by Julie Miller
“I’ll be fine.”
A blot of crimson seeping through his clothes at the left side of his waist drew her attention. “Don’t tell me you’re fine. You’re bleeding.”
As she unzipped his gear vest and pulled it open, Ethan leaned onto an elbow and tried to push himself upright. “Watts could still be in the area. Forget me and—”
“I am not forgetting you. I could never forget you. Now lie still until I check every inch of you.” She stepped over his legs and knelt to check the wound. “You must have a pretty deep laceration. Wait. I said to lie down.”
Ethan groaned a mighty curse as he fought off her attempt to ease him back to the ground. “If he rigged up one tree, then there’ll be other traps out here. Who knows what other sick tricks he’s prepared for us? We can’t stay here in the open.”
“Fine.” She peeled aside his vest. “Then let me get you wrapped up enough so you can move.” When she caught sight of raw flesh, Joanna’s own muscles clenched at the pain he must be feeling. “Oh, my God.”
The sapling Sherman Watts had tied to the ground had whipped Ethan as effectively as a cat-o’-nine-tails. The force of the blow had cut right through his clothing and left bleeding red welts along his left flank.
“I need to borrow this.” With her hand at his belt, she untied his hunting knife and pulled it from its leather sheath. She unpacked gauze and sterile salve from the first-aid kit and set to work slicing his shirts and vest open and cleaning the wounds.
Any disorientation he’d felt earlier had cleared. His grip was firm as he pulled her hands from their work, and his mood was turning grumpier by the minute. “I said we can’t stay here. Watts is close. I sense it. I know it.”
“We’re not going anywhere until I’m sure you can be moved. If one of those ribs is broken, it could puncture a lung.” She twisted her hand free and gently probed his side. A wince and a curse were enough to confirm her suspicions. “They could just be bruised or cracked, but I’m definitely wrapping these.”
“Fine. But not here.” He bent his knees, trying to get his legs under him. “Help me up. Take me back to camp. You’re right. I need medical attention. We can’t stay here.”
“Damn it, Ethan. I wear a badge and gun. I can take care of myself. I’ve been taking care of myself my whole life. I can damn well take care of you, too.”
The discussion ended abruptly at the tiniest of sounds from the woods above them.
A single step.
Moments later, a handful of pebbles cascaded down the steep slope and rolled beneath the surface of the water.
Joanna’s hands stilled over the gauze she’d taped to Ethan’s wounds. He’d heard it, too.
Everything inside her tensed. Waited. Listened.
“No.” He tried to grab her wrist, but she moved more quickly than the stiffness of his injuries allowed. She crawled a few feet up the slope, pinpointing the direction of the sound. “Joanna,” Ethan growled through gritted teeth.
“Stay put.”
Stretching out onto her belly to keep her profile as low as possible, Joanna pulled her gun and shimmied up to the top of the slope to see what kind of company they had.
But she already knew.
Creeping through the underbrush like the cockroach he was, she saw him. Thin black hair, hanging in long oily tendrils across his shoulders. Dark, squinty eyes.
Sherman Watts.
“Don’t you—” This time, Ethan couldn’t stop her. He rolled onto his hands and knees, tried to stand. “Joanna, no! Not on your own!”
The hunt on Ute Mountain had all come down to this. She sprang from her position and gave chase.
Her blood simmered, speeding the pace of her heart. Her chest expanded, giving her the oxygen she needed to race across the flats. Her vision was razor sharp, taking in roots, dips, rocks and other obstacles in her path while she closed the distance between them. A hundred yards. Sixty. Forty.
Had he actually come out of hiding to see what kind of damage he’d done to them? To gloat? To finish the job? Had he seen the long black hair and realized just who it was pursuing him?
You can do this, girl. Look who has the power now, you SOB.
He scurried away from the creek, over the next slope and down the other side, his wide-brimmed black hat quickly disappearing beyond her line of sight.
Joanna slowed her pace and quieted her footsteps, listening to the sounds of a pudgy fifty-eight-year-old knocking his way through the trees and brushes. Sliding. Falling. Cursing. She used that moment to top the hill without being seen.
And plummeted down the same washout that Watts had stumbled upon. Joanna slid a good twenty feet through the mud and gravel on her bottom before her feet hit solid ground and stuck. Ah, but fifteen years of intense physical training versus a lifetime of drinking too much and avoiding honest work paid off in spades. She was closing in before Watts could even get on his feet again.
“Sherman Watts! I’m a federal agent. Stop where you are!” She paused long enough to point her gun into the sky and fire off a warning shot. Birds screeched and cawed and took flight from the trees. Her lungs burned, but she dug down a little deeper and shouted a fair warning. “Come peacefully and it will go easier for you!”
His response was to turn with his gun drawn and fire wide of her position.
Joanna dove for cover. “Don’t make me shoot you!”
She didn’t want him dead. She wanted him to answer for all he had done.
But he was zigzagging away through the trees, huffing back up the incline. Joanna breathed in deeply, in through her nose, out through her mouth. She pushed herself to her feet and ran after him.
Twenty yards. Ten.
Close enough to hear the ragged rales of his breathing. Close enough to see the sweat staining the back of his denim jacket. “Drop your weapon and get on the ground!”
“Get away from me, bitch!” he rasped, and turned, raised his gun.
Joanna never broke stride, never hesitated. She barreled into his gut full force and knocked him flat on his ass.
His gun went flying. They rolled over her bruised wrist and she yelped at the pain, losing her grip on her own weapon.
Armed, unarmed—didn’t matter. She was a different woman than the last time they’d exchanged violent blows. She wasn’t going to lose this fight.
When his fist came at her, she locked her arm and deflected the blow. She rammed her fist against his throat. He slapped wildly at her, gurgled with the pain she caused him. When he spotted a gun and lunged for it, she caught his knees with her feet and knocked him to the ground, quickly stretching, diving to retrieve the weapon herself.
But one thing about the disgusting cockroaches of the world—they had an innate knack for survival.
As Joanna’s fingertips touched the grip of her Glock, she heard the ominous ratchet and click of a bullet sliding into the firing chamber of a gun. Joanna froze.
“Get your hand…away…from that gun, you bitch.” As halting and gaspy as the threat was, she believed it.
For one awful moment, her stomach heaved, her body clenched with an instinctive fear. But in the next breath, she found an inner calm—from her FBI training or her lessons with Ethan, she didn’t know. He’d once held a knife to her throat. Today it was a gun to the back of her head. She wasn’t going to be his victim anymore.
“Put the gun down,” she suggested calmly. “Threatening a federal agent is not a good idea.”
“I don’t care what you think. I ain’t goin’ nowhere with anybody. I’m disappearing into the world. Understand? I’ve got nothing to say to you.”
“Well, I’ve got a thing or two to say to you.”
Rolling onto her back despite his huff of protest, Joanna looked up into the blotchy red face of her rapist. Other than a few more pounds and a nose that was purple and swollen from years of alcohol abuse, her squinty-eyed nightmare looked pretty much the same as she remembered. “I’m arresting you on suspicion of—”
“Naomi?” His face spasmed with shock. The gun wavered.
Joanna pushed up onto her elbows. “I’m Agent Joanna Rhodes of the FBI.”
“Shut up! You’re dead.” He raised the gun, steadied it enough to aim at her chest. “Or you will be.”
Watts’s body jerked and Joanna’s entire body jolted in response. Her fingers dug into the mud beside her as she instinctively clutched her chest.
“Get away from her, you son of a bitch.”
The threat, as fierce and low and wonderful as any sound she’d ever heard, flowed through her like the spirit of the mountain rising from the ground itself. There was no bullet hole, no pain. She hadn’t been shot.
Watts, on the other hand, began to tremble. His fingers popped open and his gun fell to the ground. Joanna wisely scrambled after it and picked it up before he collapsed to his knees. He turned to the voice behind him and she saw a long, wicked-edged hunting knife protruding from the back of his shoulder.
“You stabbed me,” he whined, dropping to his knees.
Joanna looked up at the warriorlike intensity of Ethan’s eyes. He stood tall, erect—but tattered and pale—clutching his left arm to his side, with blood already seeping through the bandages she’d wrapped around his ribs.
How could she not love him?
“Does it hurt?” Ethan’s nostrils flared with every deep, painful breath.
“Hell yes.”
“Good.” Ethan pulled the knife from Watts’s shoulder, ignoring his yelp of pain. He wiped the blade on his pant leg and wandered off a few feet, where he lowered himself to the ground and endured his own pain in noble silence. “Don’t worry. You’re not going to die from that wound. It’s not any worse than what you did to me.”
Watts tried to reach the wound over his shoulder, and cursed at the blood that stained his fingertips. “What the hell kind of cop are you?”
“He’s not a cop.” Joanna was on her feet. “But I am.” She picked up his gun and stuck it in the waist of her filthy, muddy jeans. She holstered her own weapon and pulled out the handcuffs attached to her belt. Kicking his feet apart to put him flat on the ground, Joanna knelt beside Watts and pulled his wrists behind his back, ignoring his plea to spare him pain. “Sherman Watts, you’re under arrest for assaulting a federal officer—maybe two or three of us—grand theft auto, resisting arrest, accessory to murder—”
“What?”
“And whatever else I can think of once I catch my breath.” She quickly read him his rights. “Do you understand?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Now lie there and shut up until I’m ready to talk to you.”
“And you?” She went to Ethan, gently checked for further injuries, then clasped her palm around the back of his neck and kissed him very, very thoroughly. By the time she pulled away, he’d returned the favor. His hand lingered at the back of her neck, massaging her nape as she ripped off the placket of his flannel shirt and used it to secure one of the gauze bandages over his ribs back into place. “You’re really wreaking havoc on my quest for independence, you know that? That’s the third time you’ve saved my life.”
“I said I wasn’t going to let you face that bastard alone.” He gingerly inhaled a deep breath and leaned in to rest his forehead against hers. “Get used to it.”
THE KCCU BASE CAMP was a hive of activity. Calls were being made. Machinery was being dismantled and packed away. Sherman Watts was handcuffed in one ambulance, getting stitched up by a paramedic and treated for dehydration. While two other medics tended to his injuries, Ethan sat at the back of a different ambulance, debriefing Sheriff Martinez, Tom Ryan and Dylan Acevedo on the status of their friend and fellow agent, Ben Parrish.
An extra helicopter was being called in. Search teams were being formed. Dr. Callie MacBride-Ryan and Miguel Acevedo from the crime lab had their heads bent over the shell casings and copper wire Joanna and Ethan had brought back from the crime scenes on the mountain.
Joanna sat in the middle of the chaos, wrapped in a blanket and sipping a cup of hot, bitter coffee. Up on the mountain, she and Ethan had worked—and loved—like partners who understood and complemented each other the way the earth and the wind, the fire and water created a balance of all that was needed to survive. But here, she was an element out of sync with the world around her.
Yes, she’d given her preliminary report to Martinez. She’d personally thanked Bart Flemming for rigging up whatever kind of super cell he had that finally enabled her to call for a chopper to evac her, her patient and her prisoner safely and quickly down to the command center. And she’d already given herself three separate pep talks to keep her calm and focused and ready to interrogate Watts as soon as the medics cleared him and he was transported back to the station house.
Her gaze slid over to Ethan across the parking lot. Even in the middle of a tense, animated conversation, he sensed her and looked over Agent Acevedo’s head to meet her gaze. I love you, she whispered on a thought. If there was any way she could find a place in his world where she was so out of sync, if he could break his ties with the land and become a part of hers…
His dark eyes narrowed, questioned, as the medics lifted his gurney into the back of the ambulance. Joanna blinked and looked away, hating the pitiful signals she must sending. The man was going to the hospital for X-rays and a deep debriefing of his wounds. He didn’t need to worry about her when he should be taking care of himself.
“Agent Rhodes?”
Joanna pulled herself from her thoughts and turned to meet Elizabeth Reddawn’s polite smile. The older woman had brought her the coffee earlier. Now she was opening a plastic container of wrapped sandwiches. “I imagine you haven’t had much solid food the past couple of days and it’s almost dinnertime. These are from the Morning Ray Café. Personally, I like the pimento cheese on sourdough. But you can’t go wrong with a turkey and swiss on rye, either.”
Though she had no appetite, Joanna knew she’d need every bit of her strength to face Watts. She picked the first sandwich sitting on top. “Thank you.”
“Ham and cheese kind of girl, eh? Enjoy.” Elizabeth snapped the lid back into place and moved on, heading for the communications table where Bart was, once again, underneath the table connecting or disconnecting some cord.
Connect. Disconnect.
A lightbulb went off inside her head. It couldn’t really be that easy, could it? Just plug herself in somewhere? Make herself a place where she belonged? When had she ever not had to fight for anything she wanted in this world?
Joanna threw off her blanket and hurried after the sandwich lady. “Elizabeth?” The petite Indian woman stopped and turned, smiling expectantly as she approached. You can do this, Joanna. You can do it. “I know I wasn’t as friendly as I should have been when I first arrived, and I wanted to apologize for my rudeness.”
Elizabeth tutted, waving aside the apology. “You weren’t rude, honey.”
“I was.”
“I expect certain memories make it hard for you to be here.”
Joanna nodded. She wasn’t used to doing this, but over the past two days, she’d proven to herself that she was strong enough to do anything. “I need to ask you a favor.”
“Sure.”
“I have to go to the sheriff’s office to write my report and—” she thumbed over her shoulder toward the ambulance where Watts was being treated “—and take care of some business. Would you ride with Ethan to the hospital? Make sure he lets the doctors take a look at him and, and…”
Elizabeth took her hand and winked as she leaned in to whisper. “And call you to let you know how he’s doing? Of course I will. I care about Ethan, too.”
“Thank you.” Elizabeth smiled and turned to finish her deliveries and get her things, but on impulse, Joanna kept hold of her hand and pulled her attention back to her. Elizabeth turned with a question on her face.
Joanna squeezed the older woman’s hand and declared herself a friend. “And you call me Joanna.”<
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That earned her an even bigger smile. Elizabeth patted her hand and promised, “I’ll call you as soon as I know anything. Joanna.”
Joanna nodded, feeling something warm and hopeful—and maybe just as strong as her rigid independence.
She’d made her first connection.
Chapter Eleven
Joanna rose from her chair, adjusting the hem of her suit jacket and buttoning it as she strolled around the interview room’s gray metal table.
“Being drunk isn’t a defense.” Her voice was articulate, clear, unemotional save for the scoffing note of pity she had in reply for Sherman Watts’s last statement regarding his motive for his crimes. “They don’t serve whiskey in prison, you know.”
“That’s a shame. I’d have gone long ago.”
The creep thought she’d find his lowlife sense of humor amusing? She’d already gotten him to sign a statement about his activities on Ute Mountain. Threatening her with a gun, planting explosives, rigging the tree that had cracked three of Ethan’s ribs and earned him twenty stitches. Though he adamantly claimed he’d never shot at any human being in his life, she had him dead to rights on enough charges to keep him in prison for a very long time.
Yes, he’d stolen a truck. Yes, he’d borrowed the explosives he’d found in the back of it. Yes, he’d set several traps on the mountain, including a couple he proudly announced she and Ethan hadn’t been smart enough to find—she’d already alerted the forensic team that Ethan’s friend Garan Coons was leading up the mountain tomorrow to be on the lookout for the hidden dangers.
But he claimed to have done all that because he was guarding the exact whereabouts of his favorite fishing hole and had wanted to ensure himself a little privacy.
The one thing she hadn’t gotten him to talk about was Boyd Perkins, and his association with the hit man and Julie Grainger’s murder.