He stared a challenge at her, certain that all he’d have to do was wait before his silence and the lure of desperately needed money would convince her to give up even more. It was a tactic that had worked for him more often than not during business negotiations.
But it was clear from Sierra’s expression that she wasn’t falling for it. Clear enough that he dropped the idea of sweetening the deal with an additional sum of money almost as quickly as it occurred.
“You’ve heard my terms.” She rose from her seat, the gun held firmly in her hand. “So are we still dealing? Or do we make the drive to the police station instead?”
He sighed, realizing that trusting in this deal—and whatever luck the universe might have on offer—remained his best shot to steer clear of whatever his loving stepmother was plotting. It was his best chance, too, to buy himself the time to figure out whether Selina might be somehow linked to the woman who had apparently switched him with the real Colton heir—or his father’s shooter.
“All right, then,” he agreed. “Let’s do this disguise thing.”
“Just don’t make any quick moves or do anything you haven’t vetted with me first,” Sierra warned him, “or your particular get-up may involve an eye patch and extra bandaging...”
Chapter 2
Having altered her appearance on many previous occasions, Sierra was quick to improvise. While he turned his back to make his own choices, she stripped off her gray fleece top, then pulled an oversize navy men’s work shirt from Ace’s bag of tricks over her tee.
After shoving the rolled sleeves up to her elbows, she tackled her long hair, twisting it into a long ponytail, which she tucked up beneath another duffel find, a tweed newsboy cap. Also large for her, the hat slanted jauntily, its short brim resting atop a pair of chunky, horn-rimmed glasses. To that, she added a distinctly teenage male slouch and the bored and sullen sneer that had made any number of jittery bail jumpers miss her among crowds before.
“Wow,” Ace said when he turned around a couple of minutes later. “If I didn’t know there was a good-looking woman underneath that...”
“And for a diamond cufflinks, silver-spoon type, you make a half-convincing cowboy,” she said, honestly assessing his new look, thanks to the black Stetson, Western shirt and boots and the red bandanna he’d tied around his neck. But then again, she reminded herself, he wasn’t biologically a Colton, so maybe this version was closer to the truth than either one of them imagined.
“I’ve got a fake beard and some spirit gum if you think that’ll help.”
Making a face, she shook her head. “Just keep your collar high and your hat low because if anybody gets close enough to look at either one of us too hard, this is gonna be a real short trip.”
Sierra couldn’t help noticing how nervous Ace looked as they emerged from the hatch that her charge had blown open earlier into a darkness brightened by the glow of a full moon. As he peered into the deepest shadows, he jerked his head toward the sound of an owl hooting and a soft wind rustling through the treetops.
“Relax, Ace,” she urged him, more concerned about his frame of mind than she was about running across anyone else on this isolated hillside. “I had every reason to make sure I wasn’t followed coming up here. We’re all alone, not a soul for miles. My car’s hidden just a couple hundred yards below.”
“Sure,” he said, his voice hoarse as he used some fallen branches in an attempt to disguise the now vulnerable entrance from other prying eyes, an entrance she’d had a devil of a time finding earlier, in spite of the rough map the real estate agent had sketched for her. But as he rose and walked beside her, their feet crunching on dried twigs and grasses, she could easily spot the tension in his movements, as if every muscle lay coiled, waiting to spring into action at the slightest sign of trouble...
Or was he waiting for his chance to get the drop on her?
Increasingly concerned that he might try something that would end up getting one or both of them hurt—or cost her her crucial payout—she began to wonder if sticking with Selina’s deal would prove the safer bet. “Maybe this offer of yours isn’t such a good idea,” she suggested as he lifted a pine bough and held it to let her duck under. “Twenty-five grand’s a lot of money just to delay a problem you’re going to have to deal with sooner or later anyway. And besides, if you really were right about your stepmother plotting something—”
“I’m willing to take my chances,” he said, his breath catching for a moment as he caught his first glimpse of the lights of town, many miles in the distance.
“I’d be just as happy solving my problem with her money as yours,” she admitted, reaching up to adjust her cap, which had slid down to obscure her vision. “Besides, you could hire a really good lawyer with that kind of—”
Returning his attention to her, he waved off her concern. “Lawyers and money I’ve got,” he said bitterly. “Money I’ve saved my whole life for the family I never took the time away from work to start. And now, for all I know, I’ll never get the chance to...”
“Ace...” Her heart twisted at the thought of the latest news from Mustang Valley. A personal matter and a secret that a complete stranger like her had no business sharing with the fugitive.
She weighed her options, struggling to balance the knowledge of the heinous crime this man stood accused of against the possibility that just maybe, telling him would ground him, giving him some reason to be careful. A reason that might help ensure her future, keeping her alive, as well...
* * *
Her gaze connected with his. A real connection that Ace felt running through him like a strong electric current. And in that moment he sensed, with a clarity unlike anything he’d experienced in his entire life, that there was something that she meant to tell him. Something that would fracture the plane of his life into two distinct parts: before and after.
“There’s no easy way to say this except to come right out and tell you,” she began, her voice vibrating with emotion. “You have a daughter. A daughter of your own who’s waiting patiently to meet you.”
“What? What the hell?” Adrenaline spilled through the floodgates, unleashing a throbbing in his chest, a burning tightness stretching over his skin. Followed by absolute fury that she would mess with him like this. “Why on earth would you tell a lie like that when you know damned well I’ve just lost any claim to all the family I ever had?”
“Whoa, whoa, cowboy,” she said, a glint of moonlight off the handgun’s metallic surface giving away the fact that she had raised it. And making him realize he’d advanced on her in a way she clearly found threatening. “Pipe down for a minute and just listen to me, would you? I’ve seen a picture of Nova myself, thanks to Selina, and heard that your brothers and sisters introduced her as your daughter. A daughter by blood, Ace. There’s already been a DNA test.”
“But that’s...impossible,” he said. “I don’t have a little girl—I couldn’t possibly.”
“She’s in Mustang Valley,” Sierra told him. “And she’s a young woman, not a child. Not only that, but she’s—”
Stiffening, Sierra cut herself off to glance back over her shoulder.
It was the only warning Ace had before a dark bulk separated itself from the deeper shadow. A loud crackling sound preceded her cry of pain and alarm as she buckled forward.
Before Ace understood what was happening, she’d collapsed completely. He spotted a large man hunched over her and pressing a stun gun to the side of her neck, which was sparking and snapping with the rattling sound of a transformer arcing.
“Hold it right there,” a deep voice growled as a second man grabbed Ace’s shoulder from behind and pressed something hard and unyielding—stun gun, it had to be—against the sore spot at his temple. “Move another muscle and you’re dead when you don’t hafta be. Our beef’s not with you. It’s this little deadbeat we got business with.”
“Stop it now! Stop shocking her before you kill her!” Ace shouted, sickened by the popping noises, the helpless jerking of her body beside the shaved-head ox squatting beside her, his mouth stretched into a leer of pure cruelty. Sierra Madden might be Ace’s captor, but this sickened him—and had him wanting to turn their weapons on the two thugs that had jumped them. Thugs that gave credence to the story she had told him about the loan shark who went by the name Ice Veins.
When the crackling ceased abruptly, the man holding the gun on him, a heavily muscled specimen with a dark chinstrap beard, told his partner, “Careful frisking her for weapons. My buddies from down the boxing gym tell me she’s won her last two matches by knockout, and half the guys are scared to spar with her.”
No wonder she took me down, Ace realized. Not that it made him feel one bit better to hear the bald guy laugh or watch him pin her down with one meaty hand splayed across her chest while she whimpered, struggling to regain control of her still-twitching limbs. “Bitch won’t be punching nobody for a while. Nice try with the disguise, Miss Madden.”
With that, he tossed aside the fake glasses and pulled her hair free of its makeshift updo.
“N-no,” she protested. “G-get your—h-hands off me.”
Ace surged forward in response, only to grunt with pain when the bearded goon holding him sharply cracked the gun against his brow and cheekbone. Vision graying out, Ace dropped to his knees.
By the time he could see again, the bald thug was pocketing both Sierra’s weapon and the one she’d taken earlier from Ace inside the bunker. Rising with a grunt, the huge man took a step back, aiming a revolver so long that it practically qualified as a hand cannon above the bounty hunter’s breast.
“I didn’t come across any wad of cash that felt like my boss’s twenty-five thousand dollars in those pockets,” he told her, a satisfied sneer spreading across his broad face. “So which leg do you want blown off? The right one or the left?”
* * *
Nauseated from the threat as she felt uncoordinated from the jolting, Sierra pleaded, “You can’t do this—”
“If you’ll be patient just a minute—” though dark streamers of blood were running down his face, Ace Colton spoke with the forced cheer of a determined salesman “—I’ll be happy to take care of Ms. Madden’s bill here.”
Both men’s heads snapped in his direction. Along with Sierra’s surprised gaze. Why would he volunteer his assistance, now that she was both unarmed and helpless? Did he think they’d kill him otherwise, eliminating him as a witness to their violence?
“All of it?” the bald man asked him, his pale eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Because we’ve got strict instructions not to leave Mustang Valley without either the money or a photo of the mangled leg she owes my boss.”
“And personally,” his bearded cohort chuckled, “we kinda figured that ole Ice Veins would just as soon have us blast her leg off, on account of the way she jammed up his favorite nephew.”
“Every penny,” Ace insisted, “if you don’t mind waiting for me to head down to where I can get a decent cell phone signal so I can transfer the funds to—”
The bearded man nearest to him snorted. “You think we take electronic transfers? I imagine you want us to print you out a nice, neat receipt, too?”
The men’s coarse laughter had panic bubbling up into Sierra’s throat.
“This is a strictly cash operation, mister,” the larger bald man told him, his voice dropping to a more menacing pitch as he straightened to tower over her. “But it’s your lucky day, and we’re giving you one chance right now. Walk away and forget you ever saw or heard us, and you don’t have to be a part of this. Otherwise... I’ve got some extra ammo in this gun.”
When Ace glanced toward her, Sierra felt truly lost, as alone as she had ever felt in her life. For Ice Veins’s men were offering him the escape he craved and needed.
Certainly, he didn’t owe her, Sierra knew as she steeled herself, her gaze connecting with the fugitive’s for a fraction of a second. Nice for Colton to try; he surely wouldn’t risk his own skin for the woman who’d burst into his lair and decked him with a left cross, the woman who meant nothing to him other than a threat.
“What if I told you I could get it all in cash,” Ace blurted, looking from one of the loan shark’s men to the other, “by tomorrow morning? And what if I sweetened the deal with, let’s say, five grand each for the two of you? You know, to reward you for your patience if you’ll only wait?”
Sierra’s heart skipped a beat, her lungs refilling with the sweet, fresh breath of hope. Though she couldn’t imagine how Ace could actually come up with so much currency so quickly, his gambit flooded her with the energy she needed to reach down and carefully begin lifting up her pant leg, reaching for the boot that her captor hadn’t checked nearly as carefully as he should have.
“I don’t know,” the bald man told Ace. “We do have somewhere else we’re supposed to be.”
“And besides,” the bearded one said, “if Ice Veins figures we’re trying to run some kind of side deal on him—let’s just say he’s not the most forgiving of bosses.”
“Who’s to say he has to know?” Ace asked. “Or that it even has to be five thousand? What if I made it eight apiece?”
“Or how ’bout ten for each of us, big spender?” The bearded man laughed. “Is this bitch worth it to you?”
“You may not be an ATM, but I’m not your piggybank, either,” Ace said, abruptly shifting from affable salesman to tough negotiator. “So take it or leave it. It’s no skin off my teeth. I’m just trying to save us all some fuss and bother.”
“You’ll be no bother to anybody when you’re dead, Slick,” said the bald man, spinning his bulk toward Ace so quickly that Sierra knew for certain that he meant to shoot him.
It forced her to spring into action, grasping the little pepper spray gun from her boot holster. With its palm-size orange safety tip—designed to let police know it was not a lethal weapon—it might not look like much, but the toy-like plastic backup sent a stream of noxious fluid straight into the big man’s face.
Yelping and choking, he dropped to his knees, clawing at his streaming nose and eyes while blindly squeezing off a round from his huge gun.
Rising, Sierra whirled around, hoping to spray the bearded man’s face, too. But she saw that Ace was grappling with him, the two of them fighting to control the gun still in the thug’s right hand.
Get out of here, her instincts screamed. Get to the car before the other creep manages to shoot you!
But there was no way she could leave Ace, not when she was responsible for dragging him into this mess. So instead she looked around desperately until she found a fallen tree limb. Snatching up the thick branch, she whacked the bearded man so hard across the back that the breath exploded from his lungs.
The force of the blow sent him lurching into Ace. Yet another shot, a deafening crack, echoed through the darkness.
For a moment she held her breath, listening for something, anything, beyond the coughing and the cursing of the pepper-sprayed bald thug, to let her know what had happened.
Then she heard the unmistakable crash of a man’s body thudding to the ground.
Chapter 3
Ace’s breath roared in his ears as the two of them pounded downhill, Sierra hauling him by the hand. One of the loan shark’s goons roared threats as the moans of the bearded man, who’d been shot in the struggle, faded behind them.
“Hurry. Car’s this way.” Panting out the words, she spoke urgently into Ace’s ear, “And whatever you do, keep your head low. The big guy’s still got his gun!”
Ace wasn’t sure how ducking was supposed to stop a bullet, but he instinctively heeded her advice as he scrambled after her. Practically blinded by the darkness and the blood streaming into his right eye, he was repeatedly whipped and scraped by branches.
Even so, when she drew up short and peered around a few minutes later, doubt flooded in. With his injured face throbbing in time with the pounding of his heartbeat, he asked, “You’ve lost the car, haven’t you? Maybe if we crouch down and hide, they’ll pass us by.”
“There! It’s over there.” Her sigh was audible as she let go of him and led him to a small depression partly shrouded by thick undergrowth. “The door’s unlocked, so—”
Needing no more invitation, he clambered over and climbed into a dark-colored sedan. Seconds later she was in the driver’s seat and snapping on a seat belt before cranking up the engine.
The car lurched backward and swung clear of the brush before she dropped it into Drive.
From outside there was a pop, followed by a splintering sound as, just behind Ace’s head, the rear passenger window shattered. “Go, go, go!” he shouted.
The tail end of the car careening, the tires suddenly gained purchase. As the headlights came on to illuminate the path ahead, Ace shouted an unnecessary warning. Sierra was already swerving around tree trunks thicker than his legs.
Belting himself in in an effort to remain upright, Ace said, “Dirt road’s to your left. There! We’re clear now, or I think we are—unless he’s got wheels nearby, too.”
She darted a glance into the rearview mirror, her eyes wide and her face frozen in a grimace. His admiration rose another notch as she visibly pulled herself together, slowing her gasping breaths and mastering her body’s shaking.
“Half blind as he’s gotta be and with his partner shot, we’re sure to lose him.” Sierra flicked a look in his direction as she pulled onto an old logging road and mashed down on the accelerator. “Are you—your face?”
Hunting the Colton Fugitive Page 3
