rest,” he said softly. “I’ll keep watch.”
“I’ll watch with you,” she said, but within moments he felt the tension drain from her body and her breathing grow more even. The physical and emotional stress of the last few hours had taken their toll.
Determined to stay awake, he turned his mind to analyzing the day’s events. He had arrived at the log home where Braeswood and his team were hiding with a clear idea of his mission. His job was to capture and arrest a group of terrorists. One of those terrorists happened to be his ex-fiancée, but that didn’t make her less guilty of the horrible crimes the group was responsible for.
Now, after a few hours with Leah, he was less sure of the latter. Seeing how afraid she was of Braeswood, and how cruelly he treated her, Travis was beginning to doubt she had gone with the man willingly. He had believed she left him because she had fallen in love with someone else—what else could “changed my mind” have meant? Later, when he had learned she was living with Braeswood, he was shocked and angered that the woman he had loved and trusted had left him for a murderer.
But he had sensed no love between Leah and the terrorist leader when he saw them together now, only fear. Braeswood had clearly been intent on killing her once he used her to lure in Travis.
So why had she left Travis for a man who only seemed to want to harm her? Before this ordeal was over, he intended to know the answer to that question.
An hour or more had passed when she stirred awake. She sat up, blinking. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep,” she said, pushing her hair out of her eyes.
“It made sense for you to rest while you had the chance.” He checked the view through the narrow opening. Long shadows stretched across the ground, telling him the sun would be setting soon. “Are you ready to head out again?” he asked.
“I guess so. I’m so thirsty.” She rubbed her stomach. “And hungry, too.”
“We’re going to do something about that,” he said.
“What?”
“We have to go back to the area where we had the fire, near the creek.”
Fear tightened her features. “If Duane retraces his path, he’ll find us.”
“We have to take that chance.” He stood and pushed aside branches to widen the opening to their shelter, then pulled her to her feet.
“Why?” she asked.
“They didn’t have Buck or his pack with them when they moved past, so they must have left him there. He had at least one water bottle in that pack, and probably food and other supplies. And he probably has a phone we can use to call for help.”
Her expression grew more animated at this news. “I hadn’t thought of that. Then yes, we should definitely go back.” She started to haul herself out of the hole, but he pulled her back.
“Let me go first.”
“Why? So they can shoot you in the head first? At least you can cover me. Don’t count on me for the same.”
“I can pull you up to the ground,” he said.
“You can boost me up from here.”
“Are you always this stubborn?”
She smiled. “Always.”
Something broke inside him at that remark, some last restraint against his emotions. Not thinking, he pulled her close and looked into her eyes. “I’ve missed you,” he said, his voice rough with emotion.
“I’ve missed you, too.” She brushed her hand along his cheek, then leaned in to bring her lips to his, gently at first, then hungrily, as if he were all the food and drink she craved.
He responded in kind, all the anxiety and anger and despair of their months apart channeled into that kiss. He still didn’t know what to think about her betrayal, and he wasn’t ready to trust her, but for this moment, stranded with only each other to depend on, he gave in to the need to simply be close to her. To be with her, emotionally, in a way he had never allowed himself to be with any other person.
She pulled away first and regarded him with an expression he read as equal parts wariness and hope. “Does this mean you’ve forgiven me?” she asked.
“No.” He touched the corner of her mouth, which was still swollen from Braeswood’s blow. “But I’m not blaming you the way I once did. Consider it a first step in a long journey.”
She pulled away. “Speaking of long journeys, we’d better get going.”
He checked the opening, and seeing nothing but still woodland, he boosted her up, then climbed out himself. “Do you know the way back to the body?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said.
In the end, they were able to follow Braeswood’s and Roland’s tracks through the woods. The two men hadn’t been concerned about being followed, and their heavy boots and careless steps made a trail of scuffed leaves, broken branches and even boot prints that led all the way to the little clearing, where the remains of the campfire still smoldered, and one of the cans of water sat, undisturbed, Buck’s body slumped a few yards away.
Leah hurried to retrieve the can of water. She drank half and handed the rest to Travis. “You take it,” he said, returning the can. “I’ll get the bottle on Buck’s pack.”
Already, the body was drawing flies. Travis ignored them and focused on unbuckling the pack from the dead man’s back. He set it aside, then riffled through Buck’s pockets. He found a wallet with three different driver’s licenses, identifying him variously as Bradley Simons, Brent Sampson and Bartholomew Spietzer. He had a couple of credit cards and twenty-three dollars in cash. Travis replaced the wallet and riffled through his other pockets, coming up with a pack of breath mints, some change, a Ruger .45-caliber pistol and an extra clip of ammo, and finally, in his front jeans pocket, a cell phone.
“He has a phone,” he said.
Leah knelt a short distance away. “Can you call someone to come and get us?”
He tapped the phone to waken it, relieved to discover Buck hadn’t bothered locking it, then punched in the direct number to his supervisor, Special Agent in Charge Ted Blessing. The screen almost immediately went black. He frowned and checked the display again. “We don’t have a signal,” he said.
Leah sat back on her heels. “I should have thought of that,” she said. “Wilderness areas don’t have cell towers. Plus all these trees...” She tilted her head back to regard the pines and firs that towered overhead.
“Maybe we can climb to a better signal.” He pulled the water bottle from the pack and drank deeply, then offered some to her.
She shook her head. “I’m okay. But I’d like to know if there’s any food in there.”
“We should move to a safer location before we check it out,” he said. He stood and shouldered the pack. “Whatever is in here, it’s heavy enough.” Anything they didn’t absolutely need, he would discard at the first opportunity. They had to move quickly, and that meant not taking anything that would weigh them down.
He led the way back into deeper woods—not taking the path they had followed to get here, but moving, he hoped, closer to the road. Leah followed, saying nothing. After a while, he noticed she still carried the two empty soda cans. “We might need them,” she said when she saw him looking at them.
“Good idea.” She had come up with a lot of good ideas so far during this ordeal. Another civilian might have been a burden, but she was turning out to be a capable partner. As much as he had loved her before, he wasn’t sure he had ever respected her the way he did now.
Chapter Six (#ulink_0f16d325-eb47-575c-be85-7d03b5b9c4db)
It was almost dark before Travis felt it was safe enough for them to stop moving. He had held out the hope of making it to the road before they halted, but navigating among the trees grew dangerous as the darkness deepened. He halted in a small clearing backed by a shelf of rock. “We can’t go any farther without light,” he said. “And I don’t want to risk using the flashlight, in case the wrong people spot it.” He didn’t bring up the worry that Braeswood and his men might have night-vision goggles or infrared scanners, which would make finding them much easier.
“No, we won’t risk it.” Leah sank to the ground. Her shoulders slumped and her face was slack with exhaustion.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She straightened and looked up at him, forcing a smile. “I’m fine. And I’m anxious to see what’s in that pack. If we shield the flashlight with our bodies, we can risk taking a look. I’m hoping for food.” She rubbed her arms against the night chill. “And maybe a fleece jacket.”
Travis slung the pack from his shoulder and dropped it onto the ground in front of her. Then he lowered himself to sit beside her, their shoulders almost touching. He switched on the Mini Maglite and propped it against a couple of rocks so that the beam shone on the pack. Then he opened the top of the backpack and began laying out its contents. First out was a wrinkled black fleece jacket. He handed it to Leah and she immediately wrapped it around her shoulders. “Not only will it keep you warm, it will make you tougher to spot,” he said.
She smoothed her hand over the sleeve of her red sweater. “I wasn’t anticipating having to flee through the woods when I got dressed this morning.”
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