by JoAnn Ross
“There’s a forest service road not far from here,” Josh told her. She had to strain to hear him. “I doubt, with the storm, any plows would have gotten around to it.”
“Wouldn’t it be better if they had?”
“Plows make ridges. It’s too easy to hit one and get thrown.” He swerved around a snow-covered boulder. “Hold on.”
What the hell did he think she was doing? Nevertheless, she clung harder.
They were suddenly airborne. She shrieked, the way she might on a roller-coaster ride at an amusement park. But there was nothing even remotely amusing about this.
They landed like a stone, jarring every bone in her body, before sliding precariously so far that her right shoulder was nearly dragging in the snow. But miraculously—at least it seemed a miracle to her—they remained upright.
“All right!” Behaving like the teenager he still was, Josh pumped a fist into the air.
‘'Would you please just hold on with both hands?”
He turned his head to look back at her, his teeth flashing a bold grin in his ice-frosted face. “Yes, Mother,” he said, as he gunned the engine again.
Damned if he didn’t seem to be enjoying himself. For, from what she’d been able to tell, one of the few times since he’d arrived in Hazard.
The enjoyment was to prove short-lived.
After weaving deftly around a second boulder, he topped a small hill and cursed.
“Jump!”
Not taking time to think about the peril, Faith did as instructed. An instant later, the sled plowed into a fallen, snow-covered Douglas fir. The thick tree was no less impressive lying on its side than it would have been towering into the sky.
“We are so fucked!” Josh shouted, slamming a bare hand against the trunk of the tree.
“Not yet." The bag she’d strapped across her body when she’d jumped aboard the snowmobile had not fallen off during their wild ride. “Get behind the tree.”
She would have joined him, but the gigantic limbs, still wearing their dark green needles, would be in her way.
“Holy shit!” He goggled at the .45 she pulled out of the bag. “Do you actually know how to shoot that cannon?”
"Yes.” Faith stood up in the position Sal had taught her. The memory made her heart clench and she wanted to cry at the idea of his having been killed because of her. But as if she could hear him yelling at her to concentrate, she spread her legs, keeping her knees firm, but not quite locked, setting her trailing foot so that her natural point of aim would be on her target. “I do.”
She took a deep breath, instructing the rest of her body to relax, which was difficult when her stomach was turning somersaults, every nerve was jangling, and her heart was doing the jitterbug in her chest.
She held the heavy revolver in both hands and prepared herself for the kick of the recoil as Drew Hayworth came flying over the hillock on his wicked-looking, sleek black snowmobile.
49
Despite the way once again a woman had put a crimp in his plans, the man who’d been the boy raised by wolves was in near metaphysical exhilaration as he chased his prey over the white and drifted snow.
He’d been right. This was much better than the silent, quick kill. This was hunting on a grand scale. Akin to galloping a horse across the mountain steppes chasing a snow leopard.
Whenever he’d hunted with the tribe he believed to be the Saks, the leopard had always died. Always. The men had been exceptional hunters.
But the death had always seemed anticlimactic to the chase. And as magnificent as the white mountain cat was, both in life and in death, it couldn’t live up to a human.
But, for the pleasure and profit together,
Allow me the hunting of Man—
The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul
To its ruin—the hunting of Man.
It wouldn’t be long now. His blood stirred and, despite the cold, warmed with sweet anticipation.
He’d planned to kill the boy quickly so he wouldn’t be burdened by dragging them both away from the house.
But thanks to Faith’s changing the rules of the game by trying to escape, he was going to be able to take his time and kill them both slowly. Painfully. Soon.
Double your pleasure, the hunter thought with a smile as the sled soared over the hill. Double your fun.
It was then he saw her. Standing in front of him, the barrel of a revolver pointed straight at his chest.
Roaring with a warrior’s rage, rather than turning away, the man who’d once been the boy raised by wolves pointed the sled directly at her.
Then gunned the accelerator.
50
Will had never thought he’d be grateful for the damn Ride the Divide race that had sledders racing all around Hazard night and day. Until a group came speeding toward him, their engines sounding like a hundred, no, a thousand, furious wasps.
“Sheriff’s office,” he shouted, holding up his badge just in case they hadn’t noticed the big gold seal on the side of the Jeep’s black doors.
Middle-aged and law-abiding, the entire pack immediately came skidding to a halt, sending up frothy white rooster tails of snow.
“I’ve got an emergency and need to commandeer one of your vehicles.”
They exchanged confused looks.
“Like now,” Will stressed, reminding himself that just shooting someone and taking the sled could well be considered overkill. “I’m in a hurry.”
“Then this is the baby you want, Sheriff,” one of the sledders said, climbing off a black-and-silver Bullet chassis with CMSA stickers plastered all over it. Her voice revealed what her heavily padded, yellow spaceman suit did not, that she was a woman. It also indicated Great Lakes roots. “I did one hundred and fifty-four miles an hour in a thousand feet on it back home in Clearwater, Minnesota.”
Lake racing and powder were two entirely different things. But fast was fast.
“Thanks.” Will pulled a helmet he kept in the backseat of the Jeep. “I’ll get this back to you.” Hopefully in one piece, but Will had been a cop long enough never to guarantee anything. “Where are you staying?”
“The Red Wolf Lodge. Alone,” she tacked on in an obvious feminine ploy that caused more than one of the other sledders to chuckle.
“Well, like I said, thanks.”
He strapped his rifle onto his back, swung his leg over the seat, and roared off.
“He’s going to freaking kill you!” Josh yelled at Faith from behind the tree.
“Not if I kill the bastard first,” she shouted back.
“Christ, if we get out of this, remind me to warn my dad never to piss you off.”
“When we get out of this,” she corrected. “Now shut up and let me concentrate. I’ve never shot an actual person before.”
You can do this.
Focus.
Find your center.
No. Find his center.
One advantage Faith had was that if Drew continued straight toward her as he was doing, he presented the largest possible target.
The disadvantage was that with the huge tree behind her, she could become trapped, without anywhere to run. No way to escape.
She took a deep breath. Another. Narrowed her concentration, closing off the falling snow, the howl of the wind, the needlelike ice hitting her face.
Her sphere of vision narrowed. Until there were just the two of them. Faith and the man she’d foolishly, mistakenly considered a friend.
She stilled her mind.
Took a third, steadying breath.
Then pulled the trigger.
With every part of her being focused so intently on her attacker, Faith did not hear the crack of the limb overhead. Nor did she hear Josh’s shout of warning.
She did hear the roar of the revolver. Felt the recoil force her arm up. The last thing she heard was Drew scream like a wounded animal.
“I got him,” she murmured as the crashing limb dropped her to her knees.
51
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
What the hell did the bitch think she was doing?
Didn’t she know who he was?
What he was?
He was the man who was once the boy raised by wolves. He was a predator.
You couldn’t kill him! He was fucking invincible.
“Invincible!” he screeched, as a bolt of fire ripped through his upper arm.
As if validating his claim, a limb from the downed tree suddenly cracked off, falling through the shaggy branches. The hunter watched it strike the back of his adversary’s head.
Felt a surge in his loins as she fell, facedown, into a deep drift of snow.
Invincible, he repeated as, clenching his teeth against the pain, he managed to slow his speed in a low skid.
Game on.
* * * * *
The snow was getting heavier. Wetter. The roads more and more treacherous. The good thing was that the sled could go where even the Cherokee, with snow tires and chains, couldn’t get to.
Will had only been back in the valley six weeks. But some things a guy never forgot. Like all the forest-service and country, two-lane, dirt roads crisscrossing the landscape. When you were seventeen and looking for a place to make out with a girl, you pretty much kept a GPS in your head.
As he tore through the trees, he brought up a virtual map. Remembered that halcyon summer day when he’d been parked out in the woods with Vicki Dayton. It had been the first time a girl had ever touched his cock.
The road was close by and, if he remembered correctly—and please, God, let him be right—should be a shortcut to Faith’s house.
Even better, Will thought, as he sawed the sled back and forth to avoid ancient ice-age boulders and fallen trees, the plows wouldn’t have gotten out here yet to pack down the snow and risk it turning to ice.
The wind was howling, the snowmobile engine was screeching, but Will had spent too many hours on the police range not to recognize the sound of a gun being fired.
It ricocheted over the snow, through the trees, slamming into his brain.
Will couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed. Even when he’d been lying on those cobblestones, a dead man a few feet away, sirens wailing, and Gray shouting into his face, it hadn’t crossed his mind to request help from anyone.
But now, as he raced toward the sound of the gunfire, hitting the bumps at a speed that rattled his bones, one plea reverberated over and over in his desperate mind.
Please, God. Don’t let Faith die.
He was bleeding. Blood was pouring down his sleeve, spilling over his hand, making the throttle slick and greasy. The damn bitch had winged him. And for that she was going to pay.
He hit the brake, intending to stop just long enough to stab his blade into her chest. A collapsed lung would keep her from running away. But she’d stay alive. For a long time. Long enough for him to do everything he’d been dreaming of doing to her. All the dark and perverse things she’d been asking men to do for the last twelve months.
Oh, she hadn’t said the words out loud. To do so, especially in these post-Janet Jackson Super Bowl incident days, would have gotten her kicked off the airways. But you didn’t have to be a psychological anthropologist to know that there wasn’t a man in the high country who didn’t listen to Talking After Midnight and know, deep in his gut, his groin, that Faith Prescott was just begging him to get down and dirty with her.
And this man was more than willing to oblige.
As he approached the tree, the sheriff’s kid was down on his knees, trying to lift her out of the snowbank.
Change of plans. Actually, he’d go back to the original. Kill the kid, quick and sweet. Then deal with Faith.
He’d bought a hunting cabin from a math professor this past fall, not quite sure what he was going to do with it. But now he realized the real estate deal was serendipity.
The former owner was currently spending the holidays in Greece, which meant he wouldn’t be around to tell the sheriff that he’d just happened to sell a remote one-room hideaway to the hunter the entire country would undoubtedly be looking for by dawn.
He’d have plenty of time to do everything he’d been fantasizing. After he was finished with her, as he’d promised back in that cozy kitchen, he’d let her go.
Then he’d hunt her down.
And this time, he would kill her.
52
Will was racing toward where he’d heard the gunshot, teeth chattering from the rough ride, the snowmobile bucking under him, swaying.
The snow was blowing against his face shield so hard it was beginning to stick, making visibility next to zero. He had two choices. He could keep wiping the damn snow off the shield, thus risking an accident by driving with one hand, or he could throw up the shield, even knowing that skin froze quickly in such temperatures, especially at such high speeds, and hope for the best.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, Will threw up the shield, ducked his head, and flew over the top of a small hill.
And damned if they weren’t all there. Faith, the killer, and… Josh?
He landed with a thud and, while struggling to keep the snowmobile upright, reached beneath his jacket, pulled out his Glock, and got off a shot.
Which hit the damn tree.
“Police!” he shouted.
Last time he’d tried this, back in Savannah, it hadn’t worked. He seriously doubted it would this time. But as long as there were bottom-feeder defense attorneys out there nit-picking every little detail of an arrest, Will was going to play by the rules.
“Turn off the engine. Get off the damn sled,” he shouted into the wind. “And put your hands on top of your head.”
He couldn’t hear what the guy said, but it sounded a lot like “Fuck you.” Which was a long way from “I surrender, Officer.”
Gunning the black sled, the perp took off.
Will wanted to go after him, but there was no way he was going to leave the two people he cared about most in the world.
“How are you?” he asked them.
“I’m fine,” Josh said. “But Faith got nailed with a tree limb. She was knocked out for a second—”
“Christ.” Will glanced toward the sled, which was racing away at what had to be eighty-plus miles an hour. Faith’s head was bleeding. “Let me see—”
“I’m fine,” Faith assured him. “But Drew killed Sal.”
“No, he didn’t. The doctor said the guy’s got the hardest—actually, he said thickest—head he’s ever seen. The bullet lodged in his skull without entering the brain. He’s spending the night in the hospital with a Russian roommate.”
“Thank God! Now go after Drew before he hurts anyone else.”
“I’m not leaving you here alone, hurt—”
“She’s not going to be alone, Dad,” Josh argued. “Hell, I’ve gotten a lot harder hits from my board surfing. Go get Dr. Hayworth. He freaking tried to kill us. But Faith shot him.”
Outside, Will was freezing. But as he looked down at Faith, something warm, something that felt like love mixed with an extra helping of pride, flowed through him.
“With the cannon?”
“Yes.”
“That is one big freakin’ gun.” Josh’s lashes were so caked with snow he could barely open his eyes. But that didn’t stop Will from seeing the reckless amusement in them. His kid, he realized, had inherited his own sick sense of humor. Hell, you’d almost think he were a cop.
“You called that one right.” Will looked down at Faith again, clearly torn between love and duty.
“Go,” she insisted. “I’ll be fine. Josh and I make one helluva team. You should have seen him driving that snowmobile. You’d never know he grew up in California.”
“Go get the bastard, Dad,” Josh seconded Faith. “And take him out.”
Will’s breath blew out on a ghost cloud of frosty air. “Okay.” There was one more thing he had to say. “I’m not sure what all went down tonight, Josh. But I do kn
ow I’m damn proud of you, son.”
The teen’s cheeks were already so red, it was hard to tell, but Will thought he blushed. “Thanks, Dad.”
Will tossed Josh the cell phone. “Call #HELP. Hopefully you’ll be able to get through. Tell Earlene we’re at the base of Elk Ridge.”
“Yessir.” Pride beamed on the ice-encrusted face, reminding Will of Honeycutt, making him wonder if just maybe his son might want to follow in his footsteps and become a cop.
As he kicked the sled into high gear again, taking after the psychological anthropologist, he thought about how much things had changed in just two days. His kid was actually talking to him, a sexy woman was in love with him, and here he was, driving a snowmobile hell-bent for leather through the night, during a blizzard, chasing a bad guy.
Life couldn't get any better than this.
Dammit! His arm was going numb. He could barely steer and the falling snow was piling up on his helmet shield so thick he could barely see. The helmet lantern was doing no good, the thin yellow light only allowing him to see an inch or two in front of the sled.
He no longer knew where he was. Only knew that he needed to keep going. To stop was to die. And he was not yet prepared for that to happen.
He swerved around a boulder the size of a Volkswagen, managed to dodge a pine tree that seemed to suddenly appear out of nowhere, then, unstable because he’d gone onto a single runner to avoid the tree, couldn’t correct fast enough to avoid the huge snow-covered mound that came looming out of the flying snow.
He hit it straight on, went flying over the windshield, and landed with a thud on top of what turned out to be a pair of moose antlers. The moose had undoubtedly died of exposure; the hunter, vowing that it would not happen to him, clambered off the huge dead animal and tried to tilt the sled upright, but it had sunk too deep into the snow for him to pull out with one arm.
With no other choice, he took off, his left arm hanging uselessly at his side, lumbering toward the thick stand of trees at the top of the ridge.
