Hot On His Trail

But there wasn’t any justice. If a man could be convicted of a murder he didn’t commit, if everyone was so damn quick to convict an innocent man, then there wasn’t any justice at all.

His leg throbbed. It had been blessedly numb until the girl had kicked it, and before too much longer it would hurt like hell. It continued to bleed, but the flow had slowed some. He’d have to bandage it…soon.

Nick again glanced sideways at the girl he’d grabbed from the courthouse steps. She’d fought for a while, but now she was quiet and she no longer gripped the door handle as if she was thinking of jumping. He half expected to see tears, fear, anger, anxiety—but she remained relatively calm. Her hazel-green eyes were fixed on him, clear and unafraid, and at that moment she looked very familiar, like an old friend whose face you recall but whose name escapes you. She was a reporter, he knew. Hell, he’d grabbed the microphone from her hand and tossed it down. But still he couldn’t place her. He just couldn’t quite remember…

“How’d you get away?” she asked softly, just a hint of the South in her voice.

“What difference does it make?” He returned his attention to the empty, tree-lined road that headed up Monte Sano Mountain.

“I want to know, that’s all.”

He hadn’t planned it. Up until the moment the jury foreman said “guilty,” Nick had been so sure he’d be walking out of that courtroom a free man. “A deputy was taking me upstairs to the jail, but before he could put the cuffs back on I grabbed his pistol right out of the holster and clipped him under the chin. He went down like a stone. Another one came at me.” Out of nowhere, with a shout and a hand on his weapon. “I brought him down with a swift kick and headed for the stairs.”

“You make it sound easy.”

Easy. “It is, if you’re fast enough and strong enough.” And desperate enough. God knows he was desperate enough, and since he’d been such a model prisoner for the past ten months he’d had the element of surprise on his side, as well.

A thick overhang of trees shaded the road they traveled, allowing no more than a few small dapples of sunlight here and there on the road. If he was lucky the patrol cars and helicopters that were searching for him right now would be focused on the major roads out of town. After all, he’d be a fool to stay in an area where everyone knew his face and his name, and believed him to be a killer.

Of course, thanks to the press, everyone in the country knew his face and his name. He hated the reporters. They’d grabbed on to every detail of his life, had hounded everyone he’d ever known in the months since his arrest. They’d made his life hell and done their best to convict him long before the trial. He glanced at the girl again. Reporters like her, though in truth he couldn’t remember ever seeing her cover the story of Winkler’s murder or the trial. Until today. That didn’t mean anything. Lately he’d tried not to watch.

He pulled off the mountain road and onto the dirt trail he’d been heading for, a winding, narrow path barely wide enough for her car. A sharp turn took the car into a copse of thick trees and low-lying bushes. No one would see them here, unless they knew exactly where to look.

“Who shot you?” the girl asked in a soft, controlled voice.

“The deputy I knocked down.” He braked to slow the car as the trail got rougher. “Son of a bitch,” he mumbled. If he’d been thinking he would have taken that weapon, too, or at least taken the time to knock the second deputy out…but no. His only objective had been to get out, and he’d forgotten his training. It had cost him.

The path grew narrower, and green-leafed branches brushed against the sides of the car. The girl flinched with every grinding scrape, but she said nothing. When the winding trail came to an end he put the car in park and shut off the engine.

He needed time to think, time to plan, and time was one of the many things he didn’t have. He had no time, no money, no ally…no chance.

“How did I end up here?” he muttered, laying his head against the steering wheel and closing his eyes. Less than a year ago he’d had a successful contracting firm, a woman in his life he’d foolishly thought had potential for a longterm relationship, and a nice house he’d built himself. Ten months later the business was history. Lauren had not turned out to be the woman he’d thought she was, and even if she had been, twice-monthly conversations through scratched Plexiglass was no way to keep a relationship alive. The house was empty, up for sale so he could pay his legal fees.

Once again, he literally had nothing.

He should’ve known the reporter he’d snatched would try to take off once the car was stopped, but she startled him when she threw open her door and scrambled out. He tried to reach out to snag her before she got away, but she was too fast…or he was too slow.

Nick opened his own door, scraping it against the branches of the bush he’d parked alongside. Even here in the shade the warmth was oppressive, thick with strength-sapping summer heat. It threatened to drag him down, to finish him, once and for all. He shook it off.

The pistol fit comfortably in his right hand, and as he fought his way through the bushes his eyes found the hostage and stayed on her as she made her way slowly through the same dense growth he fought. Her dark hair danced with every step she took. The red she wore made her an easy target.

When he rounded the front of the car, his leg gave out from under him, buckling so that he fell to his knees. He righted himself quickly, but found he could not stand. All of a sudden he had nothing left to give. Well, almost nothing.

“Stop!” he shouted once with surprising strength, and then, almost without conscious thought, he raised the pistol and fired.

Chapter 2

The blast took Shea by surprise, and she waited for the impact of a bullet in her back. Oh God, I’m going to die. She stopped running, and still she fought for every breath she took, her heart pumping so hard she could feel it pounding in her chest.

But she wasn’t dead. He’d missed!

“Stop!” he shouted again. “Hold it right there or the next one goes in your leg, not a tree.”

Shea cut her eyes to the right and saw where a bullet had exploded, embedding itself in a tree not two feet away. The shot had been a warning; he hadn’t missed at all. She looked at the splintered bullet hole in the center of the tree trunk and knew Taggert had hit exactly what he’d been aiming for.

She slowly turned around. Taggert was on his knees in front of the car, the weapon he held pointed steadily at her.

“You said you wouldn’t hurt me,” she said.

“I said I didn’t want to hurt you.” Taggert had gone deathly pale, and a strand of thick black hair fell over his forehead. His suit was rumpled, the tie loosened slightly, and it seemed to Shea that he swayed ever so slightly, there on his knees in front of her car. Through all that, she saw his unwavering tenacity. He was inflexible. In spite of his wound and his weakness, he was damned and determined to have his way.

Part of her job was to read people when she had to. She had to be able to smile and nod through an interview, all the while knowing in her heart who was lying and who was telling the truth. It was an instinct some people had and others didn’t.

In this instant Shea saw something she’d rather not. Nicholas Taggert really didn’t want to hurt her, but he would.

“If I shoot you in the leg you won’t die,” he said passionlessly. “Unless you go into shock, which is always a possibility. Won’t we make a pair.” A humorless smile barely touched his lips. “You can try to hobble away and I’ll hobble after you.”

“What do you want from me?” Shea asked. “You got away from the courthouse. You don’t need me anymore.”

“I need time,” he said softly as he lowered the weapon. “We’re too close to houses, roads. If I let you go now I won’t have time to get away.”

“What if I promise not to tell them where you are?” Shea took a step back and Taggert raised his gun quickly, snapping it up and training the sight low on her body. The leg, he’d said. He was pallid and weak—growing weaker with every second that passed—but the hand that held the gun remained steady.

“No good,” he said. “Even if you keep your mouth shut, and I doubt that’s possible, simply by showing up on this mountain you’ll tell the cops where to search.”

Shea took a single step forward, and Taggert dropped the gun again. He looked relieved, and that evident relief told her, as much as any instinct, that he was willing to carry out his threat. He didn’t want to, but he would.

She returned to the car, shaking and angry. On her run she’d ignored the branches that snagged her clothing and scratched her bare legs, but on the return trip she felt every scratch, every gentle brush of a leaf, as if it were an added indignity.

“I’m going to watch you fry for this,” she said bravely when she was no more than five feet from Taggert.

He struggled to his feet, but all the while he kept a steadfast hand on his weapon. “Yeah, well, you’re going to have to stand in line,” he muttered. “Right now everybody wants to see me fry.” He motioned with the gun toward the car. “Sit down.”

She had to fight branches to return to the parked car, pushing angrily past thin, flexible limbs that made way for her and then snapped back. Stepping in a small hole she’d managed to miss in her failed escape attempt, she lurched forward, grabbing on to the opened door for support. But she obeyed Taggert’s surly order and lowered herself into the passenger seat again.

He slammed the car door when she was seated, and she winced at the sound of the branches scraping against the Saturn. This car wasn’t even a year old, and it was her first new car. It would be a mess when this was over, between the bloodstains and the scratched paint.

Taggert limped around the front of the car, leaning on the hood occasionally for much-needed support, stumbling twice before he fought his way to the driver’s-side door and plopped down beside her. He waved the gun in her direction. “Put on your seat belt.”

“What?”

He locked those cold blue eyes on her again. They were chips of ice in a pallid face, hard and uncompromising. Those extraordinary eyes showed no mercy, not even a hint of apology for what he’d done to her. “Do it.”

She fastened her seat belt, muttering every curse word her brothers had ever unwittingly used in her presence. If she did decide to run again, she’d have to stop to unfasten the seat belt, warning Taggert of her intentions.

She waited for him to start the car, but he didn’t. Instead he shifted his body so he leaned against his door, and he very carefully lifted his wounded leg and placed it in her lap. The weight was more than she’d expected, and warm blood seeped through his pant leg onto her skirt. Suddenly he seemed too big for her compact car, the leg in her lap too long and heavy. A surge of panic raced through her own blood. This was all too much, and Taggert was too close.

“You’re going to have to help me with this,” he said softly.

Shea stared at the leg in her lap, at the blood-soaked gray fabric and the hole…two holes and a lot of blood, she saw from this angle. If possible, she felt more terrified than when he’d fired the gun and she’d thought she was dead. “I can’t,” she whispered.

“You have to.”

Taggert jammed the gun into the waistband of his trousers and shrugged out of his jacket, moving cautiously, as if every small movement hurt him. “Wrap this around the leg,” he said as he tossed it to her.

“You’re kidding, right?”

Taggert shook his head and began loosening his tie.

Shea took a deep breath. She positively hated the sight of blood, and there was too much of it here. Taggert should be passed out, or going into shock, or at least getting woozy. She quickly glanced at him as he whipped the tie from his neck. He could die from this wound to the leg, if he lost too much blood, if he went into shock.

She wrapped the jacket around his injured calf, taking great care not to move the leg any more than was necessary. Still, when she very easily lifted Taggert’s leg to shift the jacket around the calf, he winced. She tried to place the thickest part of the makeshift bandage over his wound, to staunch the bleeding, and she wrapped the jacket arms around crosswise, making a relatively neat bandage, given what she had to work with.

When the jacket was swathed around his calf, he handed her the necktie. “Wrap this around a couple of times and bind it tight.”

“Like a tourniquet?”

“Not that tight. Just tight enough to hold the jacket snugly in place.”

She did as he instructed, crisscrossing the tie several times around his leg. He didn’t flinch again; she wondered if he could feel anything at all. “You need a doctor,” she mumbled as she brought the ends of the navy blue tie together and fastened them in a knot.

“I’m sure you’re right,” he muttered darkly, “but I’m not likely to run across one anytime soon.” He took a deep breath. “You’ll have to do.”

When she finished the unpleasant task, Taggert very cautiously removed his leg from her lap, leaving behind a nasty stain on her skirt. That dark stain was a reminder of how very serious the wound was. He could easily die. Even though he’d kidnapped and threatened her, she didn’t want that to happen.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked as he swung his body around to face forward, resting against the wheel as if he wanted nothing more than to lay his head there and go to sleep. “You have to know they’ll catch you, eventually.”

“I know,” he whispered. “But I can’t just sit back and accept what’s happened. I have to do something. No one else can prove my innocence, so I have to do it myself. When I have the proof I need I’ll turn myself in.”

Taggert slowly rotated his head until he faced her again, and Shea saw something that startled her. Eyes that had been like ice just a few minutes ago had softened. She didn’t know if the ache she saw in his eyes was there because of the wound in his leg or for some other reason. Like it or not, his ache touched her. Goodness, that pain went deep; seeing it made her shiver.

“I thought the system worked,” he said, and his voice wasn’t simply soft now, it was weak. “I thought the truth was sacred. But you know what? No one cares about the truth. The police want a conviction, the D.A. wants a win. Why bother to look for the truth when you have a convenient patsy sitting right in front of you?”

Shea’s instincts were in perfect working order, in spite of the trying events of the afternoon. She’d never been so scared; she didn’t scare easily, but Taggert had terrified her. For revealing that weakness, she should hate him, and she did. She did. But heaven help her, she believed him. Nicholas Taggert was innocent.

He slowly propelled himself away from the steering wheel until his dark head fell against headrest. His eyes fluttered and then closed, but all the while one hand rested over the gun that was tucked into his waistband.

“What are we waiting for?” Shea asked.

Taggert’s eyes drifted open. “Dark,” he whispered. “We’re waiting for dark.”

Nick wanted, more than anything, to sleep. He fought the urge to close his eyes again, knowing that if he did he’d likely never wake up. The girl would take off, and this time he didn’t have the energy—or the will—to chase after her. He’d either wake up surrounded by cops, or he’d never wake up at all.

“It’s supposed to rain tonight,” she said in an absurdly conversational tone of voice. “Visibility should be poor, and the cops will be busy with fender benders all over town. Maybe that will help you some, keep some of them busy elsewhere. And maybe the rain will cool some of this heat,” she added, her voice low, as if she were talking to herself.

Nick turned his head but didn’t lift it. The girl watched him, her eyes wide, her lips slightly parted. For the first time he really looked at her. She was pretty. Not gorgeous, maybe, but striking and yes…very, very pretty. Her warm brown hair looked soft and thick. It fell straight and smooth, like a dark waterfall, but the ends curled under just a little. Her eyes tilted up slightly at the corners, but not enough to give her an exotic look. She had too much of the girl-next-door in her to ever be exotic. And if a woman could have a perfect mouth…

Rain. “I know who you are,” he muttered. “You’re the weathergirl.”

The sunlight was slowly dying, and an oddly grayish light washed across her face. Yes, the light was fading, but it was enough to show Nick her displeasure at his recognition. Her lips came together and thinned, and her eyes narrowed.

“I am not a weathergirl,” she insisted frostily.

He began to feel a dullness within, as if the light inside him was fading as surely as the light of day. He lifted his head in an effort to clear it. “Yes you are,” he said. “I recognize you. You’re a real favorite in the TV room at the Madison County Jail, almost as popular as that big blonde.”

“Astrid,” the weathergirl muttered.

“Yeah.”

“Astrid should be here, you know,” she said angrily. “You’re her story and I was just filling in.” When she got really angry she did things with her mouth. Her lips pursed; something twitched. “If she hadn’t come down with the stomach flu she’d be sitting here right now, not me.”

Nick shook his head gently, unable to make a more vigorous move. “No, she wouldn’t.”

“And why not?”

He leaned slightly toward her and whispered. “I never would’ve grabbed the big blonde. She scares me.”

The statement obviously took the weathergirl by surprise. Her eyes widened, and finely shaped dark brows lifted. “She scares you?”

“A little. I think it’s that big silly grin on an Amazon that does it. It’s not natural.” He was losing it, could actually feel himself losing control. His heartbeat was thready, his vision less than clear and his head swam uneasily. “You don’t have a silly grin,” he added. “You have a nice, real smile. ‘This is Shea Sinclair with the weekend weather.”’ He smiled himself, for some reason. “Shea Sinclair,” he said again, “weathergirl.”

She looked like she wanted to hit him. Senseless girl. He had the pistol, he’d kidnapped her, everyone in the world believed he was a cold-blooded killer, and she looked like she wanted nothing more than to reach out and smack him a good one.

“I am not a weathergirl. I do the weekend weather, at the moment, but I also file stories. I’m a reporter, Mr. Taggert.”

For some reason he fixated on the memory of her smile. It really was a nice smile, relaxed and genuine, as if the cold or the heat or the rain that was coming didn’t bother her at all. She’d smiled, he remembered, as he’d run from the courthouse.

“Why were you smiling as I came out of the courthouse this afternoon?” he asked.

Her anger dulled; she even looked a little embarrassed. “I didn’t mean to, but I got excited about the possibility that we might actually catch a word or get a really great picture no one else would have.”

Ah, Shea Sinclair really was a reporter. He’d become familiar with the breed in the past few months. They were wolves after a piece of meat, and he was the sirloin. No, that was too kind, much too generous. Wolves were majestic, if deadly. Reporters were little yapping dogs, eagerly fighting over a scrap of meat, and he was hamburger.

Nick had been angry at the world for months, and right now he experienced a flash of blinding fury at his hostage for turning out to be another annoying, ambitious reporter who’d found reason to smile at his desperate escape. “Well, come tomorrow you’re going to have a real exclusive, aren’t you, weathergirl?”

She didn’t correct him this time, but pursed her lips together in apparent disapproval and turned away to stare out the passenger-side window. Her shoulders were squared, her spine too straight. Evidently the silent treatment was punishment for his last offense. Good.

When darkness fell he started the engine and backed slowly down the path. The trail was bumpy, the branches and leaves that brushed against the car invisible but noisy. He made the turn almost blind, leaving the route and lurching through a low spot before getting the tires on the trail again. The weathergirl continued to silently stare out of her window, even though there was nothing to see. Just darkness and shadows and the gray-green bushes and trees that had shielded them.

At the two-lane road, he switched on the headlights and continued the journey he’d started in the daylight, heading for the other side of the mountain. He didn’t think there would be a roadblock on this little country road, but every time the car rounded a blind corner Nick held his breath until he saw a length of clear road stretching ahead.

She’d been right about the rain. It started, a light sprinkle, as he steered the Saturn across a level stretch of road at the top of the mountain. When they passed one car on the winding downward slope his heart beat a little bit faster, but the vehicle didn’t so much as slow down. They were just another pair of headlights on a rarely used road.

When the mountain road was behind them and the terrain was level again, Nick pulled off the pavement and onto a rutted dirt path, rounded a bend and stopped the car with a lurch. For the first time since he’d made the mistake of calling her “weathergirl” once too often, Shea Sinclair turned her head to look at him. The headlights lit the dirt path before them, their reflection illuminating her stoic face in shades of gray. The light-headedness that wouldn’t go away made her face look like ivory—ivory with soft, black velvet shadows.

He waited for her to throw open her door and take off, but she just stared at him.

“You really didn’t do it?” she whispered.

Nick shook his head.

“Then who did?”

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.”

She didn’t make a move, so Nick reached over and unfastened her seat belt. “Go.”

Shea turned her head away again, to glance out at the deserted field. “Here?” Her head snapped around, and she stared at him wide-eyed. “You’re just going to dump me in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, in the rain?”

“That’s the plan,” he mumbled.

Instead of jumping from the car and making her escape, Shea Sinclair stared him down. “No,” she whispered.

Surely he misunderstood. “What did you say?”

“I said no.”

Nick cursed beneath his breath as he reached out and snagged Shea’s wrist and dragged her toward him, easing himself from the car and hauling the uncooperative weathergirl with him, over the console, across the driver’s seat. A soft, cool drizzle struck his face, and droplets soaked through the white dress shirt he wore. The cool water cleared his head slightly, as he pulled on Shea Sinclair’s arm. He was making progress until she grabbed the steering wheel and refused to let go. It hit him, as surely as the gentle rain, that right now he didn’t have the strength to forcibly remove her from the car.

“Are you nuts?” he yelled, poking his head into the car and placing his face close to hers. They were practically nose-to-nose, and in the semidarkness he locked his eyes to hers. She didn’t flinch, didn’t show any sign of backing down. “I’m trying to let you go!” Yelling was not such a good idea. His head swam and his knees went weak. Damn.

“You can’t let me go,” she argued. “You need me, Taggert.”

“I’m not a…” He swayed slightly. “I’m not a kidnapper.”

Shea smiled, and Nick’s knees wobbled uncertainly. The smile was all wrong; wrong time, wrong place. There had been a time when a smile like this one would’ve given him hope, would’ve made him list easily forward to kiss her…but not now. She should be running scared right now, and he should be well down the road, running to God knows where.

“Actually,” she said softly, “you are. And since I don’t think there’s a different charge for long-term versus shortterm kidnappings, you might as well make the best of what you’ve got.”