What she got was body-slammed by a gangly German Shepherd. Suede came up laughing. “You want to play rough?” Smacking his rump playfully, she bucked to dislodge him from her lap. “Get off. You weigh a ton.”
But Gallo didn’t budge. His feet were spread and his head had lowered. His hackles were up, and a deep growl rumbled from his throat.
“What’s wrong, boy?” she asked, jockeying onto her elbows to see around his fuzzy body to the forest. God, please don’t let a bear or wolf be after us. For sure not a mountain lion.
Suede ran a hand over her face, now dripping with melted snow. “Oh crap,” hissed out of her. There he was. Standing in the shadows as if he thought she couldn’t see him. A man in black leathers. York’s right-hand man. Domingo Zapata.
She fisted Gallo’s mane to keep him from charging. Zapata would kill man or dog without compunction. “Time to go inside.”
Gallo didn’t move, but Zapata did.
*****
A red and silver helicopter banked to the left far ahead of Woody’s chopper. Could be anyone. A news channel. A private pilot. Julio Juarez. Domingo Zapata.
Hyper-vigilance sat heavy on Chance’s shoulder like a demon from hell. Every man-made thing in the sky was a tango and they were all going after Suede. The aftermath of past choices, two in particular, nagged at him that this could all go so, so wrong.
Once aboard the chopper, he’d doctored Pagan’s rump with a shot of Quik Clot and an antiseptic pressure bandage. The bullet still had to come out, but helicopters weren’t known to be optimum surgical sites. Baby Brother might be uncomfortable, but he’d live.
With every mile still to go, Chance’s blood pressure ramped higher. If Suede stayed indoors, she’d be fine. But the woman had cabin fever, and who could blame her if she stepped outside? With the house quiet and only Gallo for company, yeah. Chance blocked the thoughts of her taking his brainless dog for a walk. Into the forest. Alone.
“Can’t this son-of-a-bitch go any faster?” hissed out of him.
Woody nodded once, but his five-seater was no Eurocopter X3, the fastest helo on the market, and he’d already pushed the turbine-powered engine to its limit of one-forty miles-per-hour. Still not fast enough, but those were the breaks. A man made his choices and there Chance was, stuck with the knowledge that his split decision to save his brother might cost Suede her life.
“Stay inside,” he commanded her across the distance. God, please, stay inside where you’re safe.
Chance swallowed hard, his gloves forsaken and his fingernails digging into his palms as they passed over Western Washington and the northern leg of the Columbia River. From liftoff, Woody had set a straight flight. Spokane lay ahead to the northeast. Beyond that the Idaho panhandle and the northwestern most corner of Montana. Chance cursed the day. His parcel of land would be worthless without Suede Tennyson to share it with. Hell, the whole world would fit that category if anything happened to her. She was his heart, his soul, and every last one of his reasons to live.
Pagan’s heavy hand clamped Chance’s shoulder. “She’s smart. She’ll know what to do,” he called out over the engine noise.
“Yeah, but…” Chance let his fears go unspoken. Gallo. It all depended on a hardheaded dog that had yet to act like the watchdog he should be. The kicker was that Gallo would already be a decent guard dog if Chance had taken the time to train him, to build him into one of the finely-honed EOD dogs he’d worked with, flown with, and served with. But he hadn’t.
Grief over losing his mom and his men had weighed heavily on him then. Hell, he’d been buried in it. Stuck. His own injuries had played a role in his melancholy, but they hadn’t compared to losing so many of the people he loved. Despite all he’d done to get his head back in the game, there’d been days it was damned hard getting out of bed in the morning. Until Suede dropped into his life, then BOOM. He was alive again. He was himself.
“But shit, I’ve been sloppy,” he murmured, not caring who heard or who judged.
“I’m only going to say this once, Big Brother, because Mom’s listening, I know she is,” Pagan growled in Chance’s ear. “You ain’t been sloppy. You’ve been sad, so shut the fuck up about that shit. It’s hammer time. You’re going in hot and you’re getting your woman.”
Chance cast Pagan a spiked brow. “We’ve both been cussing a lot lately.”
Pagan’s eyes popped. “Shit, I’m sorry man, but I cuss when I’m hurt. Mom would too if she’d been shot in the ass.” He lifted his eyes heavenward. “Sorry, Mom, but I know you would.”
As usual, Pagan was right on the money. Chance let the past roll off his shoulders and focused on the job at hand. This wasn’t about ghosts and it wasn’t about losing. He didn’t intend to be late this time. Zapata, if he were smart enough, had better stay the hell away from Suede Tennyson.
Chapter Forty-Seven
Suede crab-walked backward, her gaze fixed on Zapata. Playing with Gallo had put her five, maybe six feet to the side of Chance’s front porch. Every inch to the steps had turned into a mile, but she didn’t dare turn her back and run for her life. Zapata would like that too much.
He had yet to take more than a step toward her, not that he didn’t frighten the hell out of her just by standing as still as he was. The inked symbols tattooed all over his face, neck, and bald head were scary enough. Sixes and snakes. Crosses and Spanish words she didn’t want to know the meanings of. Other symbols and ink-covered scars decorated the ugly face of one of the cruelest men she knew.
“Stay with me,” she urged Gallo, but as tense as he was, Suede doubted he’d listen much longer. He tilted forward, his nails dug into the snow as if coiled to spring. He whined. “Please don’t leave me,” she begged him. “We need to get inside together. Both of us. You and me. That’s the way it has to be.”
Zapata cocked his head. Suddenly, as if he’d teleported from the shadows into sunlight, he was out in the open, between her and the forest, standing taut like he’d just launched out of Hell. “Bitch,” hissed out of him, his name for her.
Suede Tennyson must’ve been difficult to pronounce, because he’d never called her by anything other than something derogatory to women. ‘Bitch’ was mild. He must be feeling generous. He usually used the ugly ‘c’ word.
She didn’t answer. Just kept creeping backward, tugging at the long hairs on Gallo’s belly to make him stay with her.
Zapata scanned the cabin behind her with the sharp black eyes of a stone-cold killer. As if he could scent her from where he stood, his nose wrinkled with its customary disgust. He loathed women, and she loathed him. The man was repulsive, like a two-headed snake that ate its young alive.
At last, her fingertips hit the lowest snow-covered step. Suede backpedalled as quickly as she could, but only got to the second step from the top before Zapata was at her feet. “You alone, heh?”
“Stop!” she shrieked. “Come any closer and I’ll detonate the minefield you’re standing on. I will! I swear I will!”
Where that bravado came from she had no clue, but the evidence was all around him. There had been a recent detonation. Some of it might be camouflaged beneath a few inches of snow, but all he had to do was look around to see the rest of it.
She knew where the red button was that could make it happen again. If she could get to it.
Gallo stood over her now, his fuzzy rump nearly in her face and his hackles spiked along his spine. He’d lowered his head even more, his ears flat against his skull, and his fangs bared.
Zapata’s head rotated downward and from left to right as he studied the scene and her. His nostrils flared. “I believe you had a minefield. I believe men died here. I can smell their blood,” he hissed, ignoring the posturing dog. He carried no weapon that she could see, but Zapata didn’t rely on guns. He preferred switchblades, knives, and blood. Lots of red, warm blood. “But you don’t know a fucking thing about killing a man.”
“L-look again. H-h-hundreds died here,” she lied, her
throat gone dry and her courage shrinking. The distance to the door seemed an eternity away.
Gallo inched toward him, outright challenging the monster in his territory.
Zapata grunted at the wary pup. With her heart jackhammering, Suede couldn’t believe he hadn’t already knifed Gallo and grabbed her. The coward in her demanded she turn and run. Only eight feet to the door. To safety. Once Gallo charges him, run. Leave Gallo behind. He’s just a dog!
But she wasn’t leaving her sweet boy, Gallo to face this spawn from hell alone. Chance’s dog didn’t deserve to die any more than she did. “I don’t want to kill you,” she had the nerve to tell the assassin at her feet. “But I will.”
That same level of disgust shadowed his expression like an evil mask. “Then why do I see tracks in the snow where you and your mutt played like little children, heh?” Extending one arm, he snapped his wrist, and the slimmest blade that he’d mot likely sharpened until his fingertips bled from testing it, appeared out of nowhere.
“Then go for it,” she shot back at him, her chin up. She was through sniveling to bullies. “Try me, Domingo. I owe you a bloody death. Let’s go together, shall we?”
His gaze narrowed until he peered at her through slits. “Look at you. On your back again.” The revulsion radiating from him was palpable. “You have no way to detonate anything.”
“I do, too. You just can’t see it. It’s... it’s under my gloves.”
Zapata snorted. “Liar. Where is he?”
“Who?” blurted out of her before she had time to think. But she’d been transfixed by the mercurial blackness in Zapata’s eyes. There was no light there. No sparkle or glimmer. There’d probably be no reflection in a mirror, either. He was that kind of dark. If Charles Manson was the epitome of evil, Zapata was the one who’d given him the map and taught him how to get there.
“York. Who else?”
Oh, him. It’d been a while since Lionel had crossed Suede’s mind. “He’s dead and I killed him,” she declared boldly.
Zapata tossed his chin at her, scoffing. “Lying bitch. If you’re so tough, show me his grave and maybe I’ll let you walk out of here.”
Fat chance in hell. Suede knew better. The second she turned her back on him, if she were dumb enough to do that, she’d be dead. “No. It’s done and…” If only I can jump to my feet... If only Gallo will follow me... If only I can slam the door shut before Zapata gets inside! God, give me strength. “… and you need to go while you still can.”
His face wrinkled from the arrow-like indentations alongside his beak-shaped nose to the waves of wrinkles creeping over his bald forehead. “Show me the fucking body!” he hissed, taking another step in her direction, “Now! I want to see it for myself.”
Scared for her life, Suede bolted to her feet and twisted, needing that doorknob in her hand Right. Damned. Now!
Just as her gloved hand hit the knob, Gallo roared to life. Snarling. Barking. Vicious. Zapata punched him. He yelped, but before he could attack, Zapata grabbed her jacket collar and yanked her off her feet. Suede flailed elbows and knees until the knick of the blade in her cheek forced her to cease moving.
“Call your mutt off or I butcher him first and I make you eat his heart,” Zapata rasped in her ear, his breath rank with the scent of cheap cigarettes and something that smelled dead.
“G-Gallo,” she whimpered, straining to catch sight of her pretty boy’s furry face. He still growled, but with her neck twisted like it was, she couldn’t see him. “Down. Umm, sit.” Please sit down, so you don’t end up dead, too.
The dog whined, but finally came into view. His ears twitched. Big brown eyes peered up at her, but he planted his butt and obeyed. He looked so worried. “G-good boy.”
“Now we go to the grave,” Zapata ordered, his arm around her neck as he dragged her backward. Down the steps she’d just crawled up. Back across the frozen landscape and over what was left of the snow angel baby. To the trees. Into the shadows she’d never return from.
“Oh-kay,” she whispered, her mind reeling at how to save herself and Chance’s dog. Cooperate. Comply. Wait for the right moment to strike. She’d heard those words somewhere recently, but her brain was alive with adrenaline, and the last of her logic had scattered to the wind. “I’ll show you where York is buried. Just don’t hurt my dog.”
“That mangy cur is not your dog. It belongs to the bastard Sinclair and his brothers,” Zapata snarled. “You think I’m stupid, that I don’t know who lives here? You think I don’t know you are alone? I am not dumb like El Jefe. I am not swayed by bitches in heat.”
“W-Who?”
“The boss, you dumb bitch.” He jerked her ruthlessly into the cover of fragrant evergreens. “You played him long enough, chica. Now you get what’s coming to you. I told him to get rid of you five years ago, but he was not so smart. He liked playing with you too much. Like a stupid cat with a stinkin’ mouse.”
Five years? You wanted me dead five years ago? That made no sense. Suede had only met York four years ago, Zapata even later. “Why me? What’d I ever do to you?”
That earned her a stranglehold, his cocked elbow a vise around her neck. “You made him weak! Now shut the fuck up and do what you’re told.”
Another jerk on her windpipe and she choked. “Air,” she wheezed. “I can’t breathe.”
Zapata laughed, twisting his other hand, the one holding the knife, yanking her head back and exposing her neck for the slice that was sure to come. “Is no worry to me if you live or not. Soon you need no more air. Am I dragging you in the right direction or is there something you want to tell me?”
Like I don’t have a clue where Chance buried York? “N-no,” she stuttered, slowly easing her fingertips between his solid bicep and forearm to make enough room to catch a breath. “You... you’re... we’re almost there.”
She rolled her eyes, desperate for a glimpse of Gallo. He followed, but damned if those big brown eyes and his floppy ears didn’t make him look as hopeless as she felt. Suede strained to catch any landmarks on this desperate trail of tears she was on. A rock. A crooked branch. Anything she could use to find her way back to the cabin.
But everything was green and white. Only the tracks in the snow could guide her home. She steeled her last nerve, determined not to cry. Zapata wanted nothing more than to break her and watch her fall apart. He’d mocked her in front of York and his men at every chance. Not going to happen today. I can be brave like Chance, even if you kill me.
Damned if Gallo didn’t pick that moment to take off running past Zapata and into the trees.
“Looks like your dog is smarter than you,” Zapata growled in her ear. “What you gonna do now that you’re alone, bitch?”
Maybe I will cry after all.
Chapter Forty-Eight
Woody took the chopper in low and silent, a mile from the cabin. High noon, straight up.
“Stay here,” Chance ordered Pagan, but didn’t wait for an answer as he pushed out of the chopper and dropped to ground level. He sunk into the powdery depths to mid-thigh, then crunched through the crusted older snow until he hit rock bottom. By then he was hip deep and floundering. He’d struck a fallen log beneath the white and nearly fell. It took a moment to catch his balance. Shit. All this snow was a nightmare.
Wind from the rotors whipped it into a whirlwind of ice crystals that buffeted his face and made sight impossible, but Chance scrambled onward, damned near swimming through the white stuff. His thighs and glutes suffered a firestorm of agony fighting the weight of it. He might as well have been running in slow motion, but run he did. Out of breath and tasting copper at the back of his throat, he’d left all but his two pistols and a half-dozen extra mags behind. Whatever happened next would be short and lethal.
Pagan had offered alternatives on the ride home. “We could be wrong,” he’d said.
“She probably stayed indoors,” he’d said.
“I doubt she even knows anyone’s outside laying for her,�
� he’d said.
All plausible, but all wrong. Once again, a woman’s life hung in the balance because of Chance’s poor choices. Recrimination walked with him every floundering step of the way until at last he stood at the edge of the graveyard, where York and twenty-one other bodies lay. McQueen would soon send in a team to remove them. Kruze and McQueen had wrapped them, so no animals could get at them, but for now they waited in silent, gruesome slumber.
The forest was silent around him, when Gallo came out of nowhere, knocking Chance to his back. Pissed that the dog had left Suede, he grabbed Gallo by the scruff of his neck and shook the worthless mutt. Gallo snapped, his canines bared. Pushing off Chance like a kid off a trampoline, he bounded back the way he’d come. Ten steps away, he whirled on Chance, his snout lifted and growling his peculiar dog-speak. By hell, he wants me to follow.
“You know where she is, don’t you?” Chance asked as he climbed to his feet.
That earned him another snarl and a shake of the dog’s head. Bared canines again. Gallo stood there in the deep snow, poised to run and his ears pitched forward like radar dishes.
“Find Suede,” Chance ordered, though it was clear he wasn’t in charge.
Whirling, Gallo bounded through the drifts like a damned flying reindeer, while Chance barely managed to keep up.
“N-noooo,” Suede’s voice drifted from far beyond the graveyard. “I told you it’s just a little farther. He’s buried close by, but with all the snow, I got lost and…”
“Gallo. Sit. Stay,” Chance whispered to his faithful dog. Gallo dropped his butt to the snow where he stood yards ahead, his focus one hundred percent beyond the stand of snow-laden fir trees between him and Suede.
A husky male voice grumbled, but when Suede cried out, “Not that!” Chance was done waiting. His pistols sprang to his hands. The powder made his steps silent. His anger made his intentions certain.
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