Lawman On The Hunt

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

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

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.”