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Decoding a Criminal

Page 20

by Barb Han


  The man pushed to his feet and took aim.

  Option B.

  Luke rolled. He bet every heartbeat left in him that he wasn’t plunging to his death as he slipped beneath the guardrail and tumbled off the overhang into the abyss.

  The man with the gun swore.

  He heard the crack of a gunshot, felt a burning hot poker drill through his shoulder. And then he was falling.

  He dropped a good ten feet until he crashed into the first ledge. But loose gravel and his momentum carried him over the edge, and he hit another rocky outcropping, jarring a fresh wave of pain through his side. He instinctively snatched at a sapling growing out of a fissure between the rocks, then tall grass, flowers, rocks, anything he could claw his grip into.

  He heard more bullets.

  The answering whiff of air and sharp pings of the tiny missiles hitting a rock or tree or dirt created a cacophonous symphony that chased his crazy fall down the mountain.

  By the time he slammed to a stop near a copse of trees at the bottom of the ravine, his battered body and jumbled brain made him think he should be dead.

  He prayed the man with the gun on the road above him thought the same.

  * * *

  HE’D BEEN RUNNING for hours.

  Well, running was a relative term, considering how often he’d stumbled or fallen. But he’d kept moving. He hoped to hell it hadn’t been in circles. It was hard to get his bearings with all these trees and no compass. Yet even with throbbing gelatin for a brain, he knew enough to keep going downhill. Away from the bullets. Away from the option of winding up dead. He’d followed the current of the creek, had even walked through the icy, rushing water itself for half a mile or so to avoid leaving footsteps and any scent that could be tracked, in case whoever was after him had dogs.

  At least the cold water had stimulated his senses and kept him conscious when every weary bone in his body begged him to lie down and sleep. He’d torn up the button-down shirt he’d been wearing to tie off a bandage for the hole in his shoulder. He’d stemmed the bleeding for a little while, but now his shirt was soaked and the blood was trickling down his arm again, leaving a distinct trail of red droplets for anyone who had the skills to track him through the trees, scrubby grass and exposed gray rock of the mountain. He hoped he hadn’t attracted the attention of some bear or mountain lion—they’d be able to follow the blood trail, too.

  He’d sustained an injury to his head. Although his hair was cropped close to his scalp, it was matted with blood. But without a mirror or proper med kit, he had no way of assessing or treating the wound.

  He could feel cognition slipping away as steadily as his life’s blood was ebbing from his body. Only his training was keeping him alive.

  Imminent threat. Behind enemy lines. Keep moving.

  Why was he running? How did he get hurt? Was he being followed?

  He’d never heard any footsteps or vehicle pursuing him. Only a serious climber or someone willing to break his neck and fall like he had could make that descent quickly. He’d avoided anything that resembled a road or even a hiking path, so trailing him in a vehicle was next to impossible. Why did he think he was being chased? Someone tried to kill him. Someone nearly succeeded.

  Who was the enemy?

  Keep moving.

  He caught the toe of his boot on a rock and stumbled. He paid dearly for the instinct to catch himself. Pain ripped through his wounded shoulder and bum knee, and his lungs seized up in his chest.

  Medic. He needed to reach a medic.

  If he didn’t get help, he would be dead soon. He rolled onto his back and gazed up at the dark green of pine needles and the lighter green of deciduous leaves arching high over his head. Trees like that didn’t grow in the sand. And he was wearing jeans, not a uniform. He mentally shook off his confused thoughts. “You’re stateside, Captain. You’re out of the Corps.”

  Captain. The Corps. That meant he was a Marine.

  That didn’t mean he knew where he was in the good ol’ US of A.

  He had a feeling there was a lot he didn’t know.

  He squeezed his eyes shut against the dapples of light dancing through the trees. Every now and then, the lights hit his retinas straight-on, piercing his brain like shrapnel. He’d taken a hard blow to the head. He fought the urge to surrender to his fatigue or succumb to the dizziness that made him want to puke.

  So he dragged himself to his feet and kept moving.

  Find help. Survive.

  He felt the ground change beneath his feet before he recognized the clearing in the trees. The grass, dirt and pine needles gave way to the crunch of tiny rocks beneath his boots. The uneven terrain became a relatively flat surface. A gravel road. No, a driveway.

  Driveways led to houses or businesses.

  Driveways led to help.

  The gravel was evenly distributed and there were no ruts in the road, making him think it hadn’t been used very often. He’d made a pretty fair assessment of how isolated this place was long before he crested a rise and saw the two-story log cabin with an attached garage and a heavy-duty pickup truck parked out front.

  The porch ran the width of the house, and there were big pots of colorful flowers on either side of the steps he tripped up. He heard a dog’s loud, deep barking before he ever reached the front door and knocked.

  Maybe he should rethink this. Guard dog? Sounded like a big one with that booming voice. Unknown location? What if he’d circled back to the very doorstep he’d been running from?

  He swiped his palm across the bristly buzz cut of hair on his head and came away with blood on his fingers, making the desperate decision for him. He braced that bloody hand against the doorjamb, falling weakly against it before pounding the door with his fist again.

  The dog’s bark vibrated the door beneath his hand. It definitely didn’t sound friendly. But the grain of the wood beneath his hand was spinning into bizarre patterns, and he wasn’t sure if it was his eyes or his thoughts that couldn’t keep things straight anymore.

  He heard a chain scrape across the inside of the door. A dead bolt flipped open. There was a sharp, sotto voce command and the dog fell silent a split second before the door swung open.

  “Sorry to bother you, but...”

  He stared into the twin barrels of an over-under shotgun.

  The dog was a big, white furry thing with black markings around its eyes and muzzle. But the dog wasn’t what captured his attention. He was caught by a pair of blue eyes, dark like cobalt and twilight skies and every hushed, intriguing fantasy he’d ever had about a woman.

  “I don’t like surprise visitors. What do you want?” She was a little younger than him, probably in her thirties, but there was no mistaking that she had the advantage here.

  “I’m wounded. Need help. Can you call an ambulance?”

  “Is this some kind of joke? Who are you?”

  “My blood and your shotgun are a joke?” Who had a sick sense of humor like that?

  “How do I know that blood is real?”

  He had no answer for that.

  She shook her head slowly from side to side, stirring the long cascade of coffee-colored hair that hung in a loose ponytail over one shoulder and revealing the long, thin scar that curved from her cheek to her jaw. If the gun wasn’t evidence enough, he could see that this woman was a warrior. “You run along. I don’t sign books for desperate fans who trespass on my property. And I won’t reward your cleverness or diligence in tracking me down by writing you into one of my stories.”

  Her words made no sense. He must have taken a really hard blow to the head. “What are you talking about?”

  “Call 9-1-1 yourself. Don’t bother me again.”

  He was leaning heavily on his good shoulder now, the sturdiness of the house about the only thing holding him up. “No phone,” he managed to eke out.
“Please. I need...sanctuary. Place to rest...to think...”

  She shook her head, but the gun never wavered. “The last time a stranger asked for my help...”

  He saw the muscle of uncertainty twitching in her jaw, the fear and compassion warring in her expression. Yet he knew the moment her eyes hardened like dark ice that she’d made the decision not to help him.

  He pushed away from the door, willed his legs to hold him upright, even though that made him a good six inches taller than her and probably looked like he was trying to threaten her. “I fell down the mountain, lady. I’ve been shot,” he argued. There was more to tell her, but he couldn’t find the words. “I swear I won’t hurt you.”

  “I’ve heard that before, too.” That’s when he saw the other scars. Through the spinning haze of his vision, he spotted the matching puckers of healed skin on each hand. There was another at the vee of her tank top beneath the long-sleeved blouse she wore. He recognized marks like that. She’d been tortured. Some time ago, because every mark had healed, and he glimpsed the patch of what had been a skin graft along the underside of her arm, beneath the cuff of her rolled-up sleeve.

  Fists of anger and compassion squeezed around his heart at the suffering she had endured. “Whatever happened to you, I won’t—”

  “Town’s that way.” She inclined her head to the left. “They’ve got a clinic.” With the shotgun still aimed at him, she tossed that beautiful ponytail behind her back and retreated a step. “Maxie, heel.”

  The dog retreated with her and she closed the door in his face.

  The decisive click of the dead bolt and the scrape of the chain locking him out sent the clear message that he wasn’t finding refuge here.

  When he didn’t immediately leave, she shouted through the door. “I’ll call the sheriff if you don’t go.”

  Yes. Do that. The sheriff can help me. He needed to say the words, but his body was shutting down. His brain was refusing to work.

  If he were one hundred percent, he could bust down the door and overpower the woman. But he was closer to ten percent, probably less than that, and the pellets from that shotgun would be embedded in his chest before he could even break through a window, much less get to her phone.

  He turned, looking for the next option, but the forested mountainside swirled into a miasma of greens and grays. His knees buckled and the world faded away as he collapsed onto the porch.

  Copyright © 2021 by Julie Miller

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  ISBN-13: 9780369709066

  Decoding a Criminal

  Copyright © 2021 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  Special thanks and acknowledgment are given to Barb Han for her contribution to the Behavioral Analysis Unit miniseries.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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