She stepped off the last of the creaking wooden porch steps with a fierce sort of determination, more quickly than Chris expected, almost convulsively.
In that split second, a rifle shot rang out from a position on the steep hillside opposite Chris. Eden jerked and spun and fell to the steps.
She'd been hit, high Chris thought, too high to kill her, but he swore and exploded into action, full throttle, hurtling down the wooded hillside, crashing through sapling aspen and scrub oak toward the cabin. The rear of the bike slipped sideways, and Chris jerked hard to the right to correct the skid without stopping his downward trajectory.
He heard the old woman scream over the roar of his engine as another shot rang out. The sheriff's deputy shouted. Both lawmen dropped automatically to assault positions, their sidearms drawn and aimed away from Chris in the direction the shot had come from.
He saw Eden crawling, scrambling to get to the side of the porch stairs and to cover. The open door on the four-wheel drive had to be blocking the shooter's line of fire or he would already have gotten off a second round to finish her. But every inch she moved toward the side of the porch had to be bringing her back into the assassin's view.
The FBI agent must have anticipated the same deadly event. He flung himself from behind the car door into the line of fire. Another rifle shot cracked through the air. The agent crumpled silently to the ground and the sheriff's deputy took out on foot after the shooter. He didn't stand a chance against the shooter's rifle and high position.
Chris angled sideways to unleash a barrage of bullets way up the hillside, covering the deputy's wild, scrambling dash up the slope. Eden screamed and rose up and Chris barreled into the melee, the bike sliding within inches of her, spraying dirt.
She cried out again, screaming for the old woman to get to safety and send for help. She tried to run from him but he grabbed her by the forearm. She was strong, but by his size alone he had every advantage over her.
She knew that. He saw it in-her desperate gray eyes. Shock would drop her like a rock in another few seconds. She had been incredibly lucky--the bullet had pierced the thick strap of the backpack before penetrating her flesh.
She'd survive, but she was losing blood and the adrenaline rush had already worn too thin.
He planted both feet on the ground and pulled the scarf from around his neck. Wadding the material, he crammed it beneath the strap to staunch the blood, then stuck her other arm through the opposite strap to keep the pack in place.
"Get on. Now!" he ordered.
Eden's gaze jerked to his face. His harsh voice commanded her splintered attention. The engine exhaust choked her. The god-awful noise of gunfire split her ears. The FBI agent, Paglia, lay dead, she thought, right in Judith's front yard, and the horror of his silent, lifeless body spray Sled there played against the pain throbbing through her upper body. The air around the motorcycle trembled and the ground shook.
"This is it, lady," he shouted. "Get on. Now."
There was no time to think. All Eden knew was that this man wasn't the maniac shooting at her, and she didn't stand a chance of surviving unless she went with him. She saw the flash of Judith's housecoat disappearing as the old woman got safely inside and slammed the door.
The searing pain at the front of her shoulder was like nothing she had ever' felt before. Waves of nausea rolled over her, but she refused to give in to them. She turned back and flung herself astride he hind the man who'd ordered her on.
"Hold tight," he shouted, but he didn't have to tell her. She clutched at handfuls of his leather coat and curled instinctively. against him, pitting her forehead between his shoulder blade.
He opened the throttle wide. The powerful motorcycle burst forward, throwing him back as hard as it did Eden. She clung tightly, as much to keep herself from passing out as to keep from heing hurled off.
A few muted shots rang out, followed by another lone rifle shot exploding through the thin mountain air. The bullet ricocheted off the wind deflector. Her rescuer swore and turned violently, letting his left arm swing out ~so his gun pointed up the opposite hill where the assassin's shots came from.
He fired again, another hail of bullets, then pulled in his weapon and roared off up the road this time, leading back to the highway.
She was cold. So cold. Her mind seemed to work at an agonizingly slow pace. The man's body heat comforted her. She couldn't figure out how this had happer~xl. Where he'd come from. How he fitted into the picture.
Tafoya's men had come to take her safely away, some killer had been lying in wait, and this man seemed to come from nowhere into the middle of the deadly battle--as if that had been planned, too.
She could see him only in profile. His face was tanned. Weathered. Whiskered, with high cheeks and deeply set eyes and prominent, masculine brows. His hair was too long and black as coal. She knew him. Knew his face but' now she couldn't remember who or where or when.
She gave up trying. She felt disconnected and wildly grateful for the solid body she clung to, for the strength and the warmth. It knocked the hell out of her vaunted certainty that she needed no one, no man to save her, but she was grateful:
They'd made it halfway back up the hillside when the shooter got off another clear shot at her back. The thunk preceded the impact by a fraction of a second. The blow slammed her body hard against her rescuer, making her head whiplash back then forward.
He swore again' and called back to her. "Are you hit?" The blow had knocked the breath out of her and she felt like she'd been hammered, but the bullet must have been deflected by her backpack or something inside it.
"Answer me," he commanded harshly over his shoulder. "Are you okay?"
"I think so.... " she breathed. If by okay he meant not dead. But her eyes fixed a'moment too long on the ground speeding past below her. She groaned at the nausea roiling up inside her and her body started to slump sideways.
Throwing an arm back to keep her from falling off, he crested the hill out of the shooter's range, then slammed on the brakes, sending up another plume of gravel and dirt.
He steadied the bike with one foot on the ground. "Give me your other hand."
She didn't understand what he wanted. Her reaction time was so sluggish that he Snarled at her and reached beneath his armpit and grabbed her other arm.
The sickness burned her throat. Distantly, Eden sensed her hands being drawn together around his waist. She thought he just wanted her to hold on a different way. But her arm reached a point when he was pulling on her that the bullet wound in her shoulder shot streaks of pain through her whole torso.
And when he clapped on a cold metal ring to first one wrist and then the other, Eden panicked and lost all control.
"No! Why are you doing that? I can't"
"You want to fall off?" he demanded over his shoulder~ over the noisy throb of the engine. "Because that's what will happen if you pass out."
Fear locked in her throat. She couldn't think which was more dangerous anymore--to fall off or be chained to a madman. Instinctively, she fought the cuffs, jerking hard, twisting her wrists to slip free. "Let me go!"
"Cut it out." Still balancing the bike by a foot planted on the ground, he grabbed both her forearms so she couldn't tear her own hands up trying to get free, then spoke harshly over his shoulder. "The cuffs. You got it,~ Eden? They stay."
Eden. He knew her name.
"Who are you? What do you want from me?" But she knew he wasn't going to answer her. For her arms to reach far enough around him to be cuffed, her body was pulled tight to his. Her cheek rested on his leather coat. "Please..." she whispered, still gasping for air like some helpless fish out of water, still trying to pull loose. "You have to let me go."
"Not a chance." He quieted the engine, then spoke in low, terse, forbidding tones. "Any way but my way, Eden, and you die. It's that simple. Dead, you're useless to me, so that isn't going to happen. Now be still and shut up, or I swear to God I'll knock you out myself."
/> Eden trembled. He was a madman. The engine noise roared in her ears, and the seat throbbed beneath her.
Blood began to seep again at the front of her shoulder. He knew who she was.
What use was she to him dead or alive?
She believed he would knock her senseless, but the cuffs terrified her. Chained to him, she couldn't run away or do anything to help herself.
Her only hope lay in escaping him, or the slim chance that the sheriff's deputy would get the assassin and then catch up with them. "I won't fall off," she promised. "Please..."
"Right." He uttered a harshly disparaging sound. "You won't fall." Throttling up, he turned and guided the black Harley once more to the top of the' hill overlooking Judith's cabin. He pulled the weapon from his coat pocket, extended his arm again and aimed downhill at the sheriff's four-wheel drive, its doors still gaping open.
"Don't!" Eden cried, helpless to stop him from eliminating any chance that the deputy could follow and catch them. Her cry was lost in the violent bursts of gunfire that destroyed both driver's-side tires.
Her captor's eyes narrowed and his whiskered jaw clenched. Satisfied, Eden thought, that he could not be followed. He turned back once more and sent the Harley plunging down the ungraded road toward the paved two-lane highway.
, Eden shivered uncontrollably. She had no chance now of being rescued. She couldn't believe what he'd done. She couldn't understand how he could pull her out of danger and fire his weapon to cover the deputy and then blow out his tires.
She had willingly climbed on his motorcycle, willingly put herself into his hands. When would she learn? She thought he was saving her neck, but if that was true, he would never' have crippled the deputy's transportation.
The motorcycle slipped and skidded and bucked down the road. Her teeth chattered hard. Her body felt whipped about like a rag doll's. The surrounding trees and scrub and weeds and wildflowers seemed to fly by in a dizzying blur.
She shut her eyes 'tight and clenched her teeth against the queasiness and pain. The motorcycle hit the pavement and nearly skidded off the other side of the road before it was somehow brought back to the semblance of moving upright.
She breathed deeply, telling herself over and over again that she might die but she sure as hell wouldn't be sick. Wouldn't cave in to the ordeal of being taken hostage. Whatever he intended, she would fight 'him to her last breath.
"Where are you taking me?" ".
Scanning the terrain for signs of any nasty surprises, he called back, "I haven't decided."
"You'll never get away with this!" she uttered fiercely. Never. " '
A harsh, mirthless laugh escaped him. "No kidding." He had not underestimated his peers, but in his worst nightmare scenarios, he hadn't figured Broussard could already have gotten an assassin in place to take out Eden, which had to be what had happened.
But Chris knew he Would get away with what he had to do. At least, long enough to see Winston Broussard burning in the fires of hell for what he had done to Catherine, who might have deserved a lot of things, but not to be murdered.
Still, Chris harbored no illusions. Hell was his own fate. His own destination. In the end, he wouldn't get away with -anything. But then, neither would Broussard. Not ever again. Chris,s own life no longer mattered. It hadn't for more months than he cared to remember. His soul had begun to shrivel away to nothing long before Catherine fell to Broussard's assassin.
He drove hard, back in the direction of Jackson; aware of Eden's womanly body tight against his own. Her cheek. Her breasts. Her thighs molding to his backside. He'd never been on a Harley with a woman, let alone a woman wrapped around him.
Hadn't been with a woman at all. Not in recent memory.
He wasn't going to deny, even to himself, that despite the grisly devastation that had gone on in the past hour, he was very much aware of the subtle pleasure of Eden's feminine form fitted to his.
He'd given up lying to himself for Lent three years ago, like someone giving up red meat. He never went back to it. So after that, he told himself the truth, and when it got too painful, he just drank and kept drinking--until he couldn't tell himself what day it was, let alone the truth.
So now he told himself the truth about what it felt like to have Eden wrapped firmly about him. And how pleasure hummed inside him. But he wasn? t going to act on pleasures he'd almost forgotten. Real justice was all he could afford to seek or want. He had to figure out, and fast, what he was going to do with Eden in the wake of this disaster.
His best bet in most situations had been to lie low right under his qua fry nose. But now, he was the quarry. And given that Broussard's assassin had altered the balance and escalated the stakes to the point where a cop was now dead, all bets were off.
He swerved to miss a squirrel darting across the road and leaned into the tight curve of a hairpin turn. For the moment, the woman was riding quietly behind him. He set his mind to weigh the options in front of him.
He could take the bike off road and hole up with her in the mountains. He knew David Tafoya was absolutely committed to keeping Eden safe--which meant the agent would not risk a massive manhunt that would he guaranteed to keep Broussard alerted to the location of the woman he'd determined to silence once and for all.
But Chris couldn't count on such wisdom to prevail. Sooner or later, a manhunt would be launched, and if he chose to lie low in or near Jackson, getting out would become impossible.
He couldn't even take the risk that the sheriff's deputy wasn't already on a cell phone alerting state troopers in the four adjacent states to be on the lookout.
He downshifted to regain momentum on the other end of the hairpin turn. Passing an RV with a Jeep in tow, inching its way up the incline in the opposite direction, he asked himself why he had turned in the direction of Jackson at all.
The decision had been instinctive, and he knew from long experience to follow the thread of a gut-level choice to its conclusion, even if he had no conscious awareness of where it would lead him.
As they arrived at the east end of the canyon, he braked for the lone traffic light. The convenience store he'd gassed up at was to his left, a one-story real-estate building to his
right. Across the street was a packaged-liquor store. In front of it sat the FBI sedan. Just this side of the street lamp was a square sign with an airplane graphic and an arrow.
Then he knew. His only way out was the way that Ta-foya had planned to take Eden Kelley in the first place.
"Chris's lips twisted into a grim smile. Like any law-abiding citizen,~ he waited for the green light and then turned onto the highway in the direction of the arrow.
Skyjacking wasn't likely to top the list of his felonies.
Chapter Four
Eden had no idea how she endured the hellish ride down the canyon. The pain in her shoulder never eased up. She should have passed out. She'd willed it. Her captor had figured that she would.
But maybe the threat of falling off had only been a ruse. He needed her. She was of some use to him. She couldn't grasp why, but he claimed to need her alive. He couldn't know whether, unshackled, she would make some death defying attempt to escape him.
He wasn't taking any chances.
He didn't stop again until he'd ridden the cycle right up to the terminal building at the minuscule Jackson airport and into a space marked No Parking.
A couple of bystanders gave him dirty looks, and a family of five straggled past, the mother pulling a small child in a wide berth around the cycle. He ignored the looks, shut off the engine, kicked down the stand and pulled the key to the cuffs out of a pocket.
"I'm going to unlock these," he told her over his shoulder. "Try anything stupid, you'll regret it. Clear?"
Eden swallowed. She understood him, but only now did his inflection penetrate her awareness. A Boston accent, clear pronounced in two syllables, the r dropped. She
looked up, eyeing him, stunned. Her hands were set free but she couldn't move.
"Oh, dear God. You're..." Eden reeled.
Paying no attention to her shock of recognition, he stripped the backpack from her unharmed shoulder in one swift, seamless move. She nearly went down in a sea of blackness. He shook her hand, tersely instructing her. He wanted the full weight of her pack on the injured shoulder to keep pressure on the wound' to staunch the flow of blood, which hadn't yet soaked the scarf beneath the strap. None of that seemed to matter.
Not the light-headedness. Not the pain shooting through -her torso. Not the aching numbness in her hands.
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