by Cindi Myers
He inhaled raggedly and nodded, regaining his composure. She released her hold on him and took a step back, still watching him carefully. “I’m okay,” he said. “And we are going to find him and see that he’s punished. Your testimony will go a long way toward making that happen.”
“I hope so,” she said. “I don’t know a lot about his operation, but I know some things, and I know the people he associated with. I don’t have your memory for faces, but I think I would recognize a lot of them again.”
“You probably know more than you think you do,” he said. “Enough to put him away for a long time.”
He checked the compass, and they set out walking again. “Don’t forget that I’m not the only one Duane is after,” she said. “He doesn’t have any love for the Feds. You ran him down in his home, you took me away and you killed one of his men. Any one of those things could be reason enough for him to have a grudge against you.”
“How many people does he have working with him? Were there more than your driver and Eddie Roland, Buck and Sam?”
“There are probably hundreds of people connected to Duane in one way or another,” she said. “Some merely send money to support his efforts. Others provide information or access to a location, while others do the actual work of carrying out attacks, building bombs, intercepting intelligence and disseminating propaganda. In many ways, he operates like any head of a large international corporation.”
“And Braeswood heads it all?”
“In the United States,” she said. “Though I sometimes had the sense that there were other people, in other countries, who wielded power also, to the point where Duane had to answer to them.” She shook her head. “But I don’t have any proof of any kind of connection like that. In any case, there were always new people filtering in and out of the house. Mostly men, but a few women, too.”
“Do you think you could identify them again?”
“Some of them. But I’m sure there were others I never saw. He was always on the phone, talking in a cryptic kind of code about targets and objectives and tasks. He never said anything in my presence that told me what he was really up to.”
“How long would you have stayed with him if I hadn’t come along?”
She couldn’t see his face when he asked this question, but the stiffness of his shoulders and the chill in his voice warned her to tread carefully. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe I would have found the courage on my own to leave. Or maybe he would have grown tired of me and had me killed. There were days I would have welcomed that.”
He turned and sent her a sharp look. “What happened to all that optimism and hope you were preaching about earlier?”
“I wasn’t preaching. And it’s much easier to be hopeful now that I’m away from that prison. I had plenty of bad days. Some truly horrible days.” She closed her eyes, struggling for composure. She would never forget the things Duane had done to her, but she didn’t want to let them define her.
His hand around her wrist made her open her eyes. He studied her, his expression intense, as if he were searching for something familiar in a stranger’s face. “I never realized before how strong you are. I wonder what else about you I overlooked.”
Then he released her and turned away to study the compass, then adjust their course toward the path that, she hoped, would take them to safety.
* * *
THE JOURNEY BECAME a forced march as they concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, finding the best route, stopping only to check the compass and once to filter water to fill the water bottles from a small stream. Leah moved steadily behind Travis, never complaining, stopping only when he did. He had loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her, but he had always thought of her as gentle and delicate. He was the strong one in their relationship—the man who was supposed to protect her. Maybe that was a sexist thing to believe in the twenty-first century, but it was a belief reinforced by both his upbringing and his training. He was an officer of the law, sworn to serve and protect.
She was smart, and funny, and incredibly sexy. But he had never known she was so tough and determined. Seeing her this way both awed and unsettled him. What other aspects of her character had he misjudged or failed to see in her? If he had been more in tune with what was going on inside her, would he have picked up on her distress over her sister? Could he have done something to help her? Could he have saved her from the hell she had suffered as the prisoner and pawn of Duane Braeswood? The idea that he had failed her weighed heavy; he wouldn’t fail her again.
He stopped to check the compass again; fallen trees, dense underbrush and rocky outcroppings forced them to continually detour off a direct route. Leah moved up beside him, her hand on his arm. She rose on tiptoe and whispered in his ear. “I think I heard voices.”
He looked at her sharply. “Where?”
“I can’t tell which direction they were coming from. Listen.”
He raised his head, straining his ears to pick out any sound beyond the sigh of wind in the branches overhead and the occasional birdsong. Her hand tightened on his biceps and he recognized the low murmur that might be distant conversation.
He pointed ahead and to their left, and indicated they should move in that direction. She pulled him back and spoke again, her mouth against his ear, the words barely audible. “What if it’s Duane’s men?”
“We won’t know until we check it out,” he said. The average backpacker wouldn’t be able to save them, but they might have food or information about Braeswood’s whereabouts.
“Do you still have the Glock?” he asked.
She reached behind her and withdrew the gun from the waistband of her jeans.
“Hide behind a tree here and I’ll go check this out,” he said. “If anyone comes after you, shoot them.”
“No.” She shook her head. “We’ll check it out together. It doesn’t make sense for us to separate. If they do discover us, we’re better off facing them as a team.”
The stubborn set of her chin and the determined look in her eyes told him argument would be a waste of time. “All right.” He drew the Ruger and checked that a round was in the chamber. “We’ll go together.”
They moved slowly, carefully placing each step and pausing often to listen to the intermittent bursts of what he was sure was conversation. Whoever these men were—and the low register of the words indicated they were men—they weren’t trained in stealth operations. They weren’t making any great effort to conceal their whereabouts.
At last they reached a bluff overlooking the river. A well-worn trail meandered along the bank of the waterway, and beside this path two men sat on a fallen tree trunk, eating lunch. Travis was sure these were two of the men he had seen hiking in yesterday. They were dressed in black tactical fatigues, with heavy black packs resting at their sides. He could make out a holstered pistol at one man’s hip—possibly another Ruger —and the blued stock of an assault rifle showed in the shadows beside the other man’s pack.
“The man on the right works for Duane.” Leah spoke softly in his ear. “I don’t know his name, but I’ve definitely seen him before.”
Travis nodded and started to move forward. Leah tugged on him, her expression one of alarm.
He indicated they should retreat into the woods again. When he judged they were far enough from the river that the men there wouldn’t hear their whispered conversation, he stopped. “We should move around them and cross the river downstream while they’re eating,” she said.
“Do that and we might walk right into a trap. If they have men guarding the bridge, I’d like to know before we get there. If I can get close enough to hear their conversation I might find out more about who is here and where.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“The more information we have, the less danger we’re in.” The pr
imary focus of his job with the Bureau was gathering information. The right knowledge often made the difference when it came to stopping criminals like Braeswood.
She worried her lower lip between her teeth, then nodded. “All right. But we’ll go together.”
He could have argued that two people were taking a bigger risk than one, that two people made more noise and were more likely to be seen. But he didn’t want to be separated from her any more than she wanted to wait behind for him. The memory of Braeswood holding a knife to her throat when he’d left her before still sent a chill through him. “We’ll go together,” he agreed.
They returned to their previous position on the bluff. The two men had made another tactical mistake, stopping so near the river. The noise from the water rushing over rocks would mask sounds around them. And they were still chatting as they ate, only occasionally scanning the area. As long as he and Leah were careful, they shouldn’t have too much trouble getting close enough to hear their conversation.
He touched her shoulder and indicated she should follow him through a thick growth of bushes that filled a drainage leading to the river. This cover would take them almost to the water’s edge, downstream and behind the two men. From there, he hoped they would be able to listen in on their discussion. He only hoped the two were talking about their job here in the wilderness, and not their favorite sports team or women.
They crawled through the bushes on their hands and knees, a torturous progress, battling thorns and rocks and snagging branches. Fortunately, a thick layer of leaf litter covered the ground, muffling the sounds of their progress. As long as the two men didn’t decide to look behind them and notice the bushes moving, he and Leah should be okay.
Very near the water, he stopped. Though the noise from the river swallowed up some of the two men’s words, he could make out enough to get the gist of their conversation. It was, as he hoped, about their duties out here.
“It’s a big waste of time.” The older of the two, the one Leah had recognized, was a wiry, tanned fellow with closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair. He bit into an apple and chewed as he spoke. “If they aren’t dead by now, they will be soon.”
“Then we’d better find their bodies,” the second man, a younger, beefy blond, said. “The chief isn’t going to let up until he knows they’re out of the picture.”
“I’m going to really enjoy shooting a Fed.” The older man mimed firing a pistol.
“The chief wants the woman alive,” the blond said. “I think she’s the real reason he’s going to all this trouble.”
“Women can make a man do crazy things, that’s for sure.” The older man finished off his apple and tossed the core into the grass at their feet. “Though I never knew what to make of the two of them together. He never paid that much attention to her. And she never looked all that happy to be there.”
“Oh, I think she was happy enough. The chief is loaded, and some women really get off on the power. She was one of those types. Why else would she stick around? It wasn’t like he kept her chained to the bed.”
“Now there’s an idea,” the older man said. “I had a girlfriend once who was into that stuff. You know, bondage and whips and stuff. Pretty hot.”
“Maybe when we find Braeswood’s woman, we don’t turn her over to him right away,” the blond said. “Maybe we have a little fun with her first.”
Behind Travis, Leah made a choking sound, then stumbled back.
“What was that?” The blond sat up straight and reached for the rifle.
“Something over there, in the bushes.” The older man was on his feet, his gun drawn. Travis turned to look at Leah, who huddled in the underbrush, eyes as wide as a frightened rabbit’s. He started to move back toward her when the loud crack of gunfire froze him, and a bullet smacked into the dirt inches away from him.
Chapter Twelve
Leah bit down hard on her hand to keep from screaming as bullets slammed into the dirt around them. Travis surged forward and, grabbing her hand, dragged her after him. They didn’t bother with stealth this time, crashing through the tangle of vines and shrubs, fighting their way up the slope. The rapid tattoo of gunfire propelled her forward with strength she hadn’t known she possessed.
At the top of the bluff, Travis dived behind a large boulder and she followed him, landing with her cheek pressed to the dirt, the frantic pounding of her pulse and ragged breathing drowning out all other noise. Then a deafening blast of gunfire made her jump. She raised her head to see Travis firing down the slope. Braeswood’s men returned fire and a bullet nicked the rock beside them, sending shards of granite flying, then all was silent.
“They’re too well hidden for me to get a good shot,” Travis said.
“At least they stopped shooting at us,” she said. She had drawn the Glock and held it pointed at the ground, knowing better than to fire without a clear target.
“They’re probably radioing for help,” Travis muttered. “It’s what I would do in their position.”
“They’ll try to surround us.” The thought made her chest feel hollow.
“Which means we have to get out of here now.” He unshouldered the pack, took out the box of ammunition and began reloading the Ruger. “We’re going to run hard that way.” He nodded to the west. “We’re headed for the bridge. The train hasn’t stopped there yet—we would have heard the whistle.”
“Duane will have someone guarding the bridge,” she said.
“Then we’ll have to find a way past them.” He shoved the gun into the waistband of his pants. “Are you ready?”
She took a deep breath. The first rush of adrenaline had faded, leaving her shaky, but she had to find a way to get past that. She wouldn’t sit here and let them take her back to Duane without a fight. “I’m ready.”
As soon as they began moving, the gunfire followed them, closer this time, as if their two pursuers were climbing the ridge. They retreated farther away from the bluff, into the cover of thicker underbrush, but continuing to run parallel to the river. She hoped their head start on level ground gave them an advantage.
The going was tough, and fear made it even more difficult to breathe. At the point when she felt her lungs would burst, Travis stopped and pulled her into what she thought at first was a tangle of downed trees. On closer examination, she saw they were sheltered in the remains of a crude log cabin, the kind a miner might have built over a hundred years before.
His arms encircled her, pulling her close. She rested her head against his chest, feeling the hard pounding of his heart, and some of her panic eased. “What are we going to do?” she whispered.
“We’re going to rest here for a minute,” he said. “We’ll see if they’re following us.”
“They’ll be able to tell where we crashed through the woods,” she said. “They’ll know we’re in here.”
“Most people aren’t trained trackers,” he said. “None of their shots hit us because they weren’t aiming—they were just firing wildly in our general direction.”
They had gotten lucky this time. But what about next time? “If they trap us in here, how long can we hold them off?”
“We have maybe thirty rounds of ammunition for the Ruger, less for the Glock.”
“So not long.”
“That rifle the blond guy was toting will rip through this old wood like tacks through paper,” he said. “If they get close enough, how much ammo we have left won’t matter.”
“You do know how to reassure a woman.”
“Is that what you want? Pretty lies to make you feel better?”
“No. Thank you for being honest with me.” They had always told each other the truth—until she lied to him about Duane. In trying to save him, she had destroyed so much. “I could offer to surrender if they let you go,” she said. “You heard what those two men said—Duan
e wants me alive.”
“Because he loves you so much.” He spoke the words with a sneer.
“Because he loves that he can control me. Or he could. Getting away from him, running for our lives here in the wilderness, has shown me what I can do. I won’t stay with him again. But I’ll make him think I will if it will give you time to get away.”
His arms tightened around her. “No. I won’t let him or his men have you. Now be quiet and try to rest. We need to listen for them.”
She settled against him, but her mind raced, preventing rest. The odds that Duane would let Travis go in exchange for her were slim, but with Travis’s cooperation they might be able to trick him. The tough part would be distracting the hunters he had sent out after them. Maybe she could draw their fire here in the ruined cabin while Travis sneaked out the back and circled behind them. Did they have enough ammunition to make that plan feasible? And what about his assertion that the rifle bullets would cut through the old wood as if it weren’t there? Her stomach churned along with her thoughts, a stew of frustration. She hated feeling helpless like this.
Travis slipped his arm from around her shoulder and leaned forward. “Listen,” he hissed.
Something—or someone—was moving through the underbrush and not bothering to disguise the sound of his approach. Travis put his eye to a gap between the logs, and she found a gap to peer through also. At first, she saw nothing. Then she detected a shaking in the trees. The blond young man emerged, rifle at the ready.
“Come out with your hands up and we won’t shoot,” he shouted, and her blood turned to ice.
Travis gripped her wrist, whether in reassurance or restraint, she couldn’t tell.
“We know you’re here,” the young man shouted. “You won’t get away.” But he had turned his back to them, aiming his words at the general surroundings. She exchanged a glance of relief with Travis. Blondie hadn’t seen their hiding place—not yet.
The older man emerged from the woods to the west, his face flushed, his breath coming in pants. “Did you find them?” he gasped.
