“Well, what are you waiting for, Mal?” Doc asked. “Go! Blow off some steam.”
“And be bombarded by snowballs?” Unless...she snuck out back and around the side of the house. Gathering snow as she went and packing it into a tight ball, Mal peeked around the corner of the cabin.
Those cheaters already had snowballs in hand and a pile at their feet, ready and waiting for her to step out the door. But before Nash had a chance to spot her in his periphery, Mal took aim and smacked him on the side of the head. He yelped. Ben laughed and hit him from his other side.
They took turns rushing and retreating and then ganging up on one another until they were all laughing and winded. Mal got the worst of it, being without jacket or gloves. “Time-out!” she called after one particular brutal assault of snowballs.
She stopped long enough to go inside and grab a jacket. By the time she returned, a light snow had started to fall. Mal stood on the porch to admire the view. Ben and Nash had called a truce in order to start building a snowman. They were working together rolling a big ball around the yard and came to a halt at the foot of the stairs.
Mal went to work on the head while Nash and Ben rolled the midsection. Nash lifted the middle to the base and Mal put the head on top. Then they all stood back to admire their snowman. Nash volunteered his hat and Ben added his mittens to the arm branches that Nash had snapped off a bush. The best they could do for eyes were rocks from the garden path after much debate about the size and color of the stones.
Ben decided he’d had enough of Crusty the Snowman—made from hard-packed snow and rough around the edges—and would rather throw snowballs again. But Mal was tired of snowballs. Besides, it was late. At least ten o’clock now and they had a long day ahead of them tomorrow.
As two more balls came straight for her head, Mal decided to put an end to it by rushing Nash. She tackled him to the ground, taking out the whole pile of snowballs in that one swift move. She sat back on her heels, straddling him and gloating. Her mistake was in attempting to make him eat a face full of snow.
He rolled her beneath him. Now he had her pinned.
Scrunching her eyes and mouth shut, Mal turned her head away, totally expecting the same face full of snow in retaliation. She felt his ice-cold glove brush the side of her face and looked up to find him staring down at her. His lips inches from hers and inching closer, he looked as if he was going to kiss her.
Mal rolled over on top, but he rolled her beneath him again.
This time there was no mistaking his intent when Ben chose that moment to dump a pile of snow on both of them. Laughing, they turned toward the boy. And in that instant they both must have seen the laser-red dot between the snowman’s eyes.
Ben was standing on the other side of that snowman.
“Ben,” Mal screamed.
Nash rolled them into Ben and covered them both as the snowman’s head exploded. In the time it took for Mal’s heart to slam into her chest, Nash had his handgun out and had fired two return shots in the general direction of the sniper.
The sniper had used a silencer, but Doc came running to the front door at the sound of return fire. He fired off a couple more rounds from behind the open door.
“See anything?” Nash called to him.
“Nothing,” Doc acknowledged.
“He’s lost the element of surprise,” Nash said to her. “We don’t want to give him time to regroup. When I say go, we’ll cover you while you and Ben keep low and run for the snowmobile. Take it and go. Do not stop until you reach the old mining town.”
She wanted to argue with him. “What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you. Now go!”
Nash emptied his clip while she and Ben ran toward the garage. Doc continued to fire off several more rounds. She flung the door wide and swung her leg over the first machine she came across. She tucked Ben in front of her. “Hold on,” she said as they slipped from mud to snow.
* * *
DOC PROVIDED COVER while Nash ducked back inside the cabin.
“What do you need me to do?” Doc asked. “I’ve already called Rainey for backup.”
Nash tossed the old man the keys to the Tahoe and then scrambled to reload his weapon. “Get to the old mining ghost town over the ridge. Find Mal and Ben. She’ll want this....” He handed off Mal’s SIG and then tucked his Glock to his back. “I’ll meet you there.”
“And you?” Doc asked as they divvied up the rest of the weapons.
“I’m going to hunt this guy down. Find out what he knows.”
They left the cabin and scrambled to the barn. “Sure there’s only one shooter?” Doc asked as he opened the door to the Tahoe.
Nash kick-started the snowmobile. “No, but I am sure we’re about to have a hell of a lot more company.”
He slammed his night-vision goggles down. Nash waited for Doc to drive out of the barn and then he took off in the direction the shots had been coming from. Unless he missed his guess, the guy had taken off as soon as he lost the element of surprise and they started firing back. There’d been no exchange after that first round had been fired off. He probably had a night scope on his rifle, but he’d fired from close range, so it probably wasn’t a long-range sniper weapon.
At best Nash was dealing with an ill-equipped amateur. But this amateur had to work for somebody—somebody definitely on the wrong side of the law.
If the police or military had come in hot, first of all, they wouldn’t have sent one ill-equipped amateur, but it would have been an easy takedown. He, Mal and Ben had been out in the open. Exposed, vulnerable...
For a moment he saw Mal’s softly parted lips and that look in her eyes as he’d been about to kiss her. There was no denying to himself that he wanted her. He wouldn’t let her down, not the way he’d let Cara down. But there was just no future for them.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
MAL TORE THROUGH the snow-covered terrain on the Ski-Doo using her natural night vision—at fifty or sixty miles an hour, it was too easy to override the headlights and there’d be no time to stop in the two hundred feet of light anyway.
Plus, by using her natural sight and the moonlight to guide her, she had a better chance of staying out of the sights of any gunman that might be following them. She’d also have a better chance at seeing a drop-off or a fallen tree in her path.
She pulled Ben tighter. His small hand gripped the steering bars in front of hers. He’d given up his mittens to the snowman, so she’d given him hers. Her grip had gone numb, but that was as much from white-knuckling the handlebars as the snow and cold.
She’d snagged both helmets, which in addition to providing safety in case of a collision, also gave them some sense of protection against flying bullets. Except, of course, the high-powered, armor-piercing kind, but she tried not to think about that as they sped along. Though she couldn’t help wishing she at least had her handgun.
She trusted Nash wouldn’t have sent her and Ben into the night if the danger were greater than what they were fleeing from. He had their backs. She just had to keep going. She knew she was headed in the general direction of the ghost town, but she’d only been there once. Nothing looked familiar, especially in the dark.
Slowing the snowmobile only after they hit the deer trail, she had no choice but to turn on the headlight. The narrow path was filled with sharp turns and trees that appeared out of nowhere. Pine needles daring to get too close. The rumble of the snowmobile engine seemed overloud bouncing back at her from the eerie silence of the aspen grove that surrounded them.
Her imagination ran wild as they went through the snow.
When she came to a fork in the path and would have gone right, Ben pointed left. He’d been this way with Nash more times than she had, so she veered left, hoping he’d inherited his father’s sense of direction and n
ot his mother’s.
Just as she was beginning to think they’d taken a wrong turn, the trees thinned and opened up to reveal the small mining town, now a ghost town built into the side of the mountain.
* * *
NASH FOUND THE amateur sniper in a snowdrift alongside the road with a bullet to his head. Caucasian male. Mid-twenties. Crew cut. Prison tats across his knuckles spelled out FREEDOM. He wore a faded green camo jacket and overalls.
Could be military, ex-military or some pseudomilitary faction. Nash had plenty of run-ins with hate groups while undercover. But they weren’t likely the ones hunting him down in order to kill him—at least not at the moment.
The dominos in the fifty-city raid of sex and drug traffickers he’d taken down all had connections to the al-Ayman terrorist network and the man he was about to testify against, Mullah Kahn. And this guy did not fit the profile.
Definitely not a professional. Fresh tire tracks in the muddy snow indicated a getaway car. So this guy’s partner or partners had shot him and then left him. Maybe al-Ayman was hiring out its dirty work to locals—that would be one explanation. But something didn’t sit right and it all came back to that FBI agent shooting his partner and then shooting at them...Nash and Ben.
Nash riffled the dead man’s pockets, looking for some clue as to his identity, or more important, some clue as to his employer’s identity, but came up empty-handed. That’s when his ears perked to the sound of three-hundred-horsepower engines. At least three or four snowmobiles were headed straight for him.
Nash hopped back on his Ski-Doo just as three snowmobiles crested the hill at fifty miles an hour. The drivers were dressed all in black from helmet to boots. Nash circled back toward the cabin and headed into the open terrain of a backcountry bowl.
He would lead his pursuers away from the ghost town. Away from Mal and Ben.
They weren’t exactly shooting at him, probably because it was hard to aim at a moving target while driving a speeding snowmobile, but they sure as hell weren’t trying to flag him down for some friendly riding competition, either. Could be they wanted to take him alive—or maybe not. That became clear when the lead driver pulled alongside and tried to use his superior high-performance machine to steer Nash into a tree.
Nash barely missed the tree. He came out on the other side, kicking until he unseated the other driver, who went tumbling through the snow. The other two drivers throttled forward to flank him on either side. He throttled back and tried to outmaneuver them rather than outdistance them. But they had him at every turn. He was so engrossed in losing them that he almost didn’t see the sheer drop-off ahead.
He didn’t have time to think, let alone gauge the stopping distance needed for the snowmobile. He dove off into the snow as his machine took flight over the cliff. Pursuer number two used his handbrake to slow his machine down.
But it was too late. Nash watched the man’s slow-motion slide off the cliff.
Pursuer number three had plenty of stopping room and a gun pointed at Nash before he’d even regained his feet. Nash slowly stood and raised his hands.
And then with two deft moves Nash knocked the man’s gun hand with his left forearm, while at the same time his right forearm connected underneath the helmet at the guy’s throat. The man’s head snapped back and he dropped the gun, but he immediately came back fighting. They matched each other blow for blow and block for block.
Nash got in a couple of good shots, but then his opponent came back strong with a roundhouse kick to Nash’s injured side. He knew instantly that blood soaked his shirt. Several times he thought he was going to pass out, but he protected his injured side and kept fighting.
“Enough,” a familiar voice said.
Nash felt the cold barrel at the back of his head. “Thought I already got rid of you once, Bari. Still doing your father’s dirty work, I see?”
Somewhere in the back of Nash’s brain, it registered that the driver he’d knocked from his snowmobile had caught up with them. And that driver was someone he knew.
Nash raised his hands and driver three got in one last sucker punch. The guy’s fist connected with his side and Nash doubled over.
He would have come up fighting, but Bari coldcocked him with the butt end of his own rifle. And then his world went black.
* * *
“HE SHOULD BE here by now.” Mal turned to look at Doc.
They’d parked behind the old stable yard but had taken shelter inside the old saloon. Though it was just as cold inside as out. It was the only building in which the second floor was still intact.
The buildings had long ago been stripped to the bare walls, so the only place to sit was on the stairs or on the bar. Mal was too nervous to do anything but pace the hardwood floors.
At least she had her gun now. And they had the rifles that Doc had brought with him. So far they were alone, but that’s also what worried her.
“He’ll be here.” Doc had eased his old bones down on one of the bottom steps. Ben was burning off his own energy by making a game of skipping up and down the stairs.
All they could do was wait for Nash. Because he would get there. Mal had no doubt.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NASH WOKE UP back in the cabin, duct-taped to a chair. Or rather, his legs were duct-taped to the chair legs while his hands were duct-taped behind his back and possibly to one of the back slats. Either way, he could rip through his restraints in seconds, but it would be loud and he’d have to come up fighting.
He needed to know what he was up against first. Or find something in his back pocket that would allow him to rip through the tape with a little more stealth.
Bari had removed his helmet and stood before Nash with his grotesquely disfigured face. Left lid drooping. Left side of his mouth in a permanent scowl.
A payback from Sari.
“I thought I killed you once already,” Nash taunted him.
Bari snarled at him. “Where is she?”
“I have no idea where your sister is,” Nash lied.
Well, that explained why he was still alive. Sari was to testify along with him. Although her knowledge of Kahn’s terrorism activities was limited, it might be enough to convict her old man and her brother after he was hunted down.
If Nash had to die, at least he’d die knowing justice had been served.
“I could cut you into little pieces.” Bari was using his knife to clean underneath his fingernails. He’d probably seen some bad guy do it in a movie and thought it looked intimidating. “But you know how squeamish I am. My friend here—” he nodded over his shoulder to the driver of the third snowmobile “—is not so squeamish.”
“I know you’re a weasel. So I’m not surprised you’d have someone else do your dirty work.” Bari had at least a half dozen armed men in and around the place. Nash had been sizing them up as they came and went.
“An eye for an eye, maybe.” Bari used the knife to point to his drooping lid.
“You shouldn’t have threatened my wife—your sister—with acid.”
“Do not degrade my family by calling my sister your wife! I never would have married her to a Jew.” Bari spat in Nash’s face.
Nash turned the other cheek. And then turned cold eyes back to Bari.
“Naveed/Nash, you duplicitous infidel. I still love you like a brother.” Bari patted Nash’s battered face and then made a big production of wiping his own spittle on his black snow pants. “Why must you insist on suffering at the hands of my colleague?” Bari leaned in closer. “My colleague whose brother you sent over a cliff. Besides—” Bari shot snowmobile rider number three a dark look and then spoke loud enough for him to hear “—we both know he was an idiot for not braking sooner. What my colleague doesn’t believe but that I know for a fact is that we could inflict unimaginable pain, hack you into a
million little pieces and you still would not talk. Am I not right?”
Bari stood there with his arms thrown wide as if he were asking the rhetorical question of the universe.
Nash was beginning to wonder if this speech had a point or if Bari just liked hearing himself talk. He must love the fact that with his father and brother in jail, he was left in charge. A mistake on Nash’s part for not ensuring that he’d killed the man.
“So let us put an end to our differences. You are going to tell me where my sister is in exchange for a quick and painless death.”
“Bring it on, Bari. You had it right the first time.”
Bari turned to his colleague. “What did I tell you?” He turned back to Nash. “See, this I knew. Which is why I’m not going to hurt you, my brother—brother-in-law. But I will hurt what is left of your family.”
Nash felt a cold sweat coming on.
“They are over in that old mining town on the hillside, right? The one that looks like an old Western movie set. There are what, seven?” He verified with his henchman. “Seven buildings rigged with explosives. Imagine finding someone had done all the groundwork for me. All I had to do was construct a detonator.”
Bari waggled his cell phone in front of Nash’s face.
That cold sweat turned into a trickle of fear unlike Nash had ever known. “You son of a bitch.”
“Leave my mother out of this and tell me what I want to hear.”
“I don’t know where your sister is.” Nash ground out the words.
“I hope you’re feeling lucky.” Bari’s thumb hovered over the keypad. “Pick a building.”
“I’m not going to pick a building.”
“Then I will. What about the church? You’re Jewish. I’m Muslim. What’s one less Christian house of worship to either of us?” His thumb continued to hover. “I can hear those wheels turning inside your head. Odds are seven to one I’m wrong. Maybe you know where they are. Maybe I do not. You think if I blow up the wrong building, then they’re safe because they will run out into the street.”
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