by Mallory Kane
“I don’t know them—” he repeated, but she cut him off with a gesture.
“But you know who they are, don’t you?” she snapped. “They have something to do with whatever you’ve been doing overseas. They followed you back here to Wyoming. Somehow, they knew they could get to you by kidnapping my baby.”
“Aimee, don’t—”
“They don’t care about William. They want you,” she whispered. “For all you know, my baby is dead.”
Chapter Five
Matt caught Aimee’s shoulders as she swayed. “Listen to me,” he said firmly.
She steadied herself by closing her fingers around the sleeves of his sweater.
“William is still alive. I know he is.” Dear God, he hoped she believed him. The reticence in his voice was painfully obvious to him.
She looked at him, her eyes filled with doubt and despair. Slowly, a little of the anguish faded from her expression. “Do you really think so?”
He forced his stiff lips to smile. “I know so. I swear, Aimee, I have no idea who these men are, but you saw the way the kidnapper grabbed the briefcase and ran. He couldn’t wait to get to the money.”
Dear God, he hoped his desperate explanation sounded plausible.
He took a deep breath. “But he’s going to find out that we outsmarted him. And now we’ve seen him. We can identify him. He can’t afford to let anything happen to William now.”
He did his best not to wince. He wasn’t sure if it was the tranquilizer circulating in his blood, or the desperation clouding his brain, but his reasoning had holes so big he could have driven the Hummer through them if it hadn’t burned up.
He prayed that Aimee wasn’t thinking rationally enough to dispute him. Right now what she needed was reassurance, not raw truth.
And she certainly didn’t need to know that he echoed her suspicions. He wasn’t sure who either of the men were, but he knew there was more going on than just the kidnapping of a baby for money.
He shook his head, trying to shake off the tranquilizer’s effect, and another snowflake slid inside the neck of his sweater.
He looked up at the sky. The clouds were dark, feeding the dropping temperature. Within an hour, the sun would go down, and then the mercury would plummet. They were running out of time.
He had to make a decision. Several, if he could remember what they were. A lungful of icy air helped to clear his head.
He glanced at his watch and then stared at the tangle of briar bushes where he’d last seen the terrorist who’d followed him from Mahjidastan. He had to check on him.
He knew the man was wounded. He’d heard him shriek when the kidnapper’s bullet had hit him. But after that the terrorist had fired a shot. Had that been the last brave effort of a dying man? Or a parting shot before he escaped to lick his wound? He had to find out.
Good. He rubbed his temples. At least he finally had come to a decision.
“Aimee, get over here and stay behind me. I need to check the area, in case Al Hamar is wounded or dead, and I don’t want to let you out of my sight.”
“Al Hamar?” Her eyes widened, then immediately narrowed. “You know his name? I thought you said you didn’t know either of them.”
He sighed and spread his hands. “I don’t. I got a text message from Deke, telling me—” He stopped. “It’s complicated, Aimee. I just need you to trust me.”
She shook her head slowly. “Do I have any choice?”
“No,” he said grimly. “Have you ever shot a pistol before?”
“No. Rifles, shotguns, bows and arrows. But not a pistol.” She sounded like she was about to cry.
“It’s okay. This is a Glock.” He pulled the small handgun out of his daypack and handed it to her. “It’s loaded, and it doesn’t have a safety, so it’s ready to shoot. You pull the trigger the same way you do a rifle. And you hold it in both hands, like the cops on TV. Okay?”
“I think so.”
“Trust me, you probably won’t have to use it. But I need to know—can you shoot a man if you have to?”
She lifted her chin. “Will it help me get William back? Then, yes, I can.”
“Okay. Stay directly behind me. By now the guy’s either dead or long gone. But there’s no way I’m leaving the area until I verify that he’s not waiting to ambush us.”
Aimee met his gaze. “I’m ready.”
The determination in her expression told him she meant it. To his surprise, something welled up in his chest until it almost cut off his breath. Her bravery and trust awed and scared him.
“Good,” he said roughly. “Let’s go.”
He held the MAC-10 at waist level, ready to shoot if necessary, as he moved cautiously toward the bushes. A couple of feet away, he held up his hand.
“Wait here. Remember what I told you in the car? Same goes here. If you hear anything—anything at all—hit the dirt. Copy?”
“Yes.”
He crouched and crept forward to the edge of the patch. Peering through the tangle of bare briar-studded vines didn’t work. They were too thick. He straightened, weapon at the ready, and moved close enough to see over the tops.
The briar bushes covered about four feet of ground. Beyond that he saw new scrapes and crushed twigs and leaves.
Glancing back at Aimee, he drew a circle in the air with his left hand. “I’m circling around,” he mouthed, then held up his palm. “You stay there.”
She nodded carefully.
He circled the bushes and bent to study the scrapes on the ground. In among the dried leaves and twigs, Matt saw a saucer-sized pool of blood. Beyond it, dark red drops drew a path toward the trees, like bread crumbs left by Hansel and Gretel.
“He’s wounded, but not fatally. He got away.” He followed the trail of blood toward the trees, dividing his attention between the ground and the wooded area ahead of him.
At the edge of the clearing, he stopped. For a few seconds, he stood still, listening for the sound of a motor, but all he heard was the wind rustling the bare branches. Carefully, he followed the blood trail for a few more steps, until the underbrush was too thick to penetrate, and the tree’s roots met and intertwined on the ground.
He backed away, staying in his own footsteps until he reached the stand of bushes. When he turned, he nearly ran into Aimee.
“When I tell you to stay put, you’ve got to stay put,” he said sternly, wishing he felt like smiling at her determined stance.
She stood, legs apart, holding the Glock like every cop on Law & Order, although her expression more closely resembled that of a terrified witness.
“The kidnapper definitely wounded him. He’s losing a good bit of blood. I don’t think he’ll try anything else. If he’s got any sense, and if he’s got a vehicle—which I’m sure he does—he’s probably headed down the mountain by now.”
“What do we do now?” she asked.
He frowned. “If I had the Hummer, I’d send you down to it. But without it we’re not going anywhere, except to find a way to get you out of this storm.”
Aimee shivered and hunched her shoulders against the wind. She was already feeling the cold, even in her down parka and balaclava.
His insulated underwear was keeping him warm. If he thought it would help her, he’d strip it off and give it to her. But the suit had been custom-fitted to his body for maximum insulation. It would be much too large for her, and therefore useless. Besides, if he were going to keep her safe, he had to keep himself warm and mobile.
Aimee still held the Glock. He put on his parka and lifted the daypack onto his shoulders. Then he took the Glock and stowed it in a side pocket.
After glancing up at the sky one more time, he pulled the satellite phone out of his pocket and looked at it. No signal.
Why was he not surprised?
He wasn’t sure if the problem was the cloud cover or the cold, but it didn’t matter. There would be no nighttime rescue tonight. He couldn’t contact Deke or anyone else until the storm passed
.
He put the phone away and pulled out the GPS locator. Again, no satellite reception. He’d have to rely on old-fashioned methods of finding his way. He’d memorized the maps, so he knew where they were going. He just hoped they could make it before the storm caught up to them in full force.
It was almost 1900 hours. Seven o’clock. They had, at best, thirty minutes of daylight left. A stab of apprehension pierced his chest. He’d mapped out three shelters within reasonable distance of the ransom drop point. The one closest to his primary rendezvous point was 4.8 miles, heading 41 degrees, almost directly east. The next closest to rendezvous was 4.5 miles at 18 degrees.
The third shelter would be the easiest walk. It was two miles away, but the direction was 30 degrees, which put it farthest from the primary rendezvous point.
He could picture the grid in his head. If he were alone, he’d head directly for the primary shelter. A hike of 4.8 miles would be less than an hour at his usual pace, even in snow.
But he figured Aimee could cover about three miles per hour at best, and that didn’t take the snowstorm into consideration. It would take her almost two hours. Which wouldn’t be so much of a problem if they’d gotten started an hour earlier.
But they hadn’t. And as he’d feared, the storm was moving in at least three hours ahead of predictions, just as he’d told Special Agent Schiff. So he had no choice but to head for the nearest shelter, even if it was farthest from the primary rendezvous point.
“How far do we have to go?” Aimee asked, as if she were reading his mind.
“With any luck we can make it in an hour or a little more,” he said, knowing he was being optimistic. The longer it took, the harder it would be. He could smell the snow in the air and he figured the wind was already up to twelve miles per hour. His prediction was that it would reach fifty miles per hour or more before the storm played out. And Matt didn’t want to be caught outside in it.
He sure as hell didn’t want Aimee exposed. Once they made it to the shelter, they could get a good night’s sleep and get an early start.
Plus, as soon as the storm moved out, he could contact Deke and arrange a new, closer rendezvous point. He could tell Deke to bring replacement gear and supplies, and pick up Aimee.
He shook his head. Getting Aimee to leave without her baby was going to be a trick. Surely two ex-Special Forces operatives could convince one small civilian female to get into a helicopter.
Matt’s brain fed him a life-sized picture of that.
“We’d better get going,” he said.
She looked up at him and a couple of snowflakes caught in her lashes. They looked like stars sparkling in her eyes. She blinked and scrunched up her nose, and desire lanced through his groin, surprising the hell out of him.
Damn. At least it chased the drowsy haze from his head.
AIMEE FLEXED her right shoulder and suppressed a groan. It was already sore, and she had a feeling it would be black-and-blue by morning. She’d landed on it when the kidnapper tossed her out of the Hummer.
Matt glanced up as if he’d heard her. When she met his gaze, he gave her a little nod and then quickly looked back down at the small, handheld electronic device he held.
His effort to be reassuring wasn’t very successful, though, mostly because he wasn’t the kind of guy who could hide his feelings.
Throughout high school, college and the six years of Bill and Aimee’s marriage, Bill and his three friends had been inseparable. They’d called themselves the Black Hills Brotherhood because of the near-death experience they’d shared as kids.
She knew all of them—Matt the best, because he’d been Bill’s best friend.
It was interesting how alike the four were—and how different. Deke Cunningham and Rook Castle would have had no trouble winning at poker. Even Bill had always had a pretty good poker face.
Matt, on the other hand, was as easy to read as a first-grade storybook. Like right now. His brows drew down in a V across his forehead as he looked at the tiny screen of his device and then up at the cloudy sky.
He was worried about them reaching shelter before the storm hit. She was, too. It was getting dark, and the wind was picking up.
She wasn’t sure why she’d asked about going back down the mountain. Maybe because it would have been nice to have a choice, even though she’d never leave without her child. Or maybe so she could understand exactly how bad things were, now that the Hummer had been destroyed.
They were on their own, with no transportation, a snowstorm on its way, and not one but two men who wanted to harm them. And her baby was still missing.
She figured she had a pretty good handle on how bad things were.
Per Matt’s instructions, she’d dressed for the trip as if they were going to picnic at the North Pole. Layers, layers and more layers, he’d told her.
Of course, she’d lived in Wyoming all her life, so she knew how quickly the weather could change in the mountains, especially this time of year. And she knew that the most important thing to remember was to keep one’s body core warm. So she had put on a tank top, silk long underwear, a cotton pullover, a wool sweater and her down jacket. She was set for any temperature.
Aimee’s fingers were beginning to tingle with cold. She pulled off a mitten and stuffed her hand inside the elastic sleeve that covered her other arm. The skin-to-skin contact warmed her fingers almost instantly. The chill seeped into the skin of her other wrist, but it would warm back up within seconds.
She pulled her mitten back on and then did the same thing with her other hand.
Meanwhile, Matt was still studying the weather.
“Is everything okay?” she asked.
He stuck the handheld device into a pocket of the small daypack he carried on his back, and then smiled at her. “Sure. We need to get a move on, though. As I told you, it’s going to take us an hour or so to get to the nearest shelter. And that storm is catching up to us.”
She clenched her fists inside the mittens, and bit her cheek in an effort to stop the tears that stung her eyelids.
She’d been congratulating herself for already figuring all that out. Hearing Matt say it, however, seemed to make their situation more dire, and less simple. It was one thing for her to wonder if she were overstating their predicament. It was quite another to hear Matt verify that things really were that bad.
“Remind me again how everything is going to be all right?” she begged.
Matt tugged off his glove with his teeth and took it in his other hand. He stepped closer to her and touched her cheek, then her chin, with his warm fingers.
“Hey,” he said, coaxing her chin upward so he could look into her eyes. “Pull your cap down. You look like you’re getting cold.”
“I’m a little chilly,” she admitted. “Matt? How sure are you that William is okay?”
A shadow of doubt flickered across his face as he curled his lips in a smile. “Very sure. I promise you, we’ll find him and he’ll be fine.”
As he spoke, the weight of worry that was squeezing her chest let up a little. It occurred to her that whatever he told her, she believed without reservation.
It was strange that his thoughtful answer coupled with the uncertainty that had briefly touched his features, made him more believable than Bill, who had often stared at her expressionlessly, rather than giving her a straight answer.
She watched him closely. Was he more trustworthy than her husband had been? Or was Matt, too, trying to protect her from the truth?
His teeth scraped lightly across his lower lip as he checked his pack and got ready to go.
Aimee arched her shoulder again.
He’d said it would take about an hour to get to the shelter. She hoped he was being realistic, although she was afraid he was overestimating how fast she could move.
FOR THE NEXT HALF HOUR or so, Aimee kept up with Matt better than he would have expected. Not so much better that he revised his estimate of how long it would take them to get to the shel
ter, but fast enough to keep his body producing heat. From the sound of Aimee’s breathing, she was keeping her heart rate up, too.
That was the good news. The bad news was that the storm was about to catch up to them. The wind was easterly, so it helped propel them forward, but the sun had gone down, the sky was cloudy and dark, and the air was heavy with moisture, making the wind bitingly cold.
They didn’t talk much, just trudged along doggedly. Most of their conversation consisted of Matt asking if she was all right and Aimee replying that she was.
Then it started to snow, and Aimee started slowing down—way down.
He figured they were at least another half hour from the shelter. The temperature had dropped by at least ten degrees, he was sure, and the wind was probably up to thirty miles per hour, enough to make Aimee stumble when it gusted.
He wrapped an arm around her waist and half supported her, pushing her to walk a little faster. “Come on, Aimee. We’re getting close. You’ve got to keep moving or you’re going to get sick.”
“I am a little chilly,” she said, just as she had every time he’d asked.
Only this time, her words were slurred.
He reached back to a pocket of his daypack and retrieved a windup flashlight. He gave it about a minute’s worth of winding. Then he shone it in her face.
“Wha—?” she said, her hand coming up to block the light.
“Stop for a second,” he said. “I just want to take a look at your face.”
“No. I’m fine.” She kept going, one foot in front of the other, shuffling along. “I wanna get there.”
“Aimee,” he said more loudly. “Stop.” He gripped her arm.
She tried to pull it out of his grasp, but it was a halfhearted effort. “No. Keep going,” she muttered.
He shone the flashlight in her face, and saw how pale she was, and how translucent and gray her lips looked. He aimed the light at her eyes. How did the prettiest, plumpest snowflakes always manage to get caught in her lashes? They drifted away as she blinked against the flashlight’s bright beam.
