Bounty Hunter (20 page)

Elizabeth stumbled up the last ten yards of the trail, flopping down as soon as she
was behind the shrub cover near the ledge. She could hardly believe she had been there
that afternoon. It seemed as if she’d experienced more in the hours since than she
had in her entire life.

“Come on, Hawk,” she murmured as she flattened onto her belly and shimmied closer
to the edge. She found herself half hoping he didn’t find anything. She’d gone over
his instructions a thousand times while climbing the trail. And as soon as she saw
him, she planned to do everything short of kidnapping him to get him to go down the
mountain and contact this Donegan person with her.

She had long since come to the conclusion that the situation was far beyond her control.
And she knew now that waiting for Matt to show up was a luxury she couldn’t—

A hand clamped over her mouth, sending her thoughts flying in a thousand directions
and her heart rate soaring. She instinctively began to struggle, knowing without conscious
thought that it wasn’t Kane’s hand. She kicked and thrashed, trying to scream. She
managed to get her mouth open a bit and was preparing to bite down, when the man’s
voice penetrated her haze of self-protective rage.

“Go on and bite me, you little bitch. Ain’t nothing gonna stop me now.”

Elizabeth’s blood ran cold. She turned her head as far as she could—and looked directly
into the eyes of her killer.

Her first instinct was to ask what had happened to Kane, but she quickly clamped her
lips together. If Kane was hurt or worse … there was nothing she could do about it.
But in case he wasn’t, or her attacker didn’t know his whereabouts, she wasn’t about
to clue him in.

“He’s not gonna save you this time. You’re mine.”

Her confidence in being rescued took a swift nosedive. She forced herself to maintain
eye contact, wanting him to think she wasn’t intimidated. However, no amount of self-control
could keep her limbs from trembling. “Is he …?” She couldn’t get past the hoarsely
spoken words.

“Dead?” The man laughed. It was a lifeless, menacing sound. He dragged her roughly
to her feet, pulling her hard against his body. “Don’t much matter. Unless he’s halfway
to Canada by now, he’s as dead as you’re gonna be shortly.”

He pulled one arm painfully backward, then upward until her fist was between her shoulder
blades. She sucked in air as needles of pain shot through her shoulders, fighting
the burning behind her eyelids. Think, think! she commanded herself. But her mind
wasn’t cooperating. Jumbled thoughts of Kane talking to her, kissing her, making love
to her seemed to race through her mind simultaneously. Dear God, if she was about
to die, then she hoped her killer’s words were prophetic and somehow Kane had escaped.

He jerked her arm roughly, and she couldn’t
stem the tiny yelp of pain. Shoving her in front of him, he started to move toward
the tiny trail leading down from the ledge. She stumbled blindly for several steps
then something inside her snapped.
Why am I going along like a sheep to its slaughter?
In the next instant she sprang into action. Putting her weight on her left foot,
she stomped down with her right, hoping to catch his shin—and him off guard. She accomplished
the first and was rewarded with a bellowed curse. However, when she turned into his
body and tried to knee him in the groin, her body tangled with his and they both went
tumbling to the ground. She landed on the bottom, and the blow drove the air from
her lungs in one big whoosh. Even gasping for breath, she didn’t lay still. She squirmed,
jerked, fighting and clawing like a wild animal to get free.

“Dammit to hell, lie still.”

The shouted curse was immediately followed with a hard backhand to her face.

Her ears were ringing, and she was having a hard time making her eyes focus, but it
didn’t take more than a second to realize she was staring down the barrel of a rifle.
Kane’s rifle, she thought dazedly.

“Stupid bitch, we could have had some fun first, but I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let
you punch and claw me while I’m at it.”

“You thought I’d lie still and let you rape me!” she demanded. An idea leapt into
her mind, and she instantly gave voice to it. “Sam’s paying you, right.
Whatever it is, I’ll double it, triple it. I even have contacts that can get you out
of here, safe.”

He shoved his sweaty stubbled face close to hers, and her stomach lurched at the smell
of his foul breath.

“Sam was right in having you silenced. You don’t understand anything about what we’re
doing. You probably been screwin’ that half-breed.” He shook his head and spat in
the dirt next to her cheek. “I ain’t doin’ this for the money. I’m doin’ this because
it’s the right way.”

Any hope she had of bargaining with the man died as she saw the fanatic flair of obsession
light his gray eyes. She should have known he was one of Sam’s followers. His voice
rang with an almost religious fervor.

“You women don’t know your place anymore. And your Indian lover, he’s only good for
tracking, drinking, and sucking money from the government of the U.S. of A. Can’t
decide which one of ya I’m gonna enjoy doin’ more.”

Fear escalated to terror. It clawed at her throat, making it impossible to breathe.
Was he going to torture her first? His expression was downright demonic as he stared
at her. She began to pray for a swift death, murmuring silent prayers to her brother
and Kane, apologizing for not being more valiant in the final moments of her life.

She felt the barrel of the rifle press against her temple at the same moment she heard
the click of
the safety being released. One hot tear escaped her tightly shut eyes.

The shot was so loud, it deafened her.

But it didn’t kill her.

In fact, it hadn’t hit her at all. Either that or she’d died so instantly, she hadn’t
felt anything.

Then another sensation filtered through her brain. She’d heard a sound, a high keening
cry almost like a bird—or a hawk—just before the rifle had sounded. Her eyes flew
open.

“Kane,” she whispered in stunned disbelief. She blinked once, then again. He was really
there. Only then did she realize she was free to move. She rolled onto her stomach,
meaning to push up to her feet, but halted on her knees. The pain arrowed through
her head where she’d been struck, causing her to bend forward and brace one hand on
the ground. She thought she might even be sick. Fighting the nausea and the stars
blinking in her peripheral vision, she tried once again to stand.

“Stay down, Annie.”

She turned her head too fast and ended up unintentionally complying. “Kane?” He had
her attacker face down in the dirt, his knee planted in the middle of the man’s back,
holding his head by a fistful of hair. She didn’t know what had happened to the rifle.
Kane was holding his knife.

“Damn you, Hawthorne,” the man ranted. “Get off of me.” Kane must have pulled harder,
because the man visibly flinched, then swore again. “We’re on the same side, ain’t
we? Sam wanted her found,
she’s found. Now let me do my—oof.” His sentence was cut off when Kane jerked his
head roughly backward.

Elizabeth thought his neck might snap. She wondered if the man had gone over the edge
of sanity. His words made no sense to her. “Kane, tell me where the rifle landed.”

“In the bushes,” he jerked his head to his right.

She scrambled on her hands and knees, heedless of the bite of the rough terrain against
her palms. She rooted through the bush closest to Kane and his captive. It only took
a few seconds to find it. “Here!”

“Just hold on to it. Aim it at the ground.”

Elizabeth did as he asked. Something about what her attacker had said niggled at her
brain, but before she could grasp it, Kane bent low and began talking to him, drawing
her full attention.

His voice was a hiss in the man’s ear. “I want your name. Who hired you and why, and
where you hid the car. Tell me now, and
maybe
I won’t slit your neck.”

“Harold Lucheck. Sam Perkins paid me … to silence his girlfriend. Car’s in the trees … about
a mile back down the road.”

Kane tugged a bit harder on his hair. “Where’s my horse?”

“Don’t know. Swear. She was gone when I … when I got back from torching the house.
Thought I tied her tight. Maybe the smoke spooked her.”

“You alone?”

“Yes.”

Kane didn’t react to the information other than to tuck the knife away. “Put your
face in the dirt.”

Kane could feel the defiance in his tightly clenched muscles.

“What you gonna do, half-breed, scalp me? I told Sam not to hire—”

Kane found only a tiny measure of satisfaction in the crunching sound Lucheck’s nose
made when he helped him follow instructions. Gripping Lucheck’s wrists tightly behind
him, Kane dragged the moaning man toward the nearest tree at the beginning of the
trail and shoved him down to his knees. He slipped his belt off with one hand and
turned the man so his back was to the trunk. “Put your hands behind you around the
tree.”

“Go to hell,” he shot back, but a close-up look at Kane’s knife made him comply.

He cinched the man’s hands tightly around the trunk, then crouched down and took the
bandanna from the man’s neck and gagged him.

“Except Perkins, I’ve never wanted to hurt anyone as badly as I want to hurt you.
I’m talking long, slow, and bloody.” He stabbed the knife in the ground up tight between
the man’s legs. “I wouldn’t move if I were you.”

Kane stood and forced his fists to loosen. The whole episode hadn’t taken five minutes.
He’d wanted more like five hours with the guy. When he’d first discovered the fresh
tracks and found them heading for the trail, his throat closed and his stomach
dropped. When he moved into the clearing and saw Lucheck pinning Annie to the ground,
a rage filled him so fully that he could barely see through the red haze that clouded
his vision.

It had taken considerable restraint not to flay the skin off the man strip by strip.
But in the last recess of his brain that still functioned on logic, was the knowledge
that this man was their only link to nailing Sam Perkins.

“Kane?”

Annie’s voice, rough and hoarse, drew him from his murderous thoughts, and he turned
to face her. He had no idea what she was thinking, but she had to have heard Lucheck.
She had to know.

Half expecting her to cock the rifle and aim it at his chest, feeling as if he deserved
no less, he was surprised when she dropped the rifle instead and launched her body
against his.

He instinctively caught her, but instead of pushing her away as he should have, he
tightened the hold and buried his nose in her hair.

“I’m sorry, little sun. I’m sorry.”

“You got here. I’m alive,” she whispered. “You’re alive. There’s nothing to be sorry
about.”

She didn’t know. Obviously the trauma of the moment had kept Lucheck’s damning words
from sinking in.

“Annie—” he began, but she cut him off.

“Is it really over?” She looked up at him. “I can’t believe it’s over.” Tears lined
her lashes, but her cheeks were dirt streaked and dry.

He saw the red welt swelling her right temple and tensed with a new rush of fury.
“He hit you? What else, Annie? Tell me!”

“Nothing. I’m okay.”

“Like hell you are!”

Kane made to put her aside, but she grabbed his shirt in her fists and held on tightly.
“Don’t! Don’t leave me,” she added. Only the vulnerability in her voice kept him from
going straight over to the tree where Lucheck was tied and finishing what he’d started,
but with a much more satisfying conclusion.

He stared down at Annie, hating himself for not preventing what had happened to her.
“You sure you’re okay?” he asked softly. Unable not to, he reached up a finger and
very lightly traced the skin near her bruised flesh. “I wanted to kill him, Annie,”
he whispered. “I still want to kill him.”

The tears brimmed over and trickled down the sides of her nose, removing tiny trails
of dirt to reveal the freckles that lay underneath. In that moment he wondered if
he’d ever be able to look at a freckled nose and not feel his eyes burn with shame.

“I know. I’m not too happy with him either. But he’s our link to Sam. You did the
right thing. We can get him now. Right?”

He couldn’t answer. All he could do was stare at her, wiping her tears away with his
blunt fingertips one by one as they fell. He studied her, her beautiful eyes, her
freckles, her lips, everything. He took his time. It was going to have to last him
the rest of his life.

“Hawk?”

Unthinkingly, he wiped her last tear and put his damp fingertip to his lips. It was
a mistake. Tasting her tears unleashed a tidal wave of emotions he didn’t dare label.
All he knew was that she’d almost died and he had to taste her, feel her alive against
his mouth—if not his body—one last time. He would likely roast in hell for it. But
then, he’d expected to do that all along anyway.

He meant to make it brief, but one touch of her warm lips undid his resolve. He took
her hungrily, over and over. When she met his tongue with a thrust of her own, he
thought his tears would surely come, but they remained behind his eyes, burning like
the acid that was eating away at his soul. “I shouldn’t …” he murmured brokenly, “I
can’t stop,” he mouthed against her lips. “Help me to stop, little sun.”

Her breathing ragged, she managed to pull back a breath. “I know,” she panted. “We
need to get him out of here, get the authorities.”

Dear God, if it were only that easy, he thought. He knew the pain had only begun for
her. He wanted to cut his heart out and hand it to her. It would be simpler than saying
what had to be said. Betraying her.

He set her away from him until they no longer touched, stifling the moan that rose
in his throat at the severed contact. He wasted a half a second trying to convince
himself that what he was about to
do was for the best, that no matter how it had started, the ending was inevitable.