John didn’t like the dizziness swooping down on him every few seconds. He didn’t think he’d lost that much blood, but his head felt fuzzy, his thoughts disoriented. He was having a difficult time concentrating. “He’s going to try to take out me first, because I’m a bigger threat.” He looked at her, felt a wave of longing and regret tangle in his gut. “We need to split up,” he said.
“No—”
“You make a run for the snowmobile. I’ll keep him off you—”
“John, I’m not leaving you. Even if it’s the smart thing to do I can’t leave you in this condition, for God’s sake.”
“Beth, this isn’t the time for you to play hero. Think about your baby.”
She flinched, set her hand against her abdomen in an unconscious gesture that told him she knew he was right. The pain etched into her face nearly undid him, but John resisted the urge to reach for her. He would say or do whatever it took to get her to safety—even if he had to manipulate her. “If we split up, and you make it to the snowmobile, there’s a chance we can get out of this.”
“All right,” she said, but she didn’t look happy about it.
“Good girl.” He reached for the cell phone, groaning when an ice-pick stab of pain shot from his thigh all the way down to his toes. “Take this.” He handed her the phone.
“I don’t want to leave you without communication—”
“I’m going to run for the ravine. Chances are, he’ll come after me first. If you stick to the line of trees along the trail, he won’t be able to sight you on the riflescope. Once you reach the snowmobile, get moving and don’t stop.”
“John, you’re in pain. You’re bleeding. How can you—”
“Hey, I jump out of helicopters for a living, remember?”
She made a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “You’ll say or do anything to keep me safe.” Her gazed locked with his. “That’s what kind of man you are.”
Shoving back emotions that would do nothing but distract him, he pressed the phone into her hand. “When you get a safe distance away, try the speed dial again. Call the sheriff’s office. Then call RMSAR. Tell them we’re on Elk Ridge.”
Tears welled in her eyes as she shoved the phone into her pocket. “I don’t want to leave you like this.”
“It’s the only way, Red. Come on. I’m counting on you—”
His words were cut short when she leaned forward and kissed him hard on the mouth. Despite the pain in his thigh and the blood loss playing with his concentration, John kissed her back, responding not only physically, but emotionally. For an instant the pain and fear melted away, and it was just the two of them, mouth to mouth, heart to heart, soul to soul.
Beth pulled away first, her eyes fierce and wet. “I love you,” she said. “I don’t care if you want to hear it or not.”
John stared at her, wanting to say the words so badly his chest hurt. But he couldn’t do it. The ensuing burst of emotion jolted him all the way to his soul. He’d wanted to send her off by saying something cocky. Wish her luck. Tell her to be careful. But for the first time since the day he’d left Philly, tears burned behind his eyes. He blinked rapidly to clear them, and an instant later, she was gone.
Too late, hotshot.
He sat there for several agonizing seconds, watched her disappear down the trail, the ache in his chest so powerful he couldn’t move.
I love you.
Ruthlessly he forced her words from his mind. He couldn’t think of her in those terms now. Couldn’t bear the thought of something happening to her. Losing her. God, this was making him crazy.
Getting to his feet, he looked up at the ridge overhead, the line of trees, the jagged rocks. Hell or high water, he had to find a way to distract Montgomery, keep him off Beth long enough for her to reach the snowmobile.
He looked down at the crimson snow, felt the warmth of fresh blood run down his calf. Damn, he was in a bad way. The pain was yielding to numbness. That was good. The bleeding had slowed, but it hadn’t stopped. He figured he had another twenty minutes or so before he passed out.
Tying the scarf tightly around his thigh, he leaned against the cold rock and waited for his head to clear. Once he started for the ravine, he would be in plain sight if Montgomery wanted to take a shot at him. He had to be ready. He had to move fast.
He figured he was as ready as he would ever be.
Stepping out from behind the rock, he raised his arms and waved. “Come on, Montgomery! Here I am! Come get me, you cowardly son of a bitch!”
The retort of a rifle answered. Gritting his teeth against the pain, John broke into a lumbering run toward the ravine where he’d found Beth. Montgomery had taken the bait. John had bought Beth a few extra minutes to get away. Now all he had to do was come up with a plan to stay alive.
* * *
Beth ran as she had never run before. Arms outstretched, animal sounds tearing from her throat, terror egging her on. She tried not to think about John up on the ridge, alone, bleeding and in pain. She tried not to think about his crazy plan, or that he just might be heroic enough to pull it off.
But she’d seen the amount of blood he’d lost and the glassy look in his eyes. She’d seen the way he’d had to grit his teeth against the pain just to get the phone out of his pocket. How was he going to sprint twenty-five yards, dodging bullets the entire way, when he barely had the strength to stand?
The only consolation was that he would have cover in the ravine. It was the very same ravine where she’d taken cover the night Richard had tried to kill her. If John made it into the ravine safely, there was no way Richard could get to him. What worried her was the twenty-five yards of open ground he had to cover to get there. He would be a sitting duck for a crazy man with a rifle.
She was midway down the path when the scream of an engine shattered the silence. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement, a flash of color. An instant later, a man on a snowmobile broke from the tree line and headed directly for her.
Richard.
Heart hammering, she picked up speed and changed direction. The engine behind her whined. So close she could smell the exhaust, hear the track shoes scrape against exposed rock. An instant later, the solid weight of a body crashed into her. She saw the dark silhouette of his rifle. A glimpse of sandy hair. Then strong arms wrapped around her, knocking her off balance. Beth screamed, felt her legs tangle as he took her down in a full body tackle. She rolled with the momentum, but he rolled with her, overwhelming her, smothering her. And she knew with a dreadful sense of inevitability that he was going to kill her if she didn’t think of something quick.
* * *
John dangled from the end of the rope, listening to the sudden, stark silence all around, a fresh sense of horror raging through him. Montgomery had done the unthinkable. When he’d realized he wasn’t going to be able to get at John, he’d turned the snowmobile around and gone after Beth.
John sweated profusely beneath his snowsuit. Once he’d reached the ravine, he uncoiled the length of safety rope at his waist and used it to rappel down. The rope had saved his life, but it wasn’t long enough, and now he was stuck halfway down. He needed to reach the gun Beth had dropped, then somehow get back up and reach her before Montgomery did.
Pain from the bullet wound echoed through his body with every beat of his heart. But the pain in his body was nothing compared to the fear exploding in his heart.
Beth was too kind, her heart too generous for her life to be wiped out at the hands of a violent man like Montgomery. The world was a better place with her in it. She filled his life with goodness. His heart with love. His soul with hope for tomorrow. All John could think of as he dangled from the rope was that he hadn’t had the guts to tell her he loved her. Lord knew he did. He loved her with all his heart and soul. Had since the moment he’d laid eyes on her at this very spot. But he’d been so caught up in his past, so determined to do the right thing, he’d let something precious slip away.
And now a
madman was going to kill her.
He couldn’t let that happen. Not to the woman he loved more than life itself. “Hang on, Red,” he said. “Hang on sweetheart. I’m coming for you.”
Gazing down at the rock and scrub twenty feet below, he studied the terrain. It was a long drop, but the scrub would break the fall for the most part. Hopefully he wouldn’t come out of this with a broken leg, to boot. Hopefully he’d be able to reach the ravine floor, get the gun and get back up before Montgomery hurt her.
Saying a silent prayer, he let go of the rope.
* * *
Beth fought him with every ounce of strength she possessed. She fought for the child growing inside her, for the kind and gentle man who’d risked his life to keep her safe. She fought because she didn’t want Richard Montgomery to win. Not this time.
But her strength was no match for his, and in seconds, he had her trapped beneath him, her arms pinned above her head. For several terrible moments, they stared at each other, their labored breaths spewing a white cloud of vapor into the frigid air between them.
“Don’t fight me, Beth. You can’t win,” he said.
“Let go of me!” When she looked into his cruel eyes, the full force of her terror ripped through her. She saw death in his eyes, knew his heart was cold and black enough to wipe out her life along with the life of his own unborn child.
Beth did the only thing she could and screamed.
“No one’s going to hear you up here,” he said when she finished. “Just like the last time. You remember, don’t you?”
“I don’t remember anything,” she lied. “I don’t know who you are.”
He clucked his tongue. “You’ve never been a very good liar, Beth. You’re still not.” Removing his glove, he touched her face gently with the backs of his fingers. “I can feel you trembling beneath me. I see the truth in your eyes. I can see how terrified you are. You know exactly who I am, don’t you?”
She turned her head, but he set his weight more squarely on top of her and continued caressing her cheek. “I didn’t want it to come to this.”
“Don’t take this any further,” she said.
“I know you’ll have a hard time believing this, but I really didn’t want to have to hurt you.”
“Then don’t. Let me go.”
“I can’t. Not after what you saw.” He swore viciously. “If only you hadn’t been in the warehouse that day. Looking for photographs of all the stupid things. But you always did have a penchant for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I don’t remember what I saw.”
“Angel, it’s not what you saw. It’s the person I was with who saw you.” Something cruel and unnerving glinted in his eyes. “Joseph Peretti isn’t the kind of man to tolerate a witness to a murder. Especially if the witness is a cop’s ex-wife.”
Joseph Peretti. The name terrified her. She’d seen it in the newspaper too many times to discount what he was capable of. Organized crime. Extortion. Murder for hire. “I didn’t see his face,” she whispered.
“I wish that mattered.” For a moment he looked regretful. “I really do.”
Beth’s heart pumped pure terror though her veins. The fear was so intense, she was dizzy with it. Oh Lord, where was John? What could she do now? She knew she had to fight, had to win this time. But how was she going to best a man who outweighed her by a hundred pounds?
“Peretti wanted to kill you himself that day in the warehouse,” he continued, “but I talked him out of it. I’m not sure why I brought you up here that night. I knew what I had to do. But I’ve always liked you, Beth. Even if I didn’t love you, I knew killing you wasn’t going to be easy.” He sighed heavily. “I didn’t want it to work out this way, but Peretti said he’d kill me if I didn’t get rid of you. I don’t want to die simply because you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Easing off of her, he rose, then, holding the rifle aside, offered his hand to help her up. For an instant she considered running, but knew he would catch her. Time was what she needed. Time to come up with a plan.
Struggling to stay calm, she took his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “You can tell him I’m dead. I’ll disappear—”
“I considered that. Until I saw you with that young stud of yours.” Something cold and dark played behind his eyes. “Seeing you with him…well, that changed everything.”
Jealousy, she thought, and dread billowed like a roiling thunderhead inside her. John. Her legs went weak. Oh, God, he was going to kill John, too. She couldn’t let that happen. Not John.
“I’ll bet you think you got yourself a real hero, don’t you? A man who makes his living saving Boy Scouts and little speckled pups. I’ll bet you think he’s the next best thing to a superhero, don’t you, angel?”
“I barely know him. We—”
“Don’t bother denying it. I saw you together. I saw him touch you. I saw the way you look at him. The way he looks at you.” The muscles in his jaw bunched. “You know what that does to a man, angel? To see another man put his hands all over his wife? That’s my child you’re carrying inside you. My seed that put it there. That doesn’t make any difference to you, does it?”
Nausea rose in her throat as the meaning of his words registered. “Let me go, Richard.”
His lips pulled back in a snarl. “A lowly cop isn’t good enough for you, is that it? I was never good enough, was I?”
“Stop it—”
“Let me tell you a secret about lover boy, angel. Your hero has a record. Assault. He couldn’t even make the police academy.” A cruel smile twisted his mouth. “You’ve got a habit of falling in love with losers, don’t you?”
“He’s nothing like you,” she said.
She knew an instant before he moved that he was going to strike her. The old fear coiled, but she didn’t shrink away. Instead she sidestepped, heard the whoosh of air as his fist missed her temple by less than an inch.
“Bitch.” Montgomery’s eyes went flat and dark as he started toward her. “I’m going to make you sorry you ever set eyes on him. Then I’m going to make him pay for touching you.”
Beth raised her hands, backed up in an effort to keep distance between them. “Stop it.”
“The divorce has only been final a few weeks. You couldn’t even wait for the ink to dry on the decree before you jumped in bed with another man, could you?” Lips curling, he drew back to strike her.
A gunshot shattered air.
“What the—” Montgomery spun.
Beth jolted, and looked up to see John level a pistol at Montgomery’s chest. “If you touch her, I’ll drop you,” he said.
Her heart staggered in her chest. Relief and joy and sudden fear for him rioted inside her. “John.”
“Are you all right?” he asked, never taking his eyes from Montgomery.
Unable to speak for the emotions coursing through her, she nodded.
“Step away from—”
Montgomery grabbed her so violently, she was nearly knocked off balance. She choked out a single cry as his viselike hand went around her arm and pulled her against him like a shield.
“What are you going to do now, lover boy?” Montgomery taunted. “I got what you want, don’t I?”
Beth knew immediately John was in no condition for a confrontation. He was still bleeding badly. Blood had soaked the denim all the way down to his boot. His face was nearly as pale as the snow. The gun trembled in his hand. But his eyes were as cold and dangerous as the pistol he clenched in his hand. “Let her go,” he said.
Beth knew that if they were going to get out of this mess alive, she was going to have to act quickly and decisively.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Montgomery’s grip tighten on the rifle. Her heart did a sickening roll when she saw the muzzle jerk, rising. John’s gaze zeroed in on the other man. “Don’t do anything stupid, Montgomery. I’ll put you down.”
“And risk hitting her?” He laughed. “I don’t think so
.”
Beth’s heart pounded like a drum against her ribs. Her hands were free. The rifle barrel was less than a foot away. She could picture herself reaching for it, wresting it from him, swinging it like a bat…
“Drop it, Montgomery, or I’ll tattoo your shins and you’ll never walk upright again,” John warned.
“That’s my revolver.” Montgomery’s mouth opened, fluttered. “How the hell—”
“She took your gun the night you tried to kill her.”
“I came back for it,” the other man said. “I searched—”
“You didn’t look in the ravine.” John’s jaw flexed. “The ravine she jumped into to get away from you.” He pulled back the hammer with his thumb. “Toss the rifle over here.”
“Screw you. You slept with my wife, you bastard.”
“Ex-wife,” John corrected. “And no other woman is ever going to have to worry about that temper of yours again. Now toss the rifle, or I’ll make sure you walk with a limp the rest of your lousy life.” Grimacing, favoring his leg, John moved forward but he stumbled and went down on one knee.
Beth knew that was her only chance. Pushing away from Montgomery with all her might, she grabbed for the rifle. Vaguely, she felt the cold steel of the muzzle against her palms. He yelled something obscene, and she saw the murderous light in his eyes when he turned to her.
But Beth had taken him by surprise. Yanking the rifle from his grasp, she staggered backward, then swung it like a bat as hard as she could. She heard the whoosh of air. Saw shock on Montgomery’s face. Then the sickening crack of the solid wood stock against his knee.
Montgomery fell forward, howling in pain. His murderous gaze landed on Beth. “You’re going to pay for that!”
Knowing he would make good on the threat, but unwilling to let him hurt her or her unborn child ever again, Beth stepped back, aimed the rifle at the ground next to his foot and pulled the trigger.
The force knocked her back a step. Montgomery scrambled to his feet, dancing away from where the bullet had hit the ground.
“Don’t test me!” she cried. “I’ll kill you.”
Fear permeated his eyes as he stumbled toward the snowmobile and slipped onto the seat. “I won’t let you get away with that,” he snarled as he started the engine. “I’ll get you. If it’s the last thing I do, I’ll make you pay.”
A Hero to Hold Page 22
