Manhunt in the Wild West. Jessica Andersen
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and the plan had been born.
Frankly, he was somewhat surprised they hadn’t tried to kill him yet, now that they were outside the prison walls. That they hadn’t tried to off him indicated that they still had some use for him, but he had a feeling that amnesty wouldn’t last long if he started arguing orders.
She’s acceptable collateral damage, he told himself, and went back for the woman.
Damned if she didn’t stir a little and curl into him when he picked her up and held her against his chest. Surprised, he looked down.
She had dark, chestnut-highlighted hair and faint freckles visible through a fading summer tan. Her cheeks and lips were full, her chin softly rounded, and her nose turned up slightly at the end, giving her an almost childlike, vulnerable air. But there was nothing childlike about the curves that pressed against him, and there was sure as hell nothing juvenile about the unexpected surge of lust that slammed into him when she shifted and turned her face into his neck, so her hair tickled the edge of his ear and feathered across the sensitive skin beneath his jaw.
“Move your ass,” Lee snapped from inside the van.
Muhammad finished disabling the vehicle’s state-issued GPS locator and got in the driver’s seat, then gunned the engine to warn Fax that he was running out of time.
Sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice a few to save the rest, Fax reminded himself. Still, his stomach twisted in a sick ball as he slung the woman through the side door of the vehicle, so she landed near her dead friend, whose corpse was stacked with two of the guards’ bodies. The other two bodies were still on the gurneys, one of which was jammed in at an angle where Lee had shoved it in after their escape plan had blown up in their faces.
Even without Rickey Charles, they might’ve bluffed their way through the body transfer and talked the woman into signing off without confirming the identities of the corpses, but once Lee killed the morgue attendant, even that slim chance had disappeared.
Their escape could get real messy real quick, Fax knew. Problem was, he needed them to get free so the terrorists would reach out to their contacts and plan their next move.
Which meant the woman’s life—and his own, for that matter—were expendable in the grand scheme of things.
Hating the necessity more than he would’ve expected to, he jumped into the van and rolled the side door closed just as Muhammad hit the gas and the van peeled away from the ME’s office.
The four men braced to hear the alarm raised any second, to see pursuit behind them. But there was no alarm, no pursuit as al-Jihad’s second in command navigated the city streets of Bear Claw.
Fax noted that they were heading roughly northward, back in the direction of the prison rather than away, but he didn’t ask why, didn’t even let on that he’d noticed or even cared. He simply filed the information, and hoped like hell he’d have a chance to get it to Jane before al-Jihad and the others decided he’d outlived his usefulness.
Maybe five miles outside the city limits, well down a deserted road that wound through the state forest, Muhammad pulled off into a small parking lot that served a trailhead leading into the wilderness.
Al-Jihad, who was still riding shotgun, turned to Lee and Fax, and said in his dead, inflectionless voice, “Kill the woman and dump all of the bodies in the canyon. We won’t need them where we’re going.”
Which is where? Fax wanted to ask but didn’t because he knew the game too well. The more he followed orders without question, the longer he would live, and the more information he’d gain about the structure of al-Jihad’s network inside the U.S.
So instead of asking the questions he wanted answered, he nodded and rolled open the side door, then waited while Lee climbed out. When the other man turned back, Fax shoved one of the body bags at him.
Lee caught the dead guard and nearly went down. “Watch it!” he snapped, glaring at Fax.
“Sorry,” Fax said with little remorse, having already figured out that al-Jihad and Muhammad liked the fact that he didn’t let the lemming push him around. Jerking his chin in the direction of the trailhead, he said, “I’ll be right behind you.”
Lee muttered something under his breath, but slung the body bag over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and headed off into the woods, struggling only slightly under his burden.
Hyperaware of the scrutiny he was receiving from the two men in the front of the van, Fax reached down for the woman, his mind spinning as he desperately tried to figure out a way to keep her alive while protecting his cover.
He didn’t know her name, but somehow she’d become the symbol of all the warm, civilized things he’d dreamed of from the confines of his cell, all the beauty and laughter he lived in the darkness to protect.
Jane might be his boss and sometimes lover, but the pretty medical examiner was a real person, one who belonged in the sunlight, not the shadows.
Hefting her over his shoulder, he turned and headed into the forest in Lee’s wake. Once he was out of earshot, he said under his breath, “I know you’re awake. Don’t do anything stupid and you might live to see our backs.”
CHELSEA STIFFENED at the sound of his voice, but was too terrified to process his words. The only reason she wasn’t already screaming was because she was too damn scared to breathe. That, and she was pretty sure there was nobody nearby to hear except the escaped convicts, who would probably enjoy her terror. So she kept the panic inside, save for the tears that leaked from beneath her screwed-shut eyelids.
She couldn’t believe she’d been kidnapped, couldn’t believe that the blue-eyed guard—or rather, the blue-eyed escaped convict—she’d been ogling on the loading dock was carrying her into the state forest, acting on a terrorist’s orders to kill her and dump her in Bear Claw Canyon.
Things like that just didn’t happen to small-scale people like her.
She would’ve thought it was all a dream, a nightmare, except that the sensations were too real: her head pounded from the blow that’d knocked her unconscious, her tears were cool on her cheeks, and the man’s shoulder dug into her belly as he carried her along the path. Opening her eyes, she saw that what she’d figured were signs of recent muscle gain were actually places where his uniform didn’t fit; the material gapped at the small of his back, where he’d tucked the guard’s weapon into his belt.
WWJBD? She knew she should struggle, she should try to escape, but when? Now or after they reached their destination? What were the chances she could grab that gun and turn the tables?
“Don’t,” he warned in a low voice.
Before she could respond, or act, or do anything, really, she heard another man’s voice from up ahead, saying, “I found a cave. Dump her and put a bullet in her. I’ll go get another load.”
The man’s voice was casual, careless, like he was talking about things rather than people. But to him she and the others were things, she realized. They were Americans. The enemy. Yet the speaker was blond, and his voice carried a trace of a Boston accent. She would’ve passed him on the street and never once thought to wonder about him.
Vaguely, she remembered a snippet of newscast that’d said one of the three escapees, Lee Mawadi, was a homegrown terrorist who’d hooked up with al-Jihad for the Santa Bombings.
Back then, sitting safe in her living room, terrorism had been an abstract concept, something she saw on TV and exclaimed over while secretly thinking that such things would never happen to her. She hadn’t even been in Colorado during the Santa Bombings; she’d been finishing a nice, safe rotation in a private practice outside Chicago, reveling in the early stages of a relationship she’d thought was The One, but had turned out to be another Not Quite.
Now, though, she was all alone, with terror her only companion.
“Sounds good to me,” the man carrying her said, his voice