Frowning, she shook her head. “I-I’m really sorry you had to see that. And even more sorry that once again I endangered your life with my problems.”
“Your problems are my problems,” he insisted. “So forget that. But now the idea of risking your life again, of seeing you hurt on my account or worse—So please, what if you sat this one out. For me? If you—”
“That’s awfully sweet, Ace, but this is what I do. What I will always do because I love it and I’m damned good at it—go in and dig out fugitives, sometimes even armed ones, from their hidey-holes. Just like I did with you.” Her green eyes softened as she gently ruffled the hair at his temple, where he still had a slight lump from the left cross she’d landed in the pitch-dark the night the two of them had met. “You forget already?”
“But that was before you were injured. And before I fell for you. It’s like—I can’t explain it, how it feels. But watching you struggle, worrying about your health, your safety and your happiness—it’s like the world has taken you as its hostage, and I can only be happy knowing you’re all right...because that’s how much you matter to me. How in love I am with you.”
Wiping at her eyes, she shook her head. “No, you aren’t. You can’t be. Because I can’t—I can’t risk—”
She cut herself off, looking away and rocking forward. Distress radiated off her, but she couldn’t seem to say more.
“You can’t risk what, Sierra?” he pressed. “I’ve just taken my damn heart and laid it out on a platter for you so tell me. Use your words for once, damn it.”
“You know I have to leave,” she erupted, her rushed words edged with anger. “You know I’m putting your family in danger with every day and every minute that I linger. And anyway, is that what you want for me, to have to stay hidden, living under an assumed name and hoping that the people hunting me—who are no idiots, I can assure you—never put two and two together?”
“So live under my name, Sierra, under Colton protection on the ranch.”
She stared at him in clear confusion, her lips slightly parted.
“Marry me,” he told her, “and I swear I’ll keep you safe—”
“Safe? You mean like zip-tied in an attic someplace? Or wrapped in cotton in your secret bunker? Absolutely not,” she told him before picking up the handgun. “Now, let’s go and catch your father’s killer, before we lose what little time and light that we have left.”
* * *
You’re here to earn a bounty. It’s all you were ever here for. Again and again, Sierra repeated the words to herself, struggling to focus on the mantra as she tuned out the dull throb in her head and the pain of her injured ribs and picked her way up the rocky ridge ahead of Ace. It was almost impossible to keep from turning to look—or maybe to shout—back at him, with the words of his confusing—frankly infuriating—proposal still running through her brain.
But as aggravated as she was by the idea of a man who’d spent his life as a boardroom warrior being so hell-bent on physically protecting her from danger, even when she didn’t need it, the lump in her throat was more about the realization that, impossible as it seemed, Ace Colton truly imagined that he loved her.
Just as she loved him, heaven help her... But how long would that last once he realized that what he was feeling was partly lust and partly pity, mixed up with whatever spell their mutual survival of the Ice Veins situation had cast over them on that first fateful night? How would he fit her into his new life as family man and father when he found out who she really was, a lifelong loner whose own mother hadn’t even cared enough to stick around? She clenched her jaw, thinking of that kid who’d had to toughen up fast to mostly raise herself, keeping both her inattentive father and everyone who’d ever tried to help at arm’s length. She’d found that less painful than giving anyone else the power to ever wound her so deeply again. And remembering those few occasions when she had forgotten, a young girl alone and vulnerable without real friends and family to watch for her, occasions that had taught her even harsher lessons. Lessons that had left her more fit for the company of the fugitives she brought in than good people like the Coltons. And forget the whole idea of being anybody’s wife or mother.
Blinking back the threat of tears, she heard Ace coming up behind her, his breath scraping as he struggled to keep pace. Moments later she spun, gasping, as a soccer ball-size rock she’d accidentally dislodged went clattering downslope behind her.
“Sorry!” she whispered urgently as it bounced past him. “I didn’t mean to do that!”
They both flinched when they heard it crash into the side of his poor, abused sports car, which she feared would never be the same.
“Just be careful, Iris,” he whispered up at her, his voice droll as he emphasized the detested name, “because I’d really hate it if that sorry excuse for a proposal ended up being your last memory of me.”
“Duly noted,” she said, biting back a smile. “Though right about now, you’re seriously risking my bowling your sorry rear end off this hill with the Iris nonsense.”
The sexy rumble of his chuckle all but curled her toes. And told her that leaving this man and this crazy bond that they shared behind was going to be the hardest thing she’d ever done.
As she reached the ridgeline, however, she pushed aside such thoughts to take in perhaps a dozen or so structures that made up what was left of the mining town of Gila Gulch some thirty or forty feet below. With a newly risen quarter moon adding its thin illumination to that of the emerging stars, she could barely discern a roofless building—a church, perhaps, given what looked like rough pews inside, and the most solid of the buildings, a squared-off adobe with barred windows—that once had to have been the town’s jail—just across the dusty street. The others were in worse shape, many consisting of little more than foundations and a standing wall here and there—one of which, she noted with a thrill of excitement, partly concealed the parked Camaro.
As Ace arrived beside her, she pointed it out to him before gesturing her intention to head down and check out the church ruins, which were where she suspected the shooter might be waiting to ambush the two of them as they came up the road around the switchback.
Ace nodded to show that he understood her intention before pointing to his own chest and then gesturing to indicate that he meant to split off from her, to check out the more intact jail building. Fear clutching at her stomach at the thought of him being surprised by the shooter while he himself was unarmed, she shook her head emphatically.
“We need to stick together,” she insisted in a low voice. “If I see movement in the darkness, I don’t want to worry I might shoot you.”
“I’m right behind you, then,” he whispered. “Careful on your way down.”
Sierra, whose practical boots had heavy tread, was more worried about Ace as she started down the treacherous slope. But in the poor light and unstable surface, it turned out that neither footwear nor experience stalking felons was the deciding factor.
Erosion was the culprit that made the loose scree beneath her feet collapse and sent Sierra skidding, sliding on her rear end, and finally tumbling head over heels downhill.
Chapter 15
“Sierra!” Ace’s heart kicked like a mule as a portion of the hillside gave way just beneath him, disappearing—along with Sierra—before she could so much as cry out in alarm.
There was no answer but tumbling stone and hissing sand and the roaring of his own blood in his ears. Was she hurt down there? Unconscious? Before he could find a way down to her on the slope, now steeper and more precarious than ever, three blasts echoed in quick succession. Gunshots that rang in the rocky gulch, offering him no clue as to where they’d come from or who had pulled the trigger.
Did Sierra even still have the pistol she’d been carrying when the hillside gave way beneath her? If so, was she shooting at his father’s would-be killer—or had the noise from her fall
drawn his fire?
Ace froze in place for what felt like an eternity but was probably in reality only a minute or two, straining his ears for any clue—a moan or cry, a breath or footstep, that might give him some idea of which way he should go.
With his mind churning out image after image of Sierra bleeding, possibly dying, struck by one or more of the shooter’s bullets, Ace finally decided he could wait no longer to try to find and help her. Praying he wouldn’t make the situation worse—or fall himself—he started downhill.
Almost immediately, the loose, round rock rolled beneath his feet, collapsing his left knee and sending him skidding downward. Rocking backward, he sat hard, only to pick up speed until he desperately snagged a twisted tree root with one hand, finally jerking to a stop near the hill’s bottom.
Hissing through his teeth with the pain of the splinters driven into his palm, he shifted off a rock jabbing uncomfortably into his lower leg. But as he moved to push himself to his feet with his uninjured right hand, he felt something cool and flat beneath his touch. His heart leaped as his fingers curled around what he realized, with a surge of raw emotion, was the grip of the gun.
The same gun Sierra must have lost in her fall.
The same weapon Ace had taken from the shooter in his father’s room at the hospital.
Whether fate, fortune, or even random chance had guided his own drop, it had once more come back to him.
Praying he didn’t end up shooting himself before he reached the ghost town’s street level, Ace kept his head low as he descended the final six feet or so to level ground, where he immediately heard someone running toward the jailhouse.
Was it Sierra? Or was she lying somewhere in the darkness—or even partly buried by debris and in desperate need of help?
With no way to know and little chance of finding her in the darkness without making enough noise to draw more fire, he made the wrenching decision to follow the footsteps before he lost track of them.
And if that decision led him to the shooter—Ace’s jaw clenched and his grip on the gun tightened, liquid fire streaming through his muscles at the thought of the man who’d come so close to murdering his father and destroying Ace’s own life, and who might very well have just put a bullet in the woman that he loved. To hell with getting answers. What he most wanted now was the chance to end the threat forever, to make the shooter pay.
As he approached the corner of the jail, the runner’s footsteps ahead of him stopped abruptly, leaving only the sound of Ace’s own movement to carry on the dry desert air. Realizing the danger just as an arm emerged ahead of him, Ace slid to a stop, throwing himself to one side.
The air exploded from Ace’s lungs as the hard ground came up too fast to meet him, the whine of a bullet slicing the air above his head. Pushing himself to his feet, he held on to the gun but didn’t try to use it as he made for the closest cover available, the freestanding adobe wall of some small structure. He could only pray that it was thick enough to stop another bullet as he raised the gun in his hand, watching for his target to edge from behind cover to attempt another shot.
Willing his breathing to slow and his shaking muscles to stillness, he warned himself that he might well only get one chance at this. One shot at taking down a monster and getting back to help Sierra before it was too late to save her.
Ace startled as a shout of alarm—a man’s voice—echoed from inside the walls of the jail. Hearing the thuds and grunts of a struggle, he quickly bolted from his hiding place, running toward the building.
“I warned you, stay down!” he heard Sierra order before she called out, “Hey, Ace? A little help in here? It’s darker than a grifter’s conscience—Ooofff!”
Ace reached the open doorway in time to make out the gunman elbowing Sierra in the midsection before breaking for the exit. Relieved as Ace was to see Sierra alive—and apparently in no need of anybody’s rescue—he didn’t fire on the shooter. But that didn’t stop him from hauling off and landing the kind of punch he hadn’t thrown since high school—a blow that caught the shooter’s chin hard enough to lift him off his feet.
This time, the assailant stayed down, not moving a muscle.
“Nice one,” Sierra said to Ace as she strode over, the gun she must have taken from the shooter in her hand. After checking on the shooter, she said, “You knocked him out cold, and with your left, too. You a southpaw?”
“No, but I figured if I clubbed him with the gun I’m holding in my right hand, I might—never mind that. Are you okay? You scared the devil out of me when you went tumbling down that hillside.”
“It wasn’t my plan for an entrance, either,” she said, “but in the end, we got our man.”
“You got him, you mean.”
“Probably would’ve lost him, though, without that timely assist from you, so go, team,” she said cheerfully, as, at Ace’s feet, the curly haired shooter groaned, beginning to come around.
Grabbing him by one arm, Ace hauled the smaller man to his feet.
“Never get in the boxing ring, buddy,” Sierra advised him. “You’ve got a heck of a glass jaw there.”
“Let go of me!” he protested, struggling to break free.
“After what you’ve done?” Ace asked, incredulous. “You’re damned well lucky I don’t hit you again—or put as many bullets in you as you did my father.”
“Police! Hold it right there, all of you!” boomed a familiar voice, a split second before Ace was blinded by the light of a pair of bright tactical flashlights. “Keep your hands up where we can see them!”
“Can you lower the beam, at least, for pity’s sake?” Sierra asked, squinting as a uniformed male officer relieved her of the weapon she was holding. “I can’t see a thing.”
Moments later the blinding beams were redirected. Ace, too, willingly surrendered the weapon he’d been holding as soon as Spencer, who appeared to have come without his K-9 this time, cuffed the suspect’s hands behind his back and patted down his pockets.
“Not that I’m not glad to see you,” Ace asked his distant cousin, “but how on earth did you manage to find us out here?”
“The hospital had already called to report what they knew, so we were on the lookout. Then one of the guides from Hidden Arizona Jeep tours got worried and called when he saw two cars speeding up to Gila Gulch this time of night,” Spencer said. “Are you two both all right?”
“More or less,” Sierra said.
“No thanks to him,” Ace said, scowling at the prisoner, whose murderous brown eyes burned into him. Familiar brown eyes, somehow, reinforcing the suspicion that he knew this man, or once had. “I caught him in my father’s hospital room, where he’d just wounded the private duty guard—”
“Killed the guard,” Spencer reported grimly. “We received a radio dispatch updating us that the poor man passed away in surgery.” Turning a harsh look toward his prisoner, he added, “So now you’ll be facing murder charges.”
His bleeding jaw clenching, the suspect turned away his sullen face.
“Just like he meant to finish off my father,” Ace said.
“After what he did to my family, I only wish to hell I had killed him!” the prisoner erupted, struggling against Spencer’s grip to spit in Ace’s direction.
“That’s enough of that,” Spencer warned, jerking him backward firmly. “We can finish this conversation at the station, O’Neill. If you’ll come with me, we’ll—”
“To your family?” Ace demanded, talking over Spence. “What the hell—who are you?”
“Don’t you get it, Colton?” the suspect ranted. “My mother worshipped your old man—thought he hung the moon, even after he utterly destroyed our family, taking advantage of her with their sordid workplace affair.”
“You getting this?” Spencer asked the uniformed officer, who was holding up a cell phone.
The younger cop nod
ded, which Ace took to mean that he was recording the unprompted outburst. He was dimly aware, too, that Sierra had stepped in just behind him, to lightly grip his arm and shoulder.
“Easy,” she warned, perhaps worried he might be considering throwing another punch at the shooter’s face.
But right now Ace was too rattled by what the murderer was saying to focus on anything else. “What sordid affair?” he demanded, racking his brain to think of anyone, any woman his father had worked with at Colton Oil with whom he might have been involved.
“And it would’ve served him right if I’d paid him back for breaking up my parents’ marriage,” the shooter went on, “and driving away the father that I loved, by finishing what I’d started and making it look like you’d actually done the deed before killing yourself over his dead body.”
“You—your mother...” Ace’s eyes widened as a memory suddenly sprang to life—the image of a mop-haired kid, seemingly always underfoot, and then in later years, a teenager dragged along despite his obvious reluctance, to the annual summer employee barbecue events his family had hosted for years. A kid Ace mentally connected to his father’s devoted longtime assistant, the always capable Olive O’Neill, who had succumbed to lymphoma several months ago.
“Wait, I know who you are,” Ace blurted. “It’s Kyle, right? Kyle O’Neill. Olive’s son—” The one he’d heard more recently who could never seem to keep a job and still spent most of his days locked in his bedroom shooting up virtual opponents in video games. “I’d been meaning to reach out to you, after the funeral, to see if there was anything you needed.”
But then all hell had broken loose within his own family.
“But you were always too busy, weren’t you, with your fancy parties and resort meetings, too damned important, playing the big shot over at that damned company, weren’t you? All of you! My mother was good enough to work for your father all her life, to destroy her own marriage for him when he was lonely between his divorce from Selina and when he finally married Genevieve—”
Hunting the Colton Fugitive Page 20