Lawman On The Hunt

“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.