Sleepwalker

by Karen Robards

  “Yes.” Mick picked up her gun, tucked it into her coat pocket, and took another glance out the gun slot at the snowmobile. It had now progressed to the point where the riders would have to look over their shoulders to see them leaving the shelter. At the thought of what she and Jason intended to do once they were on the ground, Mick’s heart pounded. But iffy as the chance of success seemed, it still offered more hope than anything else she could think of.

  “They’ve got their backs to us,” she told him, rising tension giving birth to butterflies in her stomach.

  “Then let’s do this.”

  Scooping up the sleeping bag, he dropped it out of their way and bent over the trapdoor to grasp the handle. Glancing reflexively at the discarded sleeping bag as it puddled into a pile in the far corner, she was afflicted with another fleeting memory of the sizzling encounter they had so unexpectedly shared. A squeak announced the opening of the trapdoor. She turned back toward it almost thankfully. Jason was standing beside the now-open-to-the-elements rectangle, watching her with an inscrutable expression she wasn’t quite sure how to interpret.

  “What?” Already thinking about how tricky it was probably going to be to descend those icy rungs, she moved to stand beside him and look down at what turned out to be nothing more than a sliver of trunk and the snowy ground beneath the tree. Then she glanced back at him and couldn’t help noticing, just in passing, that he was looking tall and capable and, despite the mishmash of his clothes, seriously handsome.

  “I just want you to know”—he reached out to cup the back of her neck as he spoke—“you’re the sexiest cop I ever kissed.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, and never mind that her idiotic heart beat faster at his touch.

  “Kissed a lot of cops, have you?” she asked tartly.

  He grinned, shook his head and kissed her.

  The kiss was quick, hard and tantalizing. It took Mick by surprise: she didn’t even have time to close her eyes.

  It also served as something of a revelation, she thought as he let her go, grabbed the suitcase—of course!—and swung down through the trapdoor to disappear from sight without another word.

  Because, in just those few seconds when their lips had connected, her body had superheated. Her bones had melted, her blood had turned to steam, and fire had shot through her veins.

  Now she knew: the electricity that sizzled between them was real, and rare. It was physical chemistry ramped up to the nth degree, and just as potent in the cold gray light of this grim January morning, when bad things were going down and fear was making her heart pound and her pulse race, as it had been from practically their first touch. And it was as dazzling as it was unwelcome.

  How could she possibly be getting a serious case of the hots for a thief?

  “Mick.”

  That hiss from below galvanized her. Quickly she dropped to her knees and edged out of the trapdoor onto the rungs. Her sock mittens were still too wet to do any good; wearing them would just make her fingers turn into popsicles that much faster, she knew, so she discarded them as soon as she pulled them out of her pocket and discovered their state. Unfortunately, that meant she was left to grasp the icy metal with her bare hands. Gritting her teeth, ignoring the freezing burn that bit into her palms and the backs of her fingers, she swung herself down. At the same time she sought for and found a visual on the snowmobile. Rolling down the gravel road toward the lake, it was far enough away now that she could see its taillights flaring red through the brightening dawn. The snowmobilers still faced forward, oblivious to her and Jason’s presence, although all one of the riders had to do was glance over his shoulder to spot them. Trying to hurry while being as silent as possible, she hung on to each icy rung with grim determination. The smell of the snowy forest made her think of Pine-Sol. The bite of the wind nipped at her cheeks. Her boots slipped more than once, but she made it without falling, dropping into what was now almost a foot of snow with a wince because of the crunch as her boots sank through the crust. Then she realized that the sound of the snowmobile would almost certainly have kept the men on it from hearing anything else short of a scream or a gunshot, and she let out a breath of relief.

  Jason stood waiting for her nearby, and something about his expression and stance made her think that he’d positioned himself there with the intention of catching her if she should have fallen. Her mouth twisted wryly—he didn’t know her well enough to know she would never have screwed up like that in a pinch. He didn’t know her at all, just like she didn’t know him. He might have a chivalrous streak, but if he wanted to play knight in shining armor, he definitely had the wrong chick. She was no maiden in distress. She was strong and competent and armed, way more than capable of taking care of herself. And he was definitely no knight. With his black hair tousled from sleep and stubble darkening his cheeks and chin, he looked as thoroughly disreputable as he absolutely was, which was something she needed to keep firmly in mind. He also looked sexy as hell.

  See, that was the kicker.

  “Let’s move.” His voice was low. Without waiting for her to reply, he turned and set off with long strides through the snow, while she followed, trudging through drifts, casting a series of hunted glances through the trees at the snowmobile, which, she was thankful to see, was still moving away from them. For the plan to work, certain things had to be set in place before the vehicle turned around, which it would undoubtedly do when it reached the lake.

  “Did you have to bring the suitcase? Seriously?” she whispered to him with some asperity when she caught up.

  He slanted a look down at her. The beginnings of a smile touched his mouth, while a decided twinkle brightened his eyes. Which were blue, she discovered, the deep blue of a street cop’s uniform, and realized that it was the first time she’d actually looked at them in enough light to notice.

  “Hell, yeah. It’s all about the benjamins, baby.”

  Something to remember, she told herself sternly as he shifted the suitcase to the hand away from her.

  A moment later he grabbed her by the hand and stopped walking.

  “Here?” she asked, looking around.

  “As good a place as any,” he answered, and dropped the suitcase in the snow to swing her around so that her back came up flush against the nearest tree.

  Their eyes met. Tension shimmered in the air between them. As he leaned close, Mick discovered that she was faintly breathless. Her heart beat way too fast. Her pulse raced. She felt the warmth of his breath on her lips.

  Then he handcuffed her to the tree.

  Chapter

  15

  “Help! Over here!” Mick screamed as she made a series of frantic bobbing movements designed to attract attention. Screaming felt wrong in this hushed, isolated environment. She hated even thinking about the possibility that there might be any other searchers near enough to hear. But it was a chance she had to take. Having made that decision, she embraced it with vigor, jumping up and down and yelling like her life depended on it, which, in a backward kind of way, it did.

  “Help! Somebody help!”

  Good God, what if they didn’t spot her? Having reached the lake, the snowmobile had already turned around and was heading back the way it had come, clearly oblivious to her efforts to attract attention. It was moving slowly. She thought, from what she could see of the movements of the riders, that they were conducting a visual sweep of the forest. But so far, they had neither seen nor heard her.

  “Over here, you idiots! Over here!” Screeching loudly enough to hurt her throat, her breath forming white puffs in the cold winter air, Mick jumped up and down like a demented bunny. The tree at her back felt hard against her spine even through the layers of her clothing. With her eyes fixed on the snowmobile, she knew the moment they saw her. Both the driver and the passenger sat up straighter, and the vehicle spurted briefly forward, as if the driver’s hand had accidentally tightened on the throttle. Then the snowmobile turned her way and hit the gas. Roaring with powe
r, the big white craft caught air as it left the gravel road. Rocketing toward her, it was distinguishable from the acres of snow surrounding it only by its black handlebars and the bright red stripes on its sides. She still didn’t recognize the men on board: their full ski masks and bulky winter clothes made it impossible. But they were coming, and coming fast, and that was the important thing.

  “Hurry,” she called to them as the snowmobile fishtailed to a halt in front of the stand of trees surrounding her with a spray of fine snow. Facing her would-be rescuers, her arms pulled backward around the slender aspen, her freezing hands clasped, her wrists cuffed together, she presented the perfect picture of the discarded hostage. She hoped.

  “Mick!” The guy on the back jumped off as the driver cut the engine. Despite the full-face black ski mask and the bulky blue ski jacket and pants he wore, she recognized him instantly: Bobby Tobe. There was no mistaking the voice, or his stoop-shouldered, thin build. She felt a little frisson of relief—no matter what kind of danger her brain told her she was in, Tobe just didn’t feel like a threat—that was immediately canceled out by the near certainty that she didn’t know the other guy.

  “Are you okay?” Tobe asked, leaping toward her through drifts that in places reached halfway to his knees. As she had hoped, Tobe hadn’t bothered to draw his weapon.

  “I’m so cold,” Mick moaned, improvising wildly. Her mission was to make them think that, having been kidnapped, then abandoned, left cruelly handcuffed to a tree in the middle of an icy, snowy forest where she could have died, she was traumatized and terrified. A victim. Not, by the wildest stretch of anyone’s imagination, a threat.

  “Where’s the guy?” The driver cut the engine, got off and tromped with more deliberation toward her. No weapon in sight with him, either, she was glad to see. He was taller and much broader than Tobe, older seeming, and definitely more formidable looking in a one-piece navy ski suit that emphasized his bulk. His manner left her in almost no doubt that of the two of them, it was he who was calling the shots. His ski mask kept her from getting any kind of real look at him, but she didn’t recognize his voice, either. Uncle Nicco, or Iacono, or whoever was running the show now, had obviously supplemented the usual security crew with a contingent of new guys.

  Which couldn’t be good.

  “Get me out of here,” she begged. For good measure, she let her teeth chatter, which wasn’t a stretch, and her knees sag, which was. Acting wasn’t her strong suit, and she was so tense from nerves that her muscles felt rigid. But still she managed to droop as if there hadn’t been an ounce of fight left in her.

  “We been out here all night looking for you!” Close enough to her now so that she could have reached out and touched him if she could have reached out, Tobe registered the dire details of her situation at last. She saw it happen, saw his eyes widen, and then he rushed around behind the tree to take a look. “Sheez Louise, you’re handcuffed!” Like somehow she hadn’t realized. “You got the key?”

  Well, actually, she did. But no way was she going to admit to it.

  “No. You have to get me loose.”

  Having circled the tree, Tobe popped back into view on her other side and addressed his companion. “She’s handcuffed to the tree. What are we gonna do?”

  “You have to figure something out,” Mick urged him.

  “Where ’s the guy?” The driver stopped maybe three feet in front of her, arms folding over his chest, boots planted aggressively apart. Mick couldn’t see more of his expression than his eyes, but they looked hard and determined. Rescuing her was not his number one objective, she could tell. He was after Jason and the money. Remembering the pictures, she shivered for real. Imagining this guy committing a murder wasn’t any kind of a stretch.

  Damn nightmare. Why didn’t I just go back to bed?

  “First we gotta—” Gesturing toward Mick, Tobe strode urgently toward the other man only to be interrupted—and about time, too, in Mick’s opinion.

  “Get your hands up!” Weapon in hand, Jason stepped out from the shelter of the shaggy hemlock he’d been hiding behind, issuing the command in a voice that was fierce enough to make even Mick, who’d been expecting him, jump. About forty feet to her left, the hemlock offered the only cover in the immediate area. She’d been sweating bullets lest one of her would-be rescuers should notice Jason’s footprints leading to it before Tobe and his colleague had gotten into a position where Jason could cover them both with one gun. At his appearance, Tobe and the driver spun toward him, both going for the pistols that were obviously concealed somewhere in their clothes. Mick got just a glimpse of the alarm in Tobe’s eyes before Jason snapped, “Don’t try it! Get ’em up now !” and came stalking toward them, Sig up and in firing position.

  Two pairs of gloved hands reached skyward, Tobe’s instantly, the driver’s more slowly and reluctantly.

  “Make one wrong move and I’ll kill you,” Jason promised.

  Having objected strenuously to being truly handcuffed to a tree in case she either needed to (a) fight or (b) flee, Mick freed her right wrist from the handcuff, which had not actually been fastened at all. Shrugging her cramped shoulders, drawing her Glock, she stepped away from the tree.

  “Throw down your weapons,” she ordered, knowing as she did it that there was no going back from this. Unless she killed them, which she wasn’t about to do unless they left her with absolutely no other choice, Tobe and his buddy would tell this tale far and wide. As far as Uncle Nicco, his family and crew were concerned, she had just put herself firmly in the enemy camp. Mick thought briefly of Angie, knowing her friend well enough to know that she would never be forgiven for what Angela would see as a betrayal of her family. The knowledge made her sick to her stomach, but there was simply nothing else she could do.

  “Mick,” Tobe gasped. His eyes went round as quarters beneath the mask.

  “You first, Tobe. Take your gun out and throw it down in the snow in front of me. Really, really carefully. You know I’ll shoot you if I have to.” She shot a hard look at the driver. “And you, don’t move.”

  “Oh, man, Mick. The boss is gonna be so pissed,” Tobe moaned. Tobe had that right, she knew. Just thinking about how angry Uncle Nicco was going to be when he found out what she had done made her sweat. She didn’t dare take her eyes off their prisoners long enough to scan their surroundings for approaching enemies. But every sense she had remained on high alert. If another search party should come along now …

  “Do it !” Feeling like she was about to jump out of her skin with anxiety added extra bite to her voice.

  “This is gonna turn out so bad. Why would you even do this? I’m gonna catch so much shit.”

  Turning a deaf ear to Tobe’s whining, Mick kept him covered as he extracted a pistol from his pocket and, at a gesture from her, tossed it in the snow. Meanwhile Jason disarmed the driver, catching a lot less flack in the process.

  Moving to recover Tobe’s weapon, grimacing as she plucked it from the snow, she kept her eyes and gun fixed on both men, who, once again on Jason’s orders, had their hands in the air. All around them, the forest was coming alive with sound: the slurp of snow falling from trees, the whisper of the wind, the creaking of branches. But nothing at all that would hint of a human presence outside their little circle, for which Mick was thankful.

  “Give me the handcuffs.” Voice low, Jason moved to stand beside her. Like her, he was careful to keep their prisoners covered at all times.

  “One of the bracelets is locked around my wrist.” The tart reminder was delivered under her breath as Mick passed him her gun to hold while she unlocked the aforementioned bracelet. That done, she handed over the handcuffs, and he gave her back her gun.

  Jason immediately advanced on the driver.

  “Turn around and hug that tree behind you,” Jason directed him in a hard voice.

  “You don’t know who you’re messing with,” the driver growled, but after a gesture from Jason’s gun he did as he was told,
putting his arms around the oak’s sturdy trunk. Seconds later he had been securely handcuffed to the tree. With him neutralized, Mick felt better. No matter how hard she tried, she just couldn’t consider Tobe dangerous.

  “Sweet dreams,” Jason said. Plucking the ski mask off the driver—the guy was midthirties, blond, with a buzz cut and blunt features, and was, as Mick had been sure, a stranger to her—Jason clouted him hard over the head with his gun. The thunk of metal bouncing off skull made Mick wince. The driver grunted, lapsing into instant unconsciousness. Legs folding, he slid slowly down the tree.

  Mick shot Jason a frowning look, which he was too busy rifling through the driver’s pockets to see. This part of the plan she hadn’t been apprised of, and that didn’t make her too happy. He was winging it, which made her nervous. The thing was, though, she could see Jason’s point. Gags were iffy things at best—and what did they have to make gags out of anyway? Given that, how else would they have been able to keep these two from yelling their heads off the first chance they got?

  “You’re not gonna hit me like that, are you?” Tobe sounded frightened. His eyes slid from Mick to Jason back to Mick again. “Mick …?”

  “Beats shooting you, don’t you think?” Jason responded cheerfully, having finished checking out the driver’s pockets and motioning Tobe, who was stuttering, “I-I guess it d-does,” toward another tree. “Come on over here. Hurry up. And give me your belt while you’re at it.”

  “What? My belt? Why …?”

  “Do what he says,” Mick told him, reinforcing her words with a gesture from her gun, feeling bad for Tobe but not daring to show any hint of softness lest it embolden him to do something stupid. Sidling up to Jason, who was following Tobe toward the tree, she added under her breath, “You might want to speed this up.”

  “Got it covered,” Jason whispered back.

  She shot him a skeptical look.

  “Ah, Mick, come on,” Tobe pleaded, handing his belt over. In response to Jason’s imperative gesture, however, Tobe reluctantly moved to stand with his back against another of the slender oaks. Impressing Mick with his ingenuity, Jason quickly hooked Tobe’s belt to his own. He then wrapped the elongated leather strap around both Tobe’s thin form and the tree, using it to pin his arms to his sides and him in general to the trunk.