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Vincent rose to his feet and turned. Whitney had come up behind him undetected. Not an easy feat for a grown man trained in covert experience. The irony of this talkative amateur pulling it off wasn’t lost on him.
She huddled inside her thin blue sweater with sleeves that barely came past her elbow. She looked cold and exhausted and not much older than that Jewel girl back at the ranch. That distracting urge to protect trickled into his thoughts again.
He’d planned to go back for her. But Whitney had found her way here.
Vincent pushed aside the impulse to swallow her up in his arms and warm her with his own body heat. He didn’t have time to deal with the hostage’s needs right now. He had to get her to freedom. That meant making the rendezvous that was fast approaching.
Besides, Whitney had more resiliency than he’d expected for a pampered society girl from a privileged family back East. He had to give her credit. She might lack common sense, but she had stamina and determination to spare.
“No.” He reached out and took her by the elbow, more gently this time, and led her up the rise to the top of the shaft. “Decoy.”
“So Chilton will think we’ve gone in there?” She crouched behind the rocks where he pointed.
“I hope. Stay here.”
He slid back down the slope to grab his bag and cover their path. When he returned, he held out his hand to help her to her feet. She studied his hand with the same trepidation she might use if he’d stuck a gun in her face.
“It’s not much farther.” Distancewise, he spoke the truth. But he couldn’t promise that Chilton and his men would make this an easy trip.
Her shoulders lifted with a determined sigh and she reached up to fold her hand into his. The ground was flatter up here. Still rocky and dotted with trees, it provided less cover, but they could move more quickly. Vincent broke into a loping run, and Whitney kept pace behind him.
When they reached the road, they ducked behind a pile of decaying tree trunks that had burned and fallen to the ground after a recent forest fire. Whitney leaned back against the wood and seemed to concentrate on her breathing. Vincent pulled the two-way radio from his pack and called in.
“The hawk has his prey. Repeat. The hawk has his prey. Over.”
A blip of static answered, then cleared. “Understood. Hawk’s nest on the move. Out.”
“I don’t think I like being referred to as prey.” She breathed in quick, shallow breaths, but her voice sounded stronger. “Chilton’s a smart man, you know. That’s not much of a code for him to break.”
“He’ll have us in his line of sight any minute. He doesn’t have to eavesdrop.”
Preparing for that certainty, Vincent pulled out his gun, checked the clip and reloaded. In the light from the moon, he saw those quicksilver eyes of hers pool up like saucers.
But was it the gun, or Chilton’s imminent arrival that frightened her?
“Is there something I should do?” she whispered.
“Shh.”
“Of course. Always with the shush thing.”
Thankfully, she settled in beside him to do her brooding in silence and no doubt think of the next line of questions she wanted to ask. Vincent squeezed his eyes shut. Fatigue was starting to tell in the protest of his muscles as he knelt behind the cover of the trees. But his senses were working just fine. He fine-tuned his ears and listened for the crunch of footsteps in the underbrush.
He heard the order to spread out and widen the search first. Chilton hadn’t taken long to discover his ruse, and was closing in. Vincent opened his eyes to check his watch. Their ten-minute flight had taken twelve. “Where are you?” He breathed the urgent wish between clenched teeth.
Right on cue, the roar of a four-wheel-drive engine echoed through the rocks of the plateau. But Chilton heard it, too.
A black pickup topped the crest and bounced down the mining road toward their position.
“There he is.” Whitney popped up and pointed at the truck.
“Get down, dammit!” He palmed the top of her head and pushed her down to the ground just as the first bullets hit.
The rapid fire of semiautomatic weapons flashed like fireworks in the darkness. Vincent braced his elbow on the top rotting trunk, took aim and fired at each burst of light.
A spatter of bullets hit his position, splintering the wood and sending chunks of bark flying. Vincent ducked to the ground, pinning Whitney beneath. With his hand on her head, keeping her flat in the dirt, he rose again, pointed his gun and fired.
He hit his mark. The flash fire of one weapon sank to the ground and went out. But the bullets kept flying.
The truck engine gunned and picked up speed.
Two of the terrorists were close enough to make out their shapes as they dodged from cover to cover, spraying bullets in their direction.
The squeal of brakes behind him gave a small measure of reassurance. “Romeo! Get in!”
Vincent grabbed his bag, pulled Whitney up by the arm and pushed her toward the open door of the waiting truck.
“Go! Go! Go!” he ordered.
The driver stomped on the accelerator. Whitney had climbed in, headfirst. Vincent flattened his hand on her butt, pushed her across the seat and tossed his bag into the bed of the truck. The wheels spun on the gravel and dirt, giving him time to get his feet on the running board before the truck sped away. Clinging to the open door with his left hand, Vincent turned back and fired at their pursuers.
A spray of gunfire hit the truck. Bing. Bang. Thunk.
The truck lurched and Vincent fell inside. They’d hit the back window and shattered it. “Gun it, Carl!”
Whitney sat in the middle of the bench seat, brushing the broken glass from her shoulders.
“You hit?” he asked, keeping his eye on the side-view mirror, mentally calculating the distance before they’d be out of range of Chilton’s weapons.
“No.”
The truck continued to pick up speed.
“Romeo?”
Whitney’s fingers dug into his thigh.
“Romeo!”
“What?”
He pried her grip from his leg, then looked up to see why she’d cried his name.
Carl was slumped forward. A tiny hole leaked bright red blood from the back of his head.
He was dead.
Chapter Three
“What is it with you and dead bodies, anyway?” Whitney didn’t know which way to move. She was crunched in the cab of a truck between a killer and a corpse.
And the dead man was driving.
Vincent leaned across her and grabbed Carl by the shoulder. When he pulled him back, the body’s limp fingers released the steering wheel.
“His foot’s still on the accelerator. Grab the wheel.”
Grab the wheel?
She understood what he wanted her to do. She just wasn’t sure she had the desire to do it.
“Whitney.”
Fine. Nothing like an order in that crisp, low-pitched voice to make her kick it into gear. Her father had that same kind of voice. He never asked, either. He just expected her to do whatever he commanded.
She wedged her shoulder between Carl and the steering wheel and took hold. Vincent threw his considerable weight across her lap and reached beneath the dashboard. The engine whirred in protest and the truck immediately dropped speed.
“What are you doing?”
He grabbed her left ankle and placed it on the accelerator. “Drive.”
For a few awkward moments, she simply acted on instinct. She pressed down on the accelerator and tried to gauge the upcoming curve in the road from her vantage point. With Vincent pinning her legs, she couldn’t sit up any higher. And with Carl’s weight on her shoulder, she stooped beside the wheel, looking between the wheel and the top of the dash to guide them along the dark road.
When she entered the curve, the headlights picked up a stand of boulders that had claimed that particular spot for untold millennia. Whitney moved her foot to hit the brake and slow them down, but Vincent moved it back to the accelerator.
“Don’t stop.”
“But—”
“Drive.”
And then she realized what he was doing. He reached across her and opened the driver’s-side door. The ground rushed past at an alarming speed. “Oh my God. You can’t do that.”
But he already had. He pulled Carl’s legs from the floor of the truck and shoved them out the door. Then Vincent sat up, latched onto her arm to hold her in place and pushed Carl out from behind her.
The body hit the ground with a horrible thud. She couldn’t help but look in the rearview mirror to see his limp body roll to the side of the road. “I can’t believe you did that.”
“Whitney!”
All at once his hands were on the wheel with hers. He cranked it a quarter turn to the left, jerking it from her grasp.
The rocks she’d seen from a distance rushed up in front of them with frightening speed. She stomped on the brake. Vincent turned the wheel.
But with gravel and speed they had few options.
Vincent wrapped his arms around her, turning so his body shielded hers from the impact. The truck spun out and slid madly through clumps of rocks and brush until it slammed with a deafening crunch into the rocks.
Vincent’s body lurched forward, then crushed her against the seat.
And then it was still.
Whitney slumped within the cocoon of Vincent’s body until she could hear something besides the pounding of her heart in her ears.
His weight on her chest didn’t stir. “Romeo?”
She flattened her palms at the front of his chest to push some space between them. She felt the reassuring tattoo of his heartbeat beneath her hand. But she needed to see his face. Find out if he was conscious or injured.
He was a bigger man than she realized. Solid muscle filled out his large frame. She took a deep breath, put her shoulders into it and managed to push him over into the seat next to her.
His eyes were closed.
An instant panic quickened her pulse again. “Romeo?” She touched her fingers to his parted lips. His regular breathing warmed her fingertips, but did little to reassure her. “Romeo?”
She climbed up on her knees in the seat to bring her up to eye level with him. She cupped his face between her hands and shook him gently. “Romeo? C’mon. Wake up.”
The rasp of his beard growth tickled her palms, sending inappropriate shivers of awareness straight up her arms. She might be reacting to his rough brand of charm, but she seemed to be having no effect on him.
For an instant she wondered if Dimitri Chilton had heard the crash. How far behind was he? Did he still pursue them? Her pulse quickened with renewed urgency.
Vincent Romeo was her only ticket off this mountain. The big brute had to be okay.
“Romeo.” She called his name right in his ear and gave him a light smack on the cheek. Nothing. She tapped him again. “Dammit, will you—”
Faster than the panic rising within her, his eyes popped open. He snatched her by the wrists and twisted her flat on her back in the seat with his larger body trapping her there.
Whitney’s breath whooshed out in a startled gasp. She stared helplessly up into eyes that were black. Black as coal and filled with deadly intent.
“Romeo?”
His eyes narrowed between sooty lashes. His gaze traced the shape of her face, lingered on her neck, then seemed to fix on the small jut of her breasts. To her horror, she felt the tips tighten into pebbled beads beneath the intensity of that look. Pinned beneath his crushing weight, she felt more exposed than she had been behind that rock with Rashid.
“Um—” She licked her parched lips. “Are you okay?”
His gaze darted back to her mouth, drawn to the movement there.
And then he blinked.
He squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. The raspy groan in his throat told her the movement hurt. He released one of her wrists and touched the back of his skull. The succinct curse he chose revealed just how much it hurt.
“I took a blow to the head. Things were fuzzy for a minute there, but I’ll be all right.”
“Good. Because you’re hurting me.”
As quickly as he had pinned her to the seat, he released her and scooted to the far end of the truck’s cab. It was almost embarrassing to see how quickly he could move away from her. Whitney sat up much more slowly, nursing her wounded pride and massaging her sore wrists.
“Is that where I caught you?”
The ugly purple welts that encircled her wrists were visible, even in the moonlight. Vincent thought he’d done that to her? She found the energy to summon a rusty smile. “No.” He’d probably saved her life.
