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Buzz’s attention shot back to his pilot. “Flyboy, you and Scully take the chopper northwest and do a sweep. Once we hit forty knots, I want you in. Got it?”
Tony gave him a mock salute.
Buzz’s gaze slid to John Maitland. “You and I will take the ATV southwest. We’ll be working in conjunction with the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office and dog team.” He scanned the team. “Let me reiterate. This operation is a Code Yellow. Search only. Use extreme caution. Subject is to be considered armed and dangerous. Gear up, gentlemen, let’s rock and roll.”
Abby Nichols figured she’d outdone herself this time. It wasn’t enough that she was freezing cold, that her fingers were numb, her feet aching with every step. Or that she was hungry, exhausted and scared out of her wits. To top it all off, she was finally going to have to admit she was lost. As if she needed that on top of the reality that her life had become one big disaster in the past year.
Then, just when she figured things couldn’t get worse, she spotted the man on horseback. A quarter mile away, she didn’t need to see his face to know he was a cop. She’d been around enough law enforcement types in the last year to spot one blindfolded. They had that look about them. Rigid. Uncompromising. Cold-hearted. Downright mean for the most part. The realization that he was tracking her shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did, and she felt the sharp stab of fear all the way to her very numb toes.
He was a sheriff’s deputy, more than likely—or maybe a bounty hunter. The thought of the latter made her shiver. That would be just her luck for some trigger-happy macho jerk to make it his personal mission to bring in the infamous Abby Nichols, the most dangerous female criminal since Bonnie Parker. The only problem with that analogy, Abby realized, was that she was innocent, Bonnie Parker hadn’t been. The Buena Vista Corrections Center for Women didn’t seem to care one way or the other.
She’d been tromping over clumps of buffalo grass and rocks the size of basketballs for nearly six hours. The cold, thin air burned her lungs. Her muscles quivered with exhaustion. But she didn’t slow down. She’d spent the past four months getting in shape for this little excursion. Physical conditioning went a long way when you were running for your life over terrain not fit for a rock climber.
Of course, no matter how good her physical conditioning, if Abby wasn’t heading in the right direction, she could end up in Omaha instead of Chama, New Mexico, where Grams was waiting with a hug and a smile and a place for her to spend the night before she began the lofty task of clearing her name.
She should have come across a road by now. Closer to the truth, she should have come across a road four hours ago. A narrow dirt road where Grams had stashed a pickup truck under an old, wooden bridge. A truck with a change of clothes, a cache of cash beneath the seat, and the ignition key in a magnet box under the hood.
Abby just couldn’t understand how she’d missed that road. She’d spent hours studying the map Grams had smuggled into the prison. All she’d had to do was follow the sun west from Buena Vista. Of course, come daybreak the sky had materialized as a smooth gray bowl and Mr. Sun had refused to show his face. That had been hours ago, and things weren’t looking any better. In fact, if the clouds roiling on the horizon were any indication, Abby figured she’d be trudging through snow in another hour—or, at the least, be pounded by freezing rain. She wasn’t sure which would be worse, but knew she was in for a miserable dose of Colorado weather one way or another.
Stopping to catch her breath, she leaned against a jut of granite and gazed out across the valley ahead. Pike National Forest spread out below like a page out of one of those fancy coffee-table picture books Grams was so fond of. One million acres of sparsely populated mountain terrain, white water streams and pine forests that stretched as far as the eye could see. Under different circumstances, she might have enjoyed the breathtaking scenery and mountain air. But considering she was on the run for her life, lost, and would soon find herself face-to-face with an armed man whose goal was to ruin her one and only shot at freedom, she figured her energies would be best spent putting as much distance between them as possible.
Sighing, she squinted at the figure on horseback as it wended up a trail she’d taken less than half an hour earlier. There was no doubt about it; he was gaining on her. If she didn’t think of something utterly brilliant in the next ten minutes, he was going to be right on top of her.
Forcing back the rise of panic, acutely feeling the quickly shrinking distance between her and the horseman, Abby looked around. Grams had always told her desperate times called for desperate measures. Abby had never put much weight in that old cliché. But as the seconds ticked by and the window of opportunity shrank, she figured now was as good a time as any to put it to the test.
Jake loosened the reins and let his mount pick its way up the rocky terrain. He’d been tracking his subject for the past hour. As soon as he sighted her, he’d radio RMSAR headquarters so D.O.C. and Chaffee County could pull in the perimeter they’d set up to the east. If all went well—and he fully expected it to—he would have her in custody and be on his way down the mountain before dark. If he was lucky, he’d be home in time to watch the Avalanche trounce the Red Wings this evening. He’d bet ten bucks on that one, and didn’t intend to lose the bet or to miss the game.
Jake was at home in the high country. He loved the hostile beauty, respected the unpredictable personality of the mountains. In the twelve years he’d been with RMSAR, he’d searched this rugged landscape for everything from lost Boy Scouts to Alzheimer’s patients. He knew enough about this vast wilderness to admire the tenacity of a person who could travel for six hours and not tire or panic. For a woman without hiking gear or backcountry know-how, she’d covered some rough terrain and made damn good time doing so. He wondered if she had a destination in mind; wondered what she’d expected to accomplish out here in the middle of nowhere.
The ground leveled at the top of the rise, and he urged the mare into an extended trot. Brandywine was a seasoned trail horse and as surefooted as a mountain goat. She was raw-boned and well muscled, possessing more sense than most of his friends and a heart that rivaled the size of Pikes Peak. He’d ridden her under some brutal conditions, both terrain and weather-wise, and the mare had always kept her head and come through for him. He trusted her with his life—and a good bit more than most people.
The leather saddle beneath him creaked softly as he took the horse down yet another steep incline. Behind him his mule Rebel Yell followed, his steel shoes clanking against the rocky ground.
The wind had picked up and was now coming from the west at a brisk clip. Jake figured he had another hour before heavy weather set in. November in the Colorado Rockies was unpredictable at best, particularly in the higher elevations. He’d gone on many a call-out, looking for weekend warriors who’d left eighty-degree temperatures in Denver wearing T-shirts and sneakers, hiked into the backcountry, and got caught in a snow storm without winter gear. Damn tourists. A little common sense went a long way in the mountains.
He traveled another fifty yards before realizing he’d lost the trail. Puzzled, he pulled up on the reins and backtracked. It wasn’t like him to miss something like that. Jake had been tracking since he was old enough to ride a horse—which was shortly after he’d learned to walk. From a long generation of horse and cattle ranchers, he was as comfortable on horseback as most folks were in their cars.
Fifty yards back, he picked up the tracks again. A sneaker imprint in moist soil. A trampled tuft of buffalo grass. A broken twig where the subject had brushed against it. Then suddenly nothing.
What the hell?
Remembering the corrections official’s warning that the subject could be armed, Jake scanned the immediate area, listening. It was so quiet he could hear the wind whisper through the pines. Beneath him, Brandywine grew restless, her bridle jangling as she tossed her head. The hairs on his nape prickled. It was too quiet. Why weren’t the birds chattering?
“Whoa, girl.” Wondering if his subject had doubled back, he realized he’d just made a rookie’s mistake. Damn.
Tugging on the reins, he nudged the mare’s sides with his heels, sending her quickly backward. Simultaneously he slid the Heckler & Koch .45 from his holster and swung it upward. Adrenaline cut through his gut when he saw a pair of dirty sneakers dangling from the branch of a lodgepole pine ten feet up.
“I’m a police officer.” He backed Brandywine to a safer distance. “Show me your hands.”
Two hands emerged, dirt-streaked but empty nonetheless.
“Come on down out of that tree, ma’am.”
Barely visible from the ground, she was perched precariously on a branch. Jake craned his neck to get a better look at her, hoping to gauge her frame of mind. The instant he made eye contact, the blood stalled in his veins. He’d never seen eyes that color. An intriguing mix of violet and midnight spun into velvet as soft as the mountain sky. Her hair was a jumble of brown streaked with blond. It fell in disarray over her shoulders, each strand curling as tight as a spring, too wild and unusual to be anything but natural.
Jake upheld his earlier opinion that she didn’t look like an escaped convict. The photograph the D.O.C. official had shown them that morning didn’t begin to do this lovely creature justice. From all appearances, neither did the psychological profile. She looked more rational than some people he’d run into in these parts. She even seemed a tad embarrassed at having been caught up in that tree. But, of course, she was the only blonde in prison grays around. Sitting ten feet above the ground on the branch of a lodgepole pine, she fit the bill.
“Ma’am, I’m a deputy sheriff with the Chaffee County Sheriff’s Department. I’d like for you to climb down before you get hurt,” he said. “Right now.”
“How do I know you’re really a cop?”
Her voice drifted down to him like smoke. Her accent held a hint of Appalachia. Jake wondered how in the world this lovely young woman had gotten herself into such terrible trouble with the law.
Unclipping his badge from his belt, he held it up for her to see. “Jake Madigan, Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office. Come on down. Now.”
He heard her sigh, then watched as she slid her feet along the branch, and moved toward the main trunk. “Okay. I’m coming. Just…wait a second. And put that gun away, will you? They make me nervous, especially when they’re pointed at me.”
Jake held the gun steady. “Be careful,” he said.
“Like you care.”
He arched a brow. “Well, I’d hate to have to haul you all the way back to Buena Vista with you screaming your head off because you broke your ankle jumping out of a gosh-darned tree.”
“Believe me, mister, at this point in my life a broken ankle would be the least of my problems.”
He wasn’t going to argue with that; she was definitely in serious trouble. Jake dismounted and ground-tied Brandywine. He looked up to see the woman set both feet on a lower branch. The branch would have been strong enough to support her weight—if it hadn’t been pecked full of holes by a persistent woodpecker. “Ma’am, you don’t want to put your weight on that branch.”
“Don’t tell me how to climb, cowboy. I’ve been climbing trees since I was three years old.”
“That may be true, ma’am, but—”
“I know what I’m do—”
The branch snapped with an audible crack! The woman yelped once, then crashed through a dozen smaller branches on her way down. Jake barely had time to holster his sidearm when a blur of blond hair and prison grays tumbled down and hit the ground with a thud hard enough to make his own spine ache.
“Easy,” he said, approaching her. “Just be still a moment.”
Lying sprawled on her side, she made an inaudible sound that sounded suspiciously like a curse, but she didn’t move.
Oh, hell. Just what he needed—an injured, obstinate and pretty-as-sin prisoner to haul down the mountain. What the hell was he doing volunteering for this stuff when he could be at home shoveling horse manure?
Jake knelt, set his hands firmly against her shoulder, trying not to notice when a mass of curly blond hair swept over his hand. “You all right?”
A grunt emanated from beneath that mass of hair. “Just let me…catch my…breath.”
“Can you move your toes for me?”
He looked down a stretch of leg that seemed to go on forever, saw her toes move beneath the canvas of her sneaker. “Yeah,” she said.
“What about your fingers?”
She wiggled her fingers. “Wow, that really hurt.”
Jake didn’t think she was seriously hurt. But his EMT training—and the ever-present threat of lawsuits against police departments by disgruntled suspects—told him it was always wise to rule out the serious stuff first. “Roll over for me, okay?”
Grunting with the effort, she rolled slowly onto her back. “Ow. Oh, Jeez.”
Jake’s heart rate spiked when he found himself looking down into violet eyes framed by thick, black lashes and a whole lot of attitude he had absolutely no desire to deal with. He’d had his fill of women with attitude and didn’t much like the idea of another helping—especially the con and liar variety.
“Anything hurt?” he asked.
“My hip hurts. And my elbow. Jeez, it feels like I landed on a rock.”
“You just got the wind knocked out of you,” he said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t know about you, but I just happen to be partial to keeping oxygen in my lungs. Makes breathing a hell of a lot easier.”
“You should have thought of that before you climbed that tree. That was a damn fool stunt.”
“For the record, I’m an expert on the damn fool bit, so you may as well get used to it.” Pulling a stick from her hair, she tossed it at him, then sat up.
The prison-issue jumpsuit didn’t do much for her figure, but Jake couldn’t help but notice the body beneath it. She was long and athletic and the material fell over curves he was a fool for noticing at a moment like this.
“What the hell were you doing up in that tree, anyway?” he asked.
She gave him a that’s-a-really-stupid-question glare that was hot enough to melt snow. “Well, I wasn’t building a tree house.”
“Running from the law isn’t very smart. You always get caught sooner or later.”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking when you rode by the first time.”
Jake shoved down a rise of annoyance. He could do without the smart mouth. He could damn well do without the way he was responding to those eyes of hers. Eight years in the Marine Corps had taught him discipline, and he’d lived by that code ever since. Twelve years of law enforcement had taught him control, and he’d adopted that code into his personal life, as well. The ethics came from inside the man. Jake prided himself on all those things, characteristics that defined who he was. He wasn’t about to let a siren such as this lure him into the shallows so he could crash on the rocks and die a watery death.
“Are you alone?” Jake stood and stepped back.
She rolled her eyes. “You don’t think there’s anyone else stupid enough to go tromping through this godforsaken countryside for six hours with me, do you?”
“Stand up,” he said.
Grumbling, she struggled to her feet and began brushing the dust and dry grass from her jumpsuit.
Unable to help himself, Jake’s gaze swept the length of her. The instinctive need to do so surprised him—and disturbed him more than he wanted to admit. He wasn’t a gawker when it came to women, no matter how good they were to look at. He’d never had a problem with keeping his male tendencies in check. He wasn’t even sure why he was reacting to this woman now—but he was—and it was starting to tick him off.
“Lace your hands behind your head and turn around,” he said.
Sighing in annoyance, she reluctantly obeyed.
Only when her back was to him did Jake notice the tear in her jumpsuit. It started at her backside and stretched halfway down her thigh. The sight of velvety flesh and the white cotton panties beneath shouldn’t have made his mouth go dry, but it did, and for several long seconds he couldn’t take his eyes off that small, dangerous stretch of flesh.
She must have felt the draft because an instant later she craned her head around and spotted it. “Oh, great.” She lowered her hands. “My pants are ripped.”
“Put your hands up,” Jake said.
“Damn cheap—”
“Put ’em up, ma’am. Now.”
“But my pants are ripped and my—”
Jake cursed.
Compromising, she put one hand on her head, clutched the torn fabric together with her other.
He sighed. Well, wasn’t this a hell of a mess?
Easing his eyes away from the flesh in question, he looked her in the eye. If he’d thought her gaze would be any less mesmerizing than her thigh, he was mistaken. He felt its impact with the force of a hammer striking the head of a spike and driving it deep.
“Probably caught your pants on a branch on the way down,” he offered.
“No thanks to you.” Awkwardly she kept one hand behind her head, the other clutching the tear. “I need a safety pin.”
“Ma’am, I don’t have anything like that.”
“Yeah, you don’t look much like a safety pin kind of guy. I’m sure it would be totally stupid of me to ask if you have a needle and thread in that saddlebag of yours, wouldn’t it?”
Jake watched the color rise into her cheeks, felt his own discomfort grow. He wasn’t sure why her request bothered him, but it did. Probably because he couldn’t fault her for being modest, even if she was a criminal. “I’ve got some sutures we might could use. I’ll have a look in my pack as soon as I get you settled. Maybe we can rig something to get you by.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean by ‘settled’?”
Jake didn’t like the way the situation was shaping up. Procedure dictated he search her next. By no means did he want to get his hands anywhere near that body. Male officers normally didn’t search female prisoners, but during the briefing the team had been warned that this woman should be considered armed and dangerous. If he’d been in town, he could have radioed for a female officer to assist to do a quick preliminary search for weapons or drugs. But he wasn’t anywhere near a town, and there wasn’t a female officer within fifty miles, so he was going to have to do the deed himself.
Oh, boy.
The thought shouldn’t have rattled him; he’d searched plenty of prisoners before transporting them. Quick. Impersonal. Half the time he found something illegal. But for the first time in the course of his career, Jake felt as if he were out of his element. Man, he needed this like he needed a kick in the head by his mule.
“I’d like for you to step over to the tree and put your hands on the trunk for me,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t tell me you’re going to—”
“Ma’am, just do as I say.”
“I know the drill.” Clutching the material of her torn jumpsuit, she stalked over to the tree—and put her one free hand against it. Jake swore softly, but didn’t ask her to let go of the tear. He figured he’d be better off if he just didn’t think about that tear at all. He might be a cop, but he’d been cursed with the scourge of being a gentleman, as well. To this day he wasn’t sure if that was his saving grace or his fatal flaw.
“Do you have any weapons or drugs or anything I should know about before I search you?” he asked.
“I don’t have anything on me, except a truckload of really bad luck.” She slapped her other hand against the tree.
Jake tried not to notice when the material parted, exposing a glimpse of her rear end and those white panties. Walking up behind her, he put his hand on her shoulder. “Spread your legs apart for me.”
