Authors: Heather Lowell
Near Lake Tahoe, California
Thursday night, March 18
L
uke watched as Tessa and Kelly disappeared in the trees. MacBeth cleared his throat. “While Tessa was puking her guts up, I checked out the windows. Wired, all of them.”
Luke frowned and turned to study the house. “Did you see the box for the alarm or wires anywhere?”
“No. My guess is they’re buried.”
“So we’ll have to go in on the second floor,” Luke said. “So nice of Tessa to discover that the gutters are slicker than snot and save us some trouble.”
MacBeth chuckled. “She’s a pistol, that one. Smart, too. So if you’re not serious—”
“Get lost, buddy. She’s mine.”
Luke led the way back to the edge of the cabin and stopped out of view of the windows. “Tessa said she left her guard incapacitated upstairs. I say we go in the window they left open—I mean, we know it’s not wired for the alarm.”
MacBeth agreed. “A lot of homeowners don’t wire the second floor. You’re taller than I am, so why don’t you give me a boost. Once I’m up there, I’ll reach down and help you onto the roof next to me.”
“Let’s go.” Luke bent down and boosted MacBeth until he could grab the edge of the gutter. With a grunt of effort, he lifted and guided MacBeth’s slushy feet to his shoulders.
“I’m going up,” MacBeth advised in a whisper. Using Luke’s shoulders for thrust, he heaved himself up until the lip of the roof was at his waist. Then he lifted his right leg sideways and levered it over the edge.
“Ricky! We’ve got company. The girls are gone, too!”
MacBeth looked up at the shout and saw a man he recognized as Otis the bodyguard standing in the open window.
“Let go,” Luke hissed from below, knowing his friend was completely vulnerable in his current position.
“Ah, fuck.” Even as MacBeth began to throw himself backward, the other man drew a silver-plated Glock—goddam sissy gun—and fired. He groaned at the sudden burning pain in his thigh. The other man continued to fire at him as he disappeared over the edge of the roof.
Luke tried to catch MacBeth and break as much of the fall as he could, but gravity brought them both down into an awkward pile in the deep snow. He’d heard the gunshot, and realized his friend was hit when he didn’t immediately move off the ground.
“You all right, man? MacBeth?” Luke rolled his friend over and clenched his jaw in protest as he saw the glossy black gleam of blood on the snow.
“Almost there, Kelly,” Tessa panted as they jogged awkwardly along the poorly defined trail that the men had made earlier with their snowshoes. “At least we’re warmer now, right?”
“Whatever,” Kelly huffed. “Please tell me there’s a tall mocha latte waiting for me at the truck. Or chocolate.”
Tessa laughed in response, then pointed ahead. “Look, there’s a little clearing, just past the path between those big rocks. And see the slight rise that goes up through the trees—Stone and the truck are just down the hill from there. We’ll be inside in another minute.”
“Thank God,” Kelly said.
Tessa muttered agreement under her breath, but came to an abrupt halt at the distant booming sound she heard.
“What was that?” Kelly asked, only to have her question answered by a series of muffled sounds.
“Gunshots. Oh, God.” Tessa immediately turned to the way they’d come, then stopped. She was torn between wanting to rush back to Luke and needing to escort Kelly the last quarter mile to safety.
Luke won.
“Okay, listen to me. I need you to follow the trail like we’ve been doing. Keep going until you see the truck, then shout to Stone who you are. Tell him we need an ambulance, or a medevac helicopter if weather permits. He’ll make sure that you’ll be safe. I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
“You’re not leaving me?” Kelly asked.
“I have to go help Luke and MacBeth,” Tessa said.
“You said you’d help
me
. I don’t want to walk in the forest alone, I’m scared. You said you’d stay with me.”
“Luke needs me right now, and you’ll be fine. You should be at the truck in less than ten minutes. Think how good it will feel to get out of the cold.”
Kelly sniffled.
“I need you to do this for me,” Tessa said. “We have to get word out that someone might be hurt, and that’s going to be your job. Can you handle it?”
The teenager looked hesitantly over her shoulder, to where
the trail disappeared into darkness. “I think so.”
“Good. I promise we won’t be long. Go now, run!”
Tessa watched as Kelly took off at an awkward, loping pace. Then she turned around and headed back toward the cabin.
Luke had managed to lift MacBeth in a fireman’s carry and got him as far as the woodpile before he heard more gunshots. Puffs of snow flew up where the bullets had struck close to his feet.
Too damn close.
He dove behind the stacks of wood. From the tension in MacBeth’s body, he realized that his injured friend was conscious.
“You all right?” Luke asked as he drew a borrowed handgun from his jacket.
“Fuckin’ A,” MacBeth replied grimly. “I’m going to save the California taxpayers the cost of Otis’s death row appeals process though.”
“Why don’t you stop bleeding all over the place first,” Luke advised. “Take my belt and make a tourniquet while I watch the front door.”
MacBeth reached up and unfastened Luke’s belt, fumbling for a second with the metal buckle. “Watch the hands, big guy. Tessa will get jealous.”
“It would be the best piece you ever had.” MacBeth gave a raw laugh and wrapped the makeshift tourniquet around his middle thigh, just above the wound.
Luke shot him a worried look, knowing that for all the tough talk and macho jokes, his man was hurting. “Did it hit an artery or vein?”
“I don’t think so.” MacBeth hissed in pain as he tightened the leather. “Right, I’m good to go.”
Luke dove down as a series of gunshots peppered the area around them. “Too bad we’re trapped here. I don’t think
we’d be able to make it across that clearing and onto the trail before they shot us both in our tracks.”
The cold sweat on MacBeth’s face gleamed as he lifted his head to study the woods behind them. A movement caught his eye.
“Ah, shit. Here comes the cavalry,” MacBeth said.
Luke whipped around and saw Tessa’s familiar ski jacket at the edge of a the tree line—just for a moment. Then she melted back into the darkness when shots rang out from the house once again.
“Did she see us?” Luke asked.
“Yeah.”
“Jesus, I hope she doesn’t do anything crazy.”
The clearing was quiet for a long stretch. MacBeth worked his way to a standing position, breathing through his teeth against the pain. “If you cover me, I can make it to the edge of the forest. Then I’ll drop to the ground and lay down a suppressing fire so you can pull back.”
Luke glanced at the tourniquet. “Can you make it that far?”
“Adrenaline is a beautiful thing, my friend.”
At that moment they heard the anemic sound of a horn from one of the two snowmobiles Ricky had left parked in the yard. They looked at each other, trying to figure out what was up.
Or better yet, what the hell Tessa was up to.
Luke grinned when he heard a booming voice—or her best efforts at one—echo across the compound.
“Roderick Hedges, this is the FBI. We have your cabin surrounded. Throw down your weapons, and you will not be hurt.”
Luke heard scuffling noises, then realized Otis was retreating from the second floor.
“I repeat, this is the FBI. Throw down your weapons, lie on the floor, and wait for us to come to you. We have orders to use lethal force to subdue you.”
After scanning the house to be sure there were no guns pointed at them, Luke scooped MacBeth up over his shoulder and headed down the trail as fast as he could under their combined weights.
Near Lake Tahoe, California
Thursday night, March 18
T
essa waited until at least a minute had passed from the time she’d seen Luke and MacBeth disappear into the dark cover of the trees. They should be a good distance up the trail by now.
Or at least they would be, if one of them wasn’t shot.
She bit her lip, wondering if it had been Luke. Then she decided that it didn’t matter, because either way they weren’t leaving any member of the team behind. She’d bought them some time with her bluff, but Ricky Hedges was a gambler.
And gamblers always knew when it was time to call an opponent’s bluff.
Tessa pushed away from the snowmobiles she’d hidden behind. She’d managed to disable one of them by ripping at every exposed wire she could find, but had been unsuccessful in her attempt to start the other one. So much for riding to the rescue.
She looked up and saw the shadow of a man’s form silhouetted in the window and decided that she’d done all she
could. She reached for the wires on the remaining snowmobile, but saw that it was a different model and had a plastic box covering the electronics panel. She didn’t have time to figure it out, so she took off running on a course that she hoped would intersect with the trail she’d used earlier.
After realizing how dark and unfamiliar this part of the property was, Tessa abandoned the idea and backtracked until she joined the path Luke and MacBeth had taken.
She knew she was on the right trail because she was able to follow spatters of blood that looked black in the night.
At least it stopped snowing, right? There’s a silver lining for you.
She looked up and saw the shapes of Luke and MacBeth ahead of her in the dim light. She realized that Luke was the one carrying his employee at the same moment that she heard the distant sound of a snowmobile starting.
“Coming up behind you,” she panted.
Luke kept moving, aware that they were about to be hunted down from the back of a snowmobile. “Only a few more minutes,” he panted.
“There’s one snowmobile—I disabled the other.” She ran behind him, astonished that she could barely keep up with him despite the burden he was carrying. “Is MacBeth all right?”
“Fuckin’A,” both men responded at once.
Tessa shook her head, wondering if it was some kind of SWAT thing.
Suddenly Luke stumbled, and Tessa held her breath for a moment before he managed to right himself.
“Hold up,” MacBeth panted. “My tourniquet is too loose.”
“Keep going,” Tessa said. “I recognize the clearing just past those rocks. We’re almost there.”
“Unfortunately, so is Ricky. The snowmobile is right behind,” MacBeth said. “I can see the light. We have to make a stand.”
Luke knew his man was right. He made it up the path just past where it narrowed between a series of boulders, then studied the clearing dotted with trees beyond. “We’ve got about a minute to come up with an ambush plan.”
Tessa watched as Luke carefully set MacBeth down behind one of the boulders. “Is that rope clipped onto his backpack?”
“Yeah.”
“What if we strung it across the path right here at the rocks? We could pull Ricky and Otis—”
“Right on their asses,” Luke finished. “Except that they’d see the rope and try to avoid it. Then we’re toast, unless we just shoot them.”
“What if I stood up at the edge of the clearing?” Tessa asked. “They’d see me when they crested the hill and would be distracted. They’d never notice the rope you two have strung across their path.”
“No way,” growled Luke. “If we need a decoy, I’ll do it.”
She held up her cast. “There’s no way I can hold the rope taut enough, even if I wrapped it around the tree. Besides, they won’t get close enough to hit me, and we don’t have time to argue.”
Before Luke could respond, Tessa took off running up the path. She made it to the halfway point, then slowed down, taking the time to carefully scan the path ahead of her. She didn’t want to run into any obstacles ifsomeone was shooting at her.
A quick glance over her shoulder told her that Luke had helped MacBeth to his feet and taken up a position next to him, sheltered in the darkness of the boulders that loomed at the edge of the trail. She could barely see the faint outlines of the rope they’d tied around a tree on one side of the path. On the other, they both braced themselves for impact.
At that moment, she heard a shout, then the sound of the snowmobile gunning its engine. She’d been spotted.
As she started to run across the rest of the clearing, there
was no need for her to feign being afraid. Ricky was driving the vehicle, and Otis was half-standing behind him, taking aim at Tessa with a shiny handgun.
Luke heard the sound of the snowmobile racing toward them and met MacBeth’s gaze. The other man nodded grimly, to say that he was ready, and tightened the grip of his gloved hands on the rope strung across the path.
When the sound of several shots rang out, Luke jerked as if he’d been hit himself. His head whipped to the left to try to follow Tessa’s progress. She was making no attempt to find cover for herself, and he gritted his teeth against the effort it took not to shout after her.
Another volley of gunshots, then a whoop of triumph from Otis as Tessa went down hard. Luke pulled his eyes away from her. He could hear the snowmobile enter the tiny canyon of rocks. It was time.
He and MacBeth threw their considerable combined weight backward until they were held up only by the pull the tree exerted on the rope. The snowmobile’s front end went flying by them, and then Ricky and his henchman were the ones doing the flying.
Luke gave a roar of effort, conscious of the fact that MacBeth would be the weak link because of his injury. The rope was nearly torn from his gloved hands as the men on the snowmobile ran into it and were jerked to a stop.
Otis fired several wild shots with the gun he was holding before he became completely airborne. Luke and MacBeth were both jerked forward but managed to hold on.
The snowmobile plunged forward, then crashed into a tree. Ricky and Otis ended up in a moaning heap on the ground about ten feet away. Luke grabbed the rope from MacBeth’s slack grip and drew his weapon as he got to his feet.
“Don’t fucking move, boys,” Luke said.
MacBeth pushed himself upright and drew his own weapon. “I’ve got them, Luke. Go check on Tessa.”
“If they give you any shit, I want you to plug them. It’ll save us the cost of a trial,” Luke said coldly.
Ricky moaned on the ground but stopped thrashing around. He knew he was done.
Luke holstered his weapon and ran across the clearing even though his legs were burning with fatigue. His entire being was focused on the motionless figure of Tessa in the snow ahead of him.
“Tessa? Please, baby.” He threw himself down next to her.
“Did it work?” she asked, rolling over to her side.
Luke stared at her, mouth gaping open. She grinned and threw her arms around him. Hard.
“Jesus. I thought you’d been shot.”
“No, I slipped in the mud. Tennis shoes aren’t made for snowy, icy conditions.”
“Oh, thank God.” Luke’s arms closed around her, and he pulled her against him as he sprawled in the snow on his back.
They lay there for a moment, slowing their breathing and basking in the fact that everyone was alive. A flash of red streaked into the sky above the treetops and pulled their attention away from each other. “What is that?” Tessa asked.
“Stoner. He’s signaling to the backup team with a flare that we’re ready to go home.”
“Home,” Tessa mused, as they both got to their feet. She was soaking wet, had snow crusted on her feet and lower legs, and her broken wrist was throbbing like nobody’s business. “It doesn’t snow there, right?”
“No, baby, it doesn’t.”
“Let’s go home, love.”