Manhunt in the Wild West. Jessica Andersen

the cave he’d spoken of.

      The blue-eyed man—Fairfax—flipped her off his shoulder without warning, then caught her before she could slam to the ground. She kept her eyes shut as he lowered her so she was half propped up against a rock wall. She could feel him crouch over her, leaning close and blocking any hope of escape.

      “I need you to stop playing dead and listen very carefully,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “I think I can get you out of this, but you’re going to have to trust me.”

      She opened her eyes at that, and nearly screamed when she saw that he’d put her down right next to one of the body bags. Worse, it was open, revealing one of the dead guards, shirtless, his eyes open and staring in death.

      She held in the scream, but plastered herself against the rock wall, her quick, panicked breaths rattling in her lungs.

      “Look at me.” The blue-eyed man touched her chin and turned her head toward him. “Don’t scream and don’t move. Lee is going to be back in a minute, so we’ve got to work fast.” He paused as though gauging her. “I need to get something out of my shoe. Can I trust you not to try to run?”

      She nodded quickly, though she didn’t mean it. The second an opportunity presented, she was so out of there.

      He gave her another, longer look. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.” As though he’d read her mind, he stayed between her and the mouth of the cave, which was little more than a crevice in the rock, probably part of the canyon that’d been pushed up and over ground level by a long-ago glacier or earth shift, or maybe even one of the recent landslides.

      Fairfax worked at his right shoe for a moment and came up with a small ampoule of pale yellow liquid. He crowded close to her, leaving no room for retreat or escape. “This is going to knock you out and depress your vitals so far that it’ll look like you’re dead, but you won’t be. You’ll come around in twelve hours or so, and we’ll be long gone.”

      Then, before she could react, before she could protest, or scream, or any of the other things she knew she damn well ought to do, he’d broken off the tip of the ampoule, jammed the needle-point end into her upper arm, and squeezed the yellow liquid into her.

      Pain flared at the injection site, hard and hot.

      She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out. She struggled to stand up and run, but her legs wouldn’t obey. Her muscles turned to gelatin and she started sliding sideways, and this time Fairfax didn’t catch her or break her fall.

      She heard him stand, heard a weapon’s action being racked in preparation for firing. Then there was a single gunshot.

      Then nothing.

      

      FAX KNEW HE didn’t have much time, if any. He went to his knees beside the body bag containing the dead guard, whom he’d just shot. Pressing his hand against the wound, he got as much cool blood as he could from the dead man, and slathered it across the unconscious woman’s face, concentrating on the hair above her temple.

      When he heard footsteps at the entrance to the cave, he readjusted the body bag and wiped off his hands on part of the woman’s coat, then tucked the stained section beneath her before he stood.

      Feigning nonchalance, he put the safety on his gun and stuck the weapon in his waistband before he turned toward Lee, hoping like hell the lemming wouldn’t notice that the blood on the woman wasn’t exactly fresh.

      Only the newcomer wasn’t Lee. It was al-Jihad himself.

      The terrorist leader stood silhouetted at the cave mouth, a lean, dark figure whose presence was significantly larger than his physical self.

      A shiver tried to crawl down the back of Fax’s neck but he held it off, determined to brazen out the situation and keep himself in the killer’s good graces. Gesturing casually toward the woman, he said, “She’s all set. Want me to go help Lee with the other guards?”

      Al-Jihad moved past him without a word, gliding almost silently, seeming incorporeal, like the demon he was. Crouching down beside the woman’s motionless, blood-spattered body, he touched her cheek, then her throat, checking for a pulse.

      Fax forced himself not to tense up, reminded himself to breathe, to act like the cold, jaded killer Abby’s betrayal had made him into. Only the thing was, something had changed inside him. He’d been playing the role of convict for so long it’d become second nature to hold the persona within the prison, but he found he was in danger of slipping now that they were outside those too-familiar walls.

      Hell, face it; he’d already slipped. There was no rational reason for him to jeopardize his position by faking the woman’s murder. The ampoule of the death-mimicking meds he’d tucked into a false, X-ray-safe compartment inside one of his not-quite-prison-issue shoes was supposed to be a safety net, a way for him to fake his own death if the need arose. Similarly, the GPS homing device he’d activated and placed in her coat pocket was supposed to be used only if he thought he was in imminent danger of being killed, and wanted to make sure Jane could find his body.

      Sure, he’d also planted a message on the woman, information he needed to get to Jane. But he could’ve gotten the info to her in other ways, ones that wouldn’t have used up so much of his dwindling bag of tricks.

      So why had he gone all out to save a woman whose name he knew only because he’d palmed the ID tag off her scrubs?

      Reaching into his pocket to touch the plastic tag, which read Chelsea Swan—a lovely name for a lovely woman—he thought he knew why he’d endangered himself and his mission for her. It was the freckles. Abby had had freckles like that, back when they’d been high-school sweethearts, before he’d done his stint in the military, blithely assuming things would stay the same while he was gone.

      Back when Abby’d had freckles, their biggest problems had been arguments over which movie to see, or which radio station to play as they’d tooled around town in his beat-up Wrangler with the soft top down. Eventually, though, she’d outgrown her freckles…and him.

      Chelsea Swan reminded him of those earlier times. Good times. Times that might as well have happened to someone else. But because they hadn’t, and because she looked like the sort of person who ought to have more good times ahead of her, he’d dabbed blood over her scalp and face to simulate a head wound, and he’d used his meds to make her body play dead.

      Question was, would it be enough to save her?

      Al-Jihad stood without a word, and gestured for Fax to return to the vehicle. “Go help Lee.”

      Fax stayed tense as he followed orders, fearing that al-Jihad was playing him, that the bastard knew what he’d done and was teasing him with the illusion of success. But the terrorist leader returned to the van a few minutes later, and on Fax’s next trip into the cave, he saw that Chelsea remained just as he’d left her.

      He and Lee finished unloading the other bodies, opening up each of the bags so the scent would attract scavengers, in hopes that they’d deface the bodies, further complicating forensic analysis when the dump site was eventually found. At least that was the terrorists’ theory. In reality, the homing beacon would have Jane’s people on-site in a few hours.

      Once the job was done, Fax hung back in the cave.

      “Move it,” Lee snapped when they both heard an impatient horn beep from the direction of the road. “The cops’ll get the roadblocks up soon.”

      “I’m right behind you,” Fax said. But as the other man hustled down the trail, Fax stayed put.

      Moving fast, he pulled the jacket and heavy sweatshirt off the dead morgue attendant, and packed them around Chelsea’s limp body. When that didn’t look like it’d be enough, he whispered, “Sorry,” and pulled the attendant’s still-warm corpse over her as added insulation. It was too cold and her vitals were too depressed for him to worry about niceties. If Jane took too long to respond, Chelsea could freeze to death.

      Hopefully, though,