by Jenna Ryan
Sick to death of all things food related, Raven coaxed her over to the town’s gym/boxing ring, located in a unused storehouse a mile out of town.
Once there, she stuck her iPod in a battery dock, fired up the rusty generator and ordered her pit bull, Rip, who’d refused to eat either her waffles or her bacon, to watch for skunks in the woods. She tossed Alessandra a pair of boxing mitts, but after a quick search through the storage box gave the lid an aggravated slam.
“Crap. Someone swiped the headgear. I’ll have to go out to my truck. You can warm up on the ropes until I get back.”
Not entirely certain any of this was wise, Alessandra nevertheless entered the ring. Her phone rang. Hitting Speaker, she began to stretch.
“Not talking to you, McBride,” she said with a grunt. “A gentleman would have mentioned that he’d asked someone with biceps of steel to babysit the woman who’s going to punch his lights out when he returns to town, which at this moment is functioning on half power and has absolutely nothing happening street-party wise.”
He grunted back. “You’re still winning the better-day contest, darlin’. A rig jackknifed and puked its load of fresh manure all over the highway. Rory swears the sausage we let him eat at breakfast has given him food poisoning, and I just finished changing a flat with a thirty-mile-an-hour wind blasting rain, mud and gravel in my face.”
She took a practice swing, grinned. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.” Outside, Rip began to bark. She hoped he hadn’t spotted a skunk. “Are you in Cheyenne yet?”
“Twenty minutes. Wind’s picking up… Could be longer than I thought… Talked to the sheriff…”
Static finished the sentence.
“McBride?” She repositioned her phone several times. “Are you there?” When he didn’t respond, she made a face. “You always find a way to weasel out of a conversation, don’t you?”
Curling and uncurling her fingers, she listened to the wind howl and Willie Nelson whine. The lights, sparse and already low, flickered. Rip barked again. She thought she heard Raven shout at him.
The door to her left gave a protracted creak, then slammed shut. Whether foolish or not, her heart thumped double time.
With the storm outside, a slamming door, wind in the rafters and McBride in a dead zone, this was getting creepy. And where was Raven?
Her phone rang again. She didn’t look at the caller’s name, but answered, “McBride?”
There was nothing, not even static.
With fear beginning to curl in her stomach, she checked the screen. And felt her muscles seize when she saw the name staring back at her.
YAMAN.
Whipping around, she made a quick scan of the storehouse. Nothing moved. She was being paranoid. Maybe. She’d lived with McBride long enough to know that if something felt wrong, it probably was.
Raven should be back. And why was her dog barking? Possibly at skunks. But what if someone had ambushed his owner?
Slipping out of the ring, Alessandra lowered herself, face forward, to the ground. Yes, she could hear the wind, but that didn’t mean a more sinister sound lurked beneath. On the other hand, there was YAMAN.
Who was he? Not Rory, or Eddie.
Frank Hawley? His son-in-law, Ryder?
“I didn’t kill that bull,” she said through her teeth.
Eyes in motion, she picked up McBride’s jacket, made another wary circle and started for the door.
Too many shadows, her mind whispered. And the music was much louder now. Raven’s playlist had gone from Willie Nelson to full-throttle Steve Tyler.
With her thumb, she speed-dialed McBride’s cell. And got no response.
The wind outside made deep swooping sounds. Rain pelted the roof and walls.
Then, sliding in beneath both those noises, she heard a snarl.
Shadows loomed like misshapen monsters between her and the door. The lights fluttered again. The generator coughed.
She could see the person only in silhouette. An instant before the generator stalled, she glimpsed the arm that flew out to hit the switch. And watched as everything went dark.
Stifling a gasp, she ran. But the intruder was closer to the door. He got a hand on her shoulder and wrenched her to a halt.
“Not this time, Doc,” he growled. Tossing a blanket over her head, he shoved her into the wall. “One death for another. And another and another and another. Yours, your cop husband’s, that bastard…and…”
Thunder rocked the building. He bit out something that sounded like “leopard” as he shoved her into the wall again, and a sea of glittering stars appeared.
Somehow, miraculously, he’d only trapped one of her arms under the blanket. While he continued to shove her, she worked her hand into her jacket pocket and found the pool ball she’d picked up the night before.
His muffled voice filtered through the wool. “There’s no one to interfere this time, lady. It’s just you and me.”
She struck him in the side of the head. She thought she must have connected because his grip faltered, and she felt him stagger. Unfortunately, the blanket impeded her long enough for him to recover and regain his grip. Next time when she swung, she only caught part of him. Even so, he shocked her by throwing her aside.
She tripped over the generator and fell so hard that the stars swimming in her head began to wink. She heard a screech of metal and the driving beat of the music. Then, as if her brain was lit by nothing more than a single candle, the wind swooped across her cheek and extinguished the flame.
SHE SANK THROUGH murky blackness and emerged in a red and glistening world. There was blood everywhere, and somehow she was standing in the middle of it. She had a scalpel in her hand and scrubs on her body. The bull was dead. She knew it but couldn’t see the animal.
Hawley charged in, covered with blood and shouting. He tore aside crumpled metal to reach her. He wanted to kill her, and anyone who got in his way. Except the only people in his way were already dead, and by removing the broken seats and overhead racks, he was actually freeing her.
“You’re gonna pay, lady. I’m gonna make you.”
She heard a scuffle and a lot of swearing. Then the metal wall fell, and McBride held out his hands to her. Thank God.
He helped her navigate the rubble and the bodies. One woman had been impaled, another crushed. The third, a man, had died right in front of her. Another man had crawled out of the rubble, then bled to death on the rocky slope.
Shadows slunk in. McBride kept her ahead of him. She wanted to stop and rest, but he took her by the arms and shook her to keep her going.
Black mist combined with shadows to create an eerie fog.
“Alessandra, wake up! Come on, wake up!”
She knew it wasn’t McBride who shook her like a rag doll, but the voice sounded familiar.
“Wake up!” it ordered again.
She surfaced slowly and with great reluctance because her head hurt more beyond the darkness than within it.
“We have to get out of here. The guy took off, but he could come back any minute, and I don’t think I’d win if he jumped me right now.”
Raven’s rusty voice penetrated the cracks. It came with wind and music and the faintest tinge of fear.
Alessandra forced her eyes open. “What…?”
Raven hauled her out from behind the generator. “Man’s all I know. He whacked me a couple times outside my truck. Whacked Rip when he came flying in to defend me. I think he dropped his gun in the well when he went to hit Rip. He took off when I ran in here with a piece of lead pipe. I didn’t see his face, but he’s gotta be nuts. We need to move. Could be he’s gone for another gun.”
Rain from the tips of Raven’s hair dripped onto Alessandra’s face. Only about half of what she said registered. But the urgency got through.
She struggled to sit, made it to her knees and swayed. She wanted to topple facedown and sleep for a year, but Raven tugged her to her feet.
“I yelled at him, tol
d him I called a deputy,” Raven said. “Maybe he believed me.”
They stumbled to the door and out into the sheeting rain.
“Rip!” Raven released Alessandra and ran to the unmoving animal.
Alessandra took the other side, lifted the dog’s eyelids, listened to his heart.
“He’s breathing.” More alert with chilly water sliding down her neck, she regarded the blurred landscape. “We need to get him into your truck.”
“I’ll do it.”
Raven hefted the animal while Alessandra kept watch. Was that movement she saw on the far side of the trees?
She breathed in and out, closed her eyes to clear them and focused on a clump of towering pines.
“He’s in,” Raven announced. “I think he’s coming around. He barked a little. What is it?” she demanded when Alessandra bent low to peer through the trunks.
“Is there a road back there?”
“Way far back, yeah. It’s not much of one anymore, but people use it sometimes.”
“I see a bus, a yellow school bus, with something red painted on the side.”
“So?”
“McBride and I saw a bus like that a few days ago outside a motel.”
Raven leaned forward. “Okay, I see the ass end. But again, so what? You think whoever attacked us is driving a school bus?”
“I’m not—” Alessandra hesitated. “I don’t know. Maybe not.”
Once again she felt the man’s hands on her, heard his voice growling in her ear. He’d been furious.
Who, though? Who’d been furious?
Rory was gone. He claimed he didn’t own a rifle. But someone other than Eddie had shot at them outside Ruth’s motel. And now there was a bus like the one she and McBride had used for cover from the shooter back in Wyoming.
One thing was certain, she realized with a shudder. She’d been wrong before. The nightmare wasn’t over.
Chapter Thirteen
McBride needed to be angry. Not at Alessandra, or Raven, or even at Rory Simms. He was angry at himself for not listening to his gut when it told him something more was happening here than he’d originally thought.
More than a single shooter. Although he’d tried to convince himself, he’d never quite believed that the second guy had been dispatched by Casey Simms. Hell, the second guy had killed the first.
Yes, that could have been an arranged hit, because Casey was nothing if not two-faced, but every instinct McBride possessed—not to mention the two threatening emails Alessandra had received from a mysterious person called YAMAN—had shouted at him to beware.
The door opened and Alessandra came into the room, drying her hands on a white towel. “Rip and Raven are good, the storm’s widespread and getting worse and the sheriff will be back in a few days. Apparently his mother’s doing much better.”
“Great, I know and I talked to him this morning.” Capturing her arm, he tipped her head back for a look, not an easy thing to do by battery lamp.
“I’m fine,” she said before he could ask. “No double vision, no blurring, no glitches in my memory. Raven saw the tail end of the yellow bus through the trees, so no hallucinations, either. Unfortunately.” When his gaze flicked to the window, she sighed. “We’re not staying, are we?”
“Do you think we should?”
“Yes, because there’s safety in numbers. No, because whoever that man was, he could have killed Raven and Rip as easily as he knocked them out.”
“More easily.” McBride ran a thumb over her cheek, then reluctantly let his hand fall. “Which, if you want to put a positive spin on this, suggests that it’s us he wants dead and not everyone in his path.”
“He killed Eddie, McBride.”
“That could have been an accident. There was a lot going on that night. Rifle shot took out the motel window to get things started. He might not have realized Eddie was there at first. A gun went off nearby, he responded, hit the wrong person.”
“Wrong from Eddie’s perspective, not ours.”
“Yeah, well.” He gave her eyes another inspection and motioned toward the bathroom. “Are you packed?”
“Leaving tonight, huh? I was never unpacked.” She started to turn, but swung back. “Please tell me we’re not sleeping in the truck.”
“Would you rather sleep in a puddle?”
“Okay.” She held up her hands. “But just so you know, last night notwithstanding, I’m back to hating you. Where are we going?”
“Rapid City, as fast as Moe’s truck will take us.”
“Does that mean I can go home?”
“No. And before you ask, we won’t be using the interstate, either.”
She fired a grim dagger at him. “I really hate you, McBride. What’s wrong with major highways? If he can’t catch us, he can’t hurt us.”
“Even a bus can move on good roads, Alessandra.”
“All right, rewinding to your positive spin, why not stay in Loden but keep away from everyone? And don’t say that’s not possible.”
“I was going for optimism with that positive spin remark. Pretty much, when a killer wants you dead, he or she will do what’s necessary to get the deed done. Raven and Rip got lucky.”
He saw the battle taking place in her mind. Since he already knew which side would be the victor, he slung his backpack over one shoulder and picked hers up by the straps. “It’s getting late, storm’s peaking, the whole town’s gone dark. We’ll never have a better chance to slip away undetected.”
“Can we at least buy a tent?”
“No need,” he told her.
“McBride…”
“Think about it.” He made a final visual sweep of the street below, or at least what he could see of it through the pouring rain. “Whoever this guy is, whatever he wants, our first priority is to get him out of Loden before he decides to go postal. But running from him for any length of time won’t accomplish a thing. He’ll just keep following us, as he’s apparently been doing all along. I did some checking while you were examining Raven’s dog and while I could still make a connection. According to my source, your pissed-off bull breeder’s been drowning his mad in liquor on his ranch near Rapid City for several days now.”
“Well, that’s…”
“His son-in-law, Ryder, hasn’t been seen since early Friday morning.”
“Did your source ask Hawley about him?”
“Yeah, he says Ryder’s gone fishing.”
“Where?”
“Hawley claims he doesn’t know. The cop—my source—who questioned him, thinks he does, but is refusing to talk. That could mean any number of things, one of them being his son-in-law’s off on a private vendetta.”
Alessandra walked ahead of him down the barely lit hotel corridor. “The guy who grabbed me was tall. At least that’s the impression I got. I had to swing upward to hit him.”
“So did Raven. She said she saw part of a plaid shirt before he knocked her out. She thought he was probably six to eight inches taller than her. You’re five-seven, she’s five-eight. That puts him upward of six feet.”
“Ryder’s upward of six feet.”
“Yeah, you said.”
“But you haven’t yet.” At the top of the stairs, she turned to plant a hand on his chest. “Where are we going?”
“The sheriff has a getaway in the Black Hills. The dispatcher—his mother-in-law—is worried about us. She gave me the keys.”
“Halfway to home sweet home. I love you again.” She gave his shirt a tug and his mouth a kiss that made him want to say screw safety and haul her back to their room.
But that wouldn’t tell them who YAMAN was or why he wanted Alessandra dead, along with him and some other person whose name she hadn’t heard. All they knew was that the guy probably drove a yellow school bus, was good with an assault rifle and was unlikely to be connected to Casey or Rory Simms.
Connected to Frank Hawley? Not much more likely in McBride’s opinion, despite his son-in-law’s unknown whereabouts.
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No matter how he ran it, he kept coming back to that yellow bus—and a very different bus before it.
He’d parked Moe’s truck in an alley mere feet from the back of the hotel. A gust of wind drove rain and debris inside when he opened the door. A quick scan of the area revealed no other vehicles around. Only overturned trash cans and a dozen or so beer kegs.
“When I say go,” he told Alessandra, “run. Stay between me and the truck, and use the driver’s side door. Ready?”
“I wish you’d ask me a question I could answer.”
“Go.”
It only took a few seconds to slosh through the ankle-deep water, but those seconds felt like minutes. And the situation didn’t improve once they were inside the truck.
Less than twenty feet in front of them, headlights flared. McBride swore, got the engine started and shoved Alessandra’s head down. Slamming the truck in Reverse, he floored it backward down the alley.
The blast of rifle shot from the opposing vehicle came as no surprise. The return fire from the passenger’s side of Moe’s truck did.
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted.
Alessandra fired again. “Just get us out of here, McBride.”
Easier said than done since the alley was long and only had a few leads to the street. He found one at last, zipped across it, swung the wheel over and threw the truck into second gear.
Another blast hit the box, a third the side of the town’s bank.
McBride ran the options in his head. Stop, bail and try to shoot the guy’s tires or let the bastard chase them out of town.
A string of late-night partiers weaving across the road settled the matter. A confrontation here was too dangerous. He’d draw YAMAN away from Loden and see what developed from there.
As for Alessandra…
He glanced over while she raised the window. “You know that was a spectacularly dangerous thing to do, right?”
“I learned from the best.” Finger combing the hair from her face she tied it in a long ponytail, then picked up the gun and looked behind them. “Where did he go?”