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“I hope. Stay here.”
He slid back down the slope to grab his bag and cover their path. When he returned, he held out his hand to help her to her feet. She studied his hand with the same trepidation she might use if he’d stuck a gun in her face.
“It’s not much farther.” Distancewise, he spoke the truth. But he couldn’t promise that Chilton and his men would make this an easy trip.
Her shoulders lifted with a determined sigh and she reached up to fold her hand into his. The ground was flatter up here. Still rocky and dotted with trees, it provided less cover, but they could move more quickly. Vincent broke into a loping run, and Whitney kept pace behind him.
When they reached the road, they ducked behind a pile of decaying tree trunks that had burned and fallen to the ground after a recent forest fire. Whitney leaned back against the wood and seemed to concentrate on her breathing. Vincent pulled the two-way radio from his pack and called in.
“The hawk has his prey. Repeat. The hawk has his prey. Over.”
A blip of static answered, then cleared. “Understood. Hawk’s nest on the move. Out.”
“I don’t think I like being referred to as prey.” She breathed in quick, shallow breaths, but her voice sounded stronger. “Chilton’s a smart man, you know. That’s not much of a code for him to break.”
“He’ll have us in his line of sight any minute. He doesn’t have to eavesdrop.”
Preparing for that certainty, Vincent pulled out his gun, checked the clip and reloaded. In the light from the moon, he saw those quicksilver eyes of hers pool up like saucers.
But was it the gun, or Chilton’s imminent arrival that frightened her?
“Is there something I should do?” she whispered.
“Shh.”
“Of course. Always with the shush thing.”
Thankfully, she settled in beside him to do her brooding in silence and no doubt think of the next line of questions she wanted to ask. Vincent squeezed his eyes shut. Fatigue was starting to tell in the protest of his muscles as he knelt behind the cover of the trees. But his senses were working just fine. He fine-tuned his ears and listened for the crunch of footsteps in the underbrush.
He heard the order to spread out and widen the search first. Chilton hadn’t taken long to discover his ruse, and was closing in. Vincent opened his eyes to check his watch. Their ten-minute flight had taken twelve. “Where are you?” He breathed the urgent wish between clenched teeth.
Right on cue, the roar of a four-wheel-drive engine echoed through the rocks of the plateau. But Chilton heard it, too.
A black pickup topped the crest and bounced down the mining road toward their position.
“There he is.” Whitney popped up and pointed at the truck.
“Get down, dammit!” He palmed the top of her head and pushed her down to the ground just as the first bullets hit.
The rapid fire of semiautomatic weapons flashed like fireworks in the darkness. Vincent braced his elbow on the top rotting trunk, took aim and fired at each burst of light.
A spatter of bullets hit his position, splintering the wood and sending chunks of bark flying. Vincent ducked to the ground, pinning Whitney beneath. With his hand on her head, keeping her flat in the dirt, he rose again, pointed his gun and fired.
He hit his mark. The flash fire of one weapon sank to the ground and went out. But the bullets kept flying.
The truck engine gunned and picked up speed.
Two of the terrorists were close enough to make out their shapes as they dodged from cover to cover, spraying bullets in their direction.
The squeal of brakes behind him gave a small measure of reassurance. “Romeo! Get in!”
Vincent grabbed his bag, pulled Whitney up by the arm and pushed her toward the open door of the waiting truck.
“Go! Go! Go!” he ordered.
The driver stomped on the accelerator. Whitney had climbed in, headfirst. Vincent flattened his hand on her butt, pushed her across the seat and tossed his bag into the bed of the truck. The wheels spun on the gravel and dirt, giving him time to get his feet on the running board before the truck sped away. Clinging to the open door with his left hand, Vincent turned back and fired at their pursuers.
A spray of gunfire hit the truck. Bing. Bang. Thunk.
The truck lurched and Vincent fell inside. They’d hit the back window and shattered it. “Gun it, Carl!”
Whitney sat in the middle of the bench seat, brushing the broken glass from her shoulders.
“You hit?” he asked, keeping his eye on the side-view mirror, mentally calculating the distance before they’d be out of range of Chilton’s weapons.
“No.”
The truck continued to pick up speed.
“Romeo?”
Whitney’s fingers dug into his thigh.
“Romeo!”
“What?”
He pried her grip from his leg, then looked up to see why she’d cried his name.
Carl was slumped forward. A tiny hole leaked bright red blood from the back of his head.
He was dead.
Chapter Three
“What is it with you and dead bodies, anyway?” Whitney didn’t know which way to move. She was crunched in the cab of a truck between a killer and a corpse.
And the dead man was driving.
Vincent leaned across her and grabbed Carl by the shoulder. When he pulled him back, the body’s limp fingers released the steering wheel.
“His foot’s still on the accelerator. Grab the wheel.”
Grab the wheel?
She understood what he wanted her to do. She just wasn’t sure she had the desire to do it.
“Whitney.”
Fine. Nothing like an order in that crisp, low-pitched voice to make her kick it into gear. Her father had that same kind of voice. He never asked, either. He just expected her to do whatever he commanded.
She wedged her shoulder between Carl and the steering wheel and took hold. Vincent threw his considerable weight across her lap and reached beneath the dashboard. The engine whirred in protest and the truck immediately dropped speed.
“What are you doing?”
He grabbed her left ankle and placed it on the accelerator. “Drive.”
For a few awkward moments, she simply acted on instinct. She pressed down on the accelerator and tried to gauge the upcoming curve in the road from her vantage point. With Vincent pinning her legs, she couldn’t sit up any higher. And with Carl’s weight on her shoulder, she stooped beside the wheel, looking between the wheel and the top of the dash to guide them along the dark road.
When she entered the curve, the headlights picked up a stand of boulders that had claimed that particular spot for untold millennia. Whitney moved her foot to hit the brake and slow them down, but Vincent moved it back to the accelerator.
“Don’t stop.”
“But—”
“Drive.”
And then she realized what he was doing. He reached across her and opened the driver’s-side door. The ground rushed past at an alarming speed. “Oh my God. You can’t do that.”
But he already had. He pulled Carl’s legs from the floor of the truck and shoved them out the door. Then Vincent sat up, latched onto her arm to hold her in place and pushed Carl out from behind her.
The body hit the ground with a horrible thud. She couldn’t help but look in the rearview mirror to see his limp body roll to the side of the road. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Whitney!”
All at once his hands were on the wheel with hers. He cranked it a quarter turn to the left, jerking it from her grasp.
The rocks she’d seen from a distance rushed up in front of them with frightening speed. She stomped on the brake. Vincent turned the wheel.
But with gravel and speed they had few options.
Vincent wrapped his arms around her, turning so his body shielded hers from the impact. The truck spun out and slid madly through clumps of rocks and brush until it slammed with a deafening crunch into the rocks.
Vincent’s body lurched forward, then crushed her against the seat.
And then it was still.
Whitney slumped within the cocoon of Vincent’s body until she could hear something besides the pounding of her heart in her ears.
His weight on her chest didn’t stir. “Romeo?”
She flattened her palms at the front of his chest to push some space between them. She felt the reassuring tattoo of his heartbeat beneath her hand. But she needed to see his face. Find out if he was conscious or injured.
He was a bigger man than she realized. Solid muscle filled out his large frame. She took a deep breath, put her shoulders into it and managed to push him over into the seat next to her.
His eyes were closed.
An instant panic quickened her pulse again. “Romeo?” She touched her fingers to his parted lips. His regular breathing warmed her fingertips, but did little to reassure her. “Romeo?”
She climbed up on her knees in the seat to bring her up to eye level with him. She cupped his face between her hands and shook him gently. “Romeo? C’mon. Wake up.”
The rasp of his beard growth tickled her palms, sending inappropriate shivers of awareness straight up her arms. She might be reacting to his rough brand of charm, but she seemed to be having no effect on him.
For an instant she wondered if Dimitri Chilton had heard the crash. How far behind was he? Did he still pursue them? Her pulse quickened with renewed urgency.
Vincent Romeo was her only ticket off this mountain. The big brute had to be okay.
“Romeo.” She called his name right in his ear and gave him a light smack on the cheek. Nothing. She tapped him again. “Dammit, will you—”
Faster than the panic rising within her, his eyes popped open. He snatched her by the wrists and twisted her flat on her back in the seat with his larger body trapping her there.
Whitney’s breath whooshed out in a startled gasp. She stared helplessly up into eyes that were black. Black as coal and filled with deadly intent.
“Romeo?”
His eyes narrowed between sooty lashes. His gaze traced the shape of her face, lingered on her neck, then seemed to fix on the small jut of her breasts. To her horror, she felt the tips tighten into pebbled beads beneath the intensity of that look. Pinned beneath his crushing weight, she felt more exposed than she had been behind that rock with Rashid.
“Um—” She licked her parched lips. “Are you okay?”
His gaze darted back to her mouth, drawn to the movement there.
And then he blinked.
He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. The raspy groan in his throat told her the movement hurt. He released one of her wrists and touched the back of his skull. The succinct curse he chose revealed just how much it hurt.
“I took a blow to the head. Things were fuzzy for a minute there, but I’ll be all right.”
“Good. Because you’re hurting me.”
As quickly as he had pinned her to the seat, he released her and scooted to the far end of the truck’s cab. It was almost embarrassing to see how quickly he could move away from her. Whitney sat up much more slowly, nursing her wounded pride and massaging her sore wrists.
“Is that where I caught you?”
The ugly purple welts that encircled her wrists were visible, even in the moonlight. Vincent thought he’d done that to her? She found the energy to summon a rusty smile. “No.” He’d probably saved her life.
Her smile was eclipsed by the memory of Dimitri Chilton’s eyes, laughing at her expense. “It’s from the tape they used to tie me up. Chilton thought inflicting a little pain would keep me in line.”
Vincent said nothing, but she could feel the atmosphere in the truck change. He was past recovering from his knock on the head. Agent Romeo had returned. And the man who had made her body tingle with awareness, even in the face of danger, disappeared.
“Let’s get you home.” He tried to get out, but the truck frame had bent and the door was jammed.
Whitney obeyed his silent command and climbed out the open door on her side ahead of him. She couldn’t help peering up the road behind them, wondering if she could see Carl’s body. One man’s life sacrificed for her own.
The shock of the discovery hit her and robbed her of breath. The Black Order wasn’t just out to hurt her or her family. True terrorists, with a cause she couldn’t begin to understand, they possessed a ruthless determination to get what they wanted.
Heaven help anyone who stood in their way.
A feeling of absolute shame retched in her stomach, turning it sour.
She’d felt shame before.
The shame of accusations she couldn’t defend herself against.
The shame of public scrutiny damning her reputation.
The shame of hearing her parents’ teary voices filled with disappointment as they boarded her on a plane for Montana.
But none of that could match the knowledge of one man trading his life for hers.
“Did Carl have any family?” she asked.
Vincent had crawled beneath the truck to inspect the damage. When he came out, he stood and dusted his hands off on his jeans. He was giving her that crazy look again, the look that said he wondered if she had any sense. “I didn’t know him,” he answered. “He was just a voice on the radio. A contact.”
“Don’t you care that he’s dead?”
He climbed into the bed of the damaged truck and picked up his duffel bag. He tossed it over the side and climbed back down. “He was doing his job. Like I’m doing mine.”
He opened the bag and pulled out a folded piece of paper and a heavy-duty flashlight. When he knelt down and unfolded it, she could see it was a computer-generated map.
She hugged her arms around herself, feeling a chill from within far colder than the crisp mountain air. “That’s a callous attitude.”
He absorbed her accusation with no reaction other than to stand. “Dimitri Chilton has a pretty callous attitude toward life and death. He had to have heard the crash. If he has reinforcements to call, he’s doing it right now. If not, I expect him to show up here any minute.”
Whitney shivered. “If you’re trying to scare me, the job’s already been taken.” Forget trying to wheedle an emotion out of Vincent Romeo. The man had ice in his veins. The sooner she cooperated, the sooner she could get back to Jewel and Daniel and people who might actually care. “Let’s just get in the truck and drive out of here.”
“Can’t. The axle’s shot.” He folded up the map and stuffed it back in the bag.
“Great.”
“Let’s go.” He slung the bag over his shoulder and shined the light up into the woods to the east.
“What’s your plan now?”
“Call in. You’re safe for now. We’ll set up a second rendezvous for tomorrow.”
She spread her arms wide and asked him to look at the trees and rocks and nothingness surrounding them. “Where are we going to spend the night?”
“If your friend Court Brody knows this mountain the way I hope he does, there should be an old prospector’s cabin about two miles away on the other side of that ridge. You up for the hike?”
“Do I have any choice?”
He was already walking. “No.”
“You like those one-word sentences, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Yes?” she repeated under her breath. Was that a joke? Or merely proof of a stated fact?
Whitney shook her head and pushed her weary body into step behind him. She still had another two miles to try to figure out Vincent Romeo.
VINCENT ENTERED the cabin first and scanned for signs of unwanted tenants and wildlife. The temperature was dropping rapidly outside as night deepened into midnight. The damn-fool woman traipsing along behind him didn’t have a coat. She wasn’t even wearing a heavy sweater. What kind of simpleton went horseback riding in the mountains without wearing more rugged clothes?
Probably back in Martha’s Vineyard, she had a servant to run along behind with a jacket or shawl when things got cold.
Vincent immediately regretted the unkind thought. She hadn’t asked to be kidnapped. And Dimitri Chilton didn’t care whether she suffered or not. From Whitney’s brief explanation in the truck, the bastard probably got a kick out of seeing her suffer.
She hadn’t complained about the grueling hike, the perilous rock climb, the flying bullets, the wrecked truck. Not once.
The only thing she’d criticized was his own behavior. Yeah. He hated to see a fellow agent go down. He hated the call he had to make to report his death. He hated the thought that anyone had to die. But those were the risks. Job one was keeping Whitney MacNair safe. Carl Howard would have understood.
Why couldn’t she?
When he heard her boots on the boards that passed for a front porch, he turned around. “It looks sound enough. None of the windows are broken. There’s no furniture, but we can make do on the floor.”
She pushed her way past him and inspected the ten-by-twelve-foot hideaway for herself. “As long as the roof doesn’t leak and I can warm myself up, I’ll be happy.”
Vincent closed the door behind him and dropped his bag to the floor. She had already crossed to the cobwebby stone fireplace and dropped to her knees to brush out the crumbling remains of broken plaster and charred wood.
“We can’t build a fire.”
The shock on her face when she looked up at him reminded him of the Christmas Eve when he snuck downstairs and discovered his father was filling in for Santa Claus. “No fire?”
“Chilton could spot the smoke.”
He pulled a black T-shirt and a spare set of jeans out of his bag. “We can black out the windows, though, and leave a lantern going through the night.”
She had no response to that. She stayed where she was, looking small and defenseless.
Vincent made no false promises, so he had nothing to say to cheer her up. He busied himself hanging his clothes over the windows, setting up the lantern, and pulling two granola bars and a water bottle out of his bag.
“Here. Before you fall asleep.” She hadn’t moved from in front of the empty fireplace. But when she took the offering of food and drink, she uncurled her legs and rose to her feet.
“Thanks.”
When she turned his way toward the light, he swore. Five dark bruises, fitting the span of a man’s rough hand, dotted her cheekbones. Against her pale, peaches-and-cream skin, the marks stood out like a crude attempt at finger painting.
She cowered back a step, startled by his curse. “What’s wrong?”
He remembered her wrists. She’d mentioned pain there twice before. He reached for her fingers, water bottle and all, and pulled her wrist up into the light. The duct tape had left angry welts the size of thick yarn, curling like bracelets around her bruised wrist. “Son of a bitch.”
“So you said.” She pulled her hand away, as if embarrassed by the marks.
“Get something in your stomach,” he ordered. “I’m giving you some aspirin and we’ll doctor those up.”
Her immediate protests fell on deaf ears. He spread a tarp on the floor and set out aspirin, alcohol swabs and antibiotic ointment. He could sense her fatigue because the arguments didn’t last for long. When he told her to have a seat, she crossed her legs like a ballerina and folded herself, pretzel-style, to sit on the tarp.
Vincent brought the lantern close to illuminate his work. He bathed her face with water and dabbed the bruises with alcohol. She had such fine pale skin. Clear and smooth, like cream to the eye. And down the bridge of her nose, spilling onto her cheeks, a sprinkling of dusty freckles reflected the reddish highlights in her hair.
He pushed aside the red-gold locks that fell in waves past the top of her shoulders and tended the thick bruise across her neck. He recognized that kind of marking. She’d been choked to unconsciousness. Applying that kind of pressure a few inches higher or lower would have fractured her larynx or crushed her sternum. Either wound, left unattended, could have killed her.
Damn Chilton. Vincent didn’t know Whitney beyond the dossier her father had sent. But Jewel McMurty thought the world of this woman. Daniel Austin and his men were chomping at the bit to get her back. And though she’d already complicated the hell out of his well-laid plans, she’d proved herself to be more than a pretty face or a rich bank account. She didn’t deserve this kind of abuse.
No one did.
It was Vincent’s job to stop the bastards who preyed on innocent victims. Melissa Stamos, his high-school sweetheart, couldn’t see that calling. She’d bashed his heart and his pride on the altar of Saint Stephen’s Church in front of family and friends, condemning him for putting his life on the line for people he didn’t know.
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