by Forsaken
“I’ll be fine, Deputy,” Maddie said before he’d even told her his plan. “You need to do your job and so do I.” Like him, she had to have noticed the sky lightening as she lay in his arms. “I’ll saddle your horse.”
She started to swing her legs over the side of the cot, but he pulled her back, turning her to him as he drew her near again.
“I wish I could stay right here,” he whispered as he looked into her beautiful face. “Last night...” He shook his head. There weren’t words for what he’d felt. Or if there were, he wasn’t able to find them. “Ride out of here with me—”
She pressed a finger to his lips and shook her head. “I’ll be here when you get back.”
He studied her. He knew how stubborn she could be. It was clear she wasn’t going with him. “You promise to keep a gun handy?”
She smiled and cupped his jaw. “I always have a gun handy. Haven’t you noticed that about me?”
He returned her smile, warmed by the look in her blue eyes. “I still don’t like leaving you here alone.”
“I’ve been alone for a long time now. Anyway, I have Lucy and my sheep. And you’ll be back.”
He nodded. “With the cavalry.” He kissed her and felt desire spike through him. More than anything, he wanted to make love to her one more time, but he could feel time slipping away too quickly.
The drug runners would be on the move once the storm quit. For Maddie to be safe, he had to get down out of the mountains and back by helicopter as fast as possible. He was counting on the drug runners’ first priority being their cargo and the need to escape.
Getting up, he dressed while Maddie put some jerky into a saddlebag for him then pushed him toward the door. “Just be careful.”
“I will.” He rode out through the waning storm. His horse kicked up the surprisingly light snow. Over a foot had fallen overnight. Maddie had told him to stick to the ridges where the snow would have been blown away by the wind.
He hadn’t ridden far when he turned to look back. He could see her silhouetted in the door of the tent. He spurred his horse forward, anxious to get to help. He was too aware that just over the mountains to the south was a planeload of cocaine worth a small fortune. All he could hope was that the storm had slowed down the drug runners from getting to it.
Once the storm finally cleared, a helicopter would be able to get in—but then, so would the drug runners. He was racing against time and praying he had the advantage.
* * *
CLETE KNEW HE was getting close as the snow finally stopped falling. The horseshoe tracks had less and less snow in them as he kept going. He’d been moving fast and was thankful he’d stayed in good shape since college. That he was going to be able to catch them came as no surprise. They had been nervous on horseback especially when the trails narrowed and they had to ride along a dozen steep areas.
At several points, it was clear they had gotten turned around and had to backtrack. He’d known that the falling snow would make them even more leery, so they would be forced to move at a snail’s pace. His uncle would have a fit if he knew three novices had his horses in blizzard conditions in the mountains. But Clete had a lot more to worry about than what his uncle was going to say.
Ahead, he heard a horse whinny and quickly slowed as he neared a ridge. Voices carried on the wind, but he didn’t catch the words. Crouching down, he climbed up the slope through the deep snow until he could see over the ridge.
He spotted the horses tied at the edge of a dense stand of pines—then heard voices. The sound seemed to be coming from the trees. What were they doing down there?
He didn’t believe they had merely decided to take the rest of the trip by themselves. Why go to the trouble of drugging him? They were up to something, and it was the real reason they were all back in these mountains instead of on the trail where they should have been.
He had to get closer. It would be chancy since there was no cover until he reached the pines. Keeping low, he moved as fast as he could along the top of the ravine. He dropped down at the edge of a rock cliff, slipping through the snow. If any one of them came out of the trees now, they would have seen him.
As he began to slide too quickly, he grabbed hold of brush sticking up out of the snow but only managed to slow himself down a little. Almost to the trees, he finally was able to dig his heels in and come to a stop at the edge of the pines.
The men had quit talking. Or at least he couldn’t hear them. His heart was already pounding from his slide down into the ravine. Now it picked up speed at the thought that they’d heard him.
He hadn’t forgotten that they were armed with at least one weapon—his. He suspected they’d brought their own as well since he’d let them load their own saddlebags and he hadn’t been watching them the whole time.
He moved into the trees, staying as quiet as he could, and kept to the darkest parts of the forest. The smoke of a campfire hung in the pine boughs. He hadn’t gone far when he heard voices again—closer this time. The sound was off to his left. He could almost make out their words. A horse whinnied nearby.
What were they doing? They were nowhere near any trails. Had they gotten lost and just camped here to wait out the storm?
He moved closer. A little deeper in the pines, he saw the broken limbs and sheared-off tree trunks.
What in the—
That was when he spotted one of the plane’s wings and heard Alex’s voice only yards away.
* * *
IT HAD BEEN a cold, wet time. Alex was thankful for the dense trees. Out of the wind and with a fire going, he’d stayed warm enough. He hadn’t slept, but Tony and Geoff had. Geoff was much sicker, just as he’d predicted.
He woke them both. “Saddle the horses and load them with fifty pounds each,” he ordered once they were both awake.
“Fifty pounds on each horse? That’s too heavy.” Geoff struggled to his feet but clearly wouldn’t be on them for long.
“I know what I’m doing,” Alex said as he moved to the edge of the pines to his horse.
“Wait a minute. Where are you going?” Geoff demanded as Alex swung into his saddle.
“I need to take care of something, and then we’re getting out of here.”
“You’re going to kill the rancher and the deputy?” Geoff demanded. “What is the point in that? We’re leaving.”
“You’re the one who left the loose end. You let that boy get away. I have to make sure neither the deputy or the rancher goes for help,” Alex said as he reined his horse around. “Once we get out of the mountains, we disappear just like we planned. They will think we never made it out.”
“You aren’t planning to return Clete’s horses,” Tony said.
“That would kind of give it away that we got out, now wouldn’t it?”
“You sure you can find the camp?” Geoff asked. “Don’t you want me to come along?”
Alex shook his head. Just as he’d feared, even sick, Geoff was catching on to what was going on. Tony wouldn’t be able to get out of these mountains alone, and Geoff was in no shape. But both would try if Alex didn’t come back.
“Load the horses,” he ordered. “I won’t be long.”
He rode out of the ravine and followed the stone markers the old sheepherder had left behind. Geoff had failed to mention them—or hadn’t paid any attention. Alex realized this venture had been doomed from the start.
The wind had blown the ridges clear. There were even a few frozen horseshoe tracks where two horses had gone this way during the first part of the storm.
He’d ridden quite a ways when he heard the sheep. Up over a rise, he looked down on the snow-filled meadow and the sheep all huddled together at the bottom of a rocky cliff. He could see tracks where someone had ridden out earlier.
Then he spotted the dog and knew he would have to move fast.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CLETE WAITED UNTIL Alex had ridden away before he moved closer to the downed plane. Both Tony and Geoff were busy
loading duffel bags on the three remaining horses.
“He isn’t coming back, is he,” Tony was saying.
“You think he’d leave all this drug money for the two of us to split?” Geoff snapped. He looked ashen to Clete as he watched the man grimace in pain with each limping step.
“He won’t really kill those people in that sheep camp?”
“They know about the coke since they found the plane before the storm started. Alex has no choice.” Geoff sounded resigned.
Coke? That explained a lot, then, Clete thought. He figured the deputy and rancher over in the camp were a lot safer than he was right now since they would know the danger they were in. At least they were armed.
Tony stopped working and looked toward the western horizon. A patch of blue shone just over the trees as the snowstorm moved off to the east. “We could just ride out of here now with what we can carry. Or you can have it all. I don’t even want it.”
“So ride off. Go. I don’t give a damn. Just don’t be so stupid as to talk to anyone about this, you hear me?” Geoff moved to thrust a finger into Tony’s face. “You ever talk and you’re a dead man.”
“He’s planning to kill us anyway. He told me he was going to leave you here because he thinks your leg is infected.”
Geoff let out a curse. “That’s a lie.”
“The hell it is. He told me last night. I think he plans to take all the dope and the money for himself.”
Clete moved up behind Geoff. Neither man had heard him thanks to their raised voices and the skift of soft fresh snow under the trees. He’d picked up a broken branch, one he could use as a club.
As he moved up behind Geoff, he said, “Alex has left the two of you to take the fall, you fools. He’s gone.”
Geoff turned in surprise, and Clete nailed him in the head with the limb.
If it had been anyone but Geoff, he was sure the blow would have downed him like a fallen tree. But Geoff, even sick with the infection in his leg, was anything if not hardheaded. He staggered an instant before he lunged for him.
Clete swung again, but the glancing blow to Geoff’s shoulder only elicited a curse. Geoff barreled into him, taking them both to the ground. Geoff was strong, but so was he, and while Geoff was injured and sick with fever, Clete wasn’t. Also, he was fighting for his life.
“Shoot the bastard!” Geoff yelled to Tony. “Shoot him!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Clete saw Tony run for a gun. A moment later Tony came racing back, the pistol held out in front of him. He saw Tony fumble to work the safety, clearly not used to handling guns.
Tony raised the pistol and took aim. Clete, who had been on top of Geoff, rolled just as Tony pulled the trigger not once, but twice.
Geoff let out a scream as the first bullet caught him in the side and the second struck his back. Clete shoved the man off him and, moving quickly, charged the second man.
Tony was in a panic, fumbling with the gun, shocked that he’d shot the wrong man. The two grappled for the weapon, but Tony was strong and unlike Geoff hadn’t been injured. He was bigger than he’d been in college. He twisted the gun away and staggered back from Clete, the barrel pointed at Clete’s heart.
He thought of Bethany and the son he would never see as he waited to feel the bullet tear through his flesh.
But Tony didn’t fire. He looked sick to his stomach and kept glancing over at Geoff and the blood in the snow. “Is he...?”
“Dead?” Clete nodded. “It was an accident. You didn’t mean to shoot him. I’ll testify to that in court. You just panicked.”
Tony was shaking his head as if he couldn’t believe this was happening.
“I heard you say you wanted to get out of here. Now’s your chance. Go. Don’t make this any worse. Make a run for it in case Alex does come back. You know he wasn’t planning for either of you to leave here alive.”
Tony narrowed his gaze at him. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going after Alex to try to keep him from killing those people in the sheep camp.”
Tony glanced toward the south and the way out.
“Go,” Clete said and took a step toward him, then another until he gently removed the gun from Tony’s trembling fingers. “I’m going to need my horse and some ammunition.”
* * *
AS JAMISON RODE, the falling snow began to let up. He could see farther ahead now, see the landmarks Maddie had given him to keep him on the right path back to civilization.
He couldn’t get her off his mind. These days with her...then last night... Maddie was like no one he’d ever met. He felt as though they were equals, something he’d never felt with Lana. His ex-wife didn’t have Maddie’s backbone. She was stubborn, but not strong.
Jamison couldn’t help but believe there was a reason he took the call from Fuzz Carpenter, that he was the one who’d come up here with Maddie Conner. He refused to let himself think about the future or his job back in New York. He loved being a homicide detective. But when he thought of Maddie, his heart soared and nothing else mattered.
He warned himself that it had all happened too fast. They would need time and yet the way he was feeling? If this wasn’t real, then he didn’t know what was.
This feeling, he realized, was a new one. He and Lana had been friends. They’d shared the same background. Her parents had been delighted with the union. His parents had wholeheartedly approved.
“She’s just what you need, son,” his father had said. “Behind every successful man there is a woman just like Lana.”
He hated to think now how much his father’s approval had meant to him. But there were a lot of reasons he’d married her. Lana had been easy to get along with back then. The perfect pretty subservient wife. What more could a man ask for?
The night before their wedding, though, he’d gotten cold feet, but his father had assured him that friendship and similar backgrounds were more important in a marriage than passion. Passion burned out; the other didn’t.
There hadn’t been any passion to burn out with him and Lana and nothing strong enough in their common backgrounds to keep them together.
With Maddie... Heck, they were from totally different worlds. They certainly hadn’t started as friends. Instead they were merely thrown together by circumstance and yet he had been intrigued by her from the first time he saw her. Her strength had drawn him like metal to magnet.
Now he felt like a schoolboy and warned himself that one night of passion didn’t make a relationship. Who knew what would happen once they got out of these mountains. His heart ached at the thought. He wanted this. He wanted Maddie.
The sky cleared ahead. Snow still drifted down from the pine boughs, but it had stopped falling from the clouds. The visibility improved, and Jamison was making better time when he saw the tracks.
He brought his horse up short. A deep trough had been cut through the snow. In the shadows that had formed, he could see the tracks of what appeared to be more than a few horses.
He could see where the travelers had realized they were off course. They’d apparently gotten turned around in the storm. Had they kept going in the original direction they’d been headed, they would have run into the sheep camp.
Ultimately, they had turned to the southwest. He stared in the direction they’d gone, his heart in his throat.
Jamison didn’t have to guess who they were. Worse, the tracks were only hours old. The drug runners had apparently traveled during the storm because there were a few inches of snow covering their tracks.
He still had miles to go to reach a ranch down in the Boulder River Valley and call for help. Then how long would it take for the sheriff’s department to get a chopper up here? Too long.
The men on the horses would be armed. There was no doubt they were dangerous.
And determined. The fools had traveled through the storm. It would have been incredibly hard even using a global positioning device to find the plane again, not to mention how foolish it had been i
n a storm.
But the men had a lot to lose considering the amount of drugs on that plane and their value. He doubted they’d paid cash for them, which meant they had to retrieve them and get them sold to pay their supplier or face the consequences. Those consequences were much worse than being caught by the DEA.
Jamison felt the pistol at his hip. He was a deputy, which meant he was obligated to stop these men if possible. But his obligation to see that Maddie was safe was far more important to him right now.
He looked back, worried. If they had reached the plane last night, then did they see the tracks he and Maddie had left in the trees by the plane?
Jamison reined around. He couldn’t take the chance. He had to go back. He just prayed he could reach Maddie before the drug runners did.
* * *
MADDIE HAD BEEN thinking about Jamison when she heard the dog bark. Last night seemed a fairy tale. The falling snow, the warmth of Jamison’s body, the way he’d touched her and made love to her.
She’d thought she could never feel that way again about anyone. Jamison had proved her wrong. She shivered at the memory and hugged herself, wishing she was in his arms right now. Since she’d lost Hank, she’d had to be strong. She’d felt she couldn’t show any sign of weakness or she might fall apart completely.
With Jamison she didn’t have to pretend. He saw her as she was. She had thought she could never put her trust in anyone. But she had. She trusted him with her life.
Just the thought of him made her ache. She’d already gone out and moved the sheep to lower ground where the snow was not so deep. The sun had come out once the storm passed. It now dazzled the countryside in blinding rays that turned the melting snow to tiny jewels.
She had come back to the tent to get her camera so she could assess how many lambs had been lost either in the storm or to a grizzly. With Lucy in the tent with them last night and the storm raging outside, she didn’t doubt that a grizzly had gotten to the sheep undetected. She’d seen blood on the snow in several places and needed to follow the trail to find out what was left of her lambs.
