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The rest of the men were lying low, waiting for Riley’s signal to come out of hiding.
Like a slippery eel, Fowler had slithered away. But Big Sky had pinpointed his location. He had rented some unused buildings on the Golden Saddle Ranch and reconstituted his gang as the Montana Militia for a Free America, a supposedly law-abiding group of men who only wanted to defend themselves against the forces of big government. There were other similar groups out here—which made the cover story all too plausible.
So why had ranch owner, Courtney Rogers, given Fowler a place to stay? Was she a pal of his? Was she working for a terrorist organization? Or was she an innocent bystander caught in the middle of a bad situation?
Big Sky couldn’t simply drive up to her front door, ask some pointed questions and expect straight answers. So Colonel Cameron Murphy, their leader, had devised a plan to put Riley onto the ranch where he could find out what Fowler was up to and what role Ms. Rogers was playing in the game.
Privately, Riley didn’t much like the scenario, because it could put an innocent woman in jeopardy.
If she was really innocent. He’d pored over the information they’d given him about her, trying to figure her out. She was twenty-eight. She’d been born out here in the middle of nowhere and lived all her life on the Golden Saddle—except for four years at the university, then a year in Billings after she’d gotten married. But she’d come home to the ranch when her husband had taken an overseas assignment. And her marriage had been rocky after that.
She was a rancher at heart. As a girl, she’d won a bunch of blue ribbons with her 4-H projects. And she could rope and ride, shoot and tend the stock with the best of the guys. As far as he could see, she was happy in this patch of Montana.
But Edward Rogers couldn’t stay put in one place. He liked travel—and danger. Which was how she’d ended up a widow.
And now Big Sky was messing with her life. For starters, they had paid Rogers’s ranch manager, Ernie Hastings, a large sum of money to walk out on her. Then Riley had applied for the job. His fake résumé had looked good in the e-mails he and Mrs. Rogers had exchanged. This afternoon, he was on the way to the ranch for a face-to-face interview.
His nerves were jumping. But he kept reminding himself why the colonel had picked him. He’d grown up on a ranch in Texas, so he had the skills to play the role Big Sky had assigned him.
Another point in his favor was Courtney Rogers’s situation. She was shorthanded. Her father had left the ranch in debt. And her former husband wasn’t coming to her rescue, because he’d gotten himself killed during an assignment in Lukinburg.
As Riley drove toward the Golden Saddle, his thoughts shifted from the ranch owner to Boone Fowler, and his stomach clenched.
He’d been trying not to dwell on that part of the assignment. The last time he’d seen the militia leader, Riley had been Fowler’s prisoner. Thank God he’d been in disguise. And working under an assumed name—Craig O’Riley. When they’d captured him, his hair had been long and dyed dark. Then his captors had shaved his head with a dull razor. Lucky for him, his hair was thick enough to hide the scars.
Not that he was vain enough to worry about some razor nicks on his skull spoiling his appearance. But they could have interfered with one of his biggest assets as a bounty hunter—his ability to fool his quarry into thinking he was someone else.
Among the men of Big Sky, he was known as the chameleon. For him, changing his appearance was as natural to him as changing his shirt.
Ironically, this time, he was going as himself, with sun-streaked brown hair, hazel eyes and a confident bearing he wasn’t exactly feeling. But that last part was even more important than the physical attributes. He had to convince Boone Fowler that they were equals—not former prisoner and captor. Because if Fowler cottoned on to his real identity, he was a dead man.
The stakes were too high for failure. And not just the personal stakes. Since their captivity, Big Sky had discovered that Fowler’s militia wasn’t working alone. It seemed they were tied to a terrorist movement bent on influencing American policy on Lukinburg. And the terrorists were probably in league with the former King Aleksandr Petrov—who wanted to keep his ass on the throne.
So Riley’s ultimate goal was to find out what Boone Fowler was up to, then contact Big Sky so they could scoop up him and his men and collect their bounty.
Nothing much, he thought with a laugh.
But first he had to convince Courtney Rogers to hire him so he could find out what side she was really on.
As he drove through the snow, a shape loomed above and slightly ahead of him. Uncertain of what he was seeing, he slowed.
When he drew closer, the shape resolved itself into a bridge.
The snow poured down from the sky like someone was up there emptying buckets of the stuff. But the bridge presented a man-made roof.
Once he drove into the shelter of the span, he saw something interesting—a set of skid marks on the sheltered blacktop. Obviously a vehicle had come shooting into the underpass, with the driver barely in control.
Then what?
Inching forward, he followed the trail. It emerged from the overhang and into the swirl of snow. The white stuff had almost obliterated the tire tracks on the other side, but he could follow their path as they skidded toward the right.
When he projected the trajectory to its logical conclusion, he saw a green pickup truck that had taken a header into a field.
So, had somebody rescued the driver? Or was he still inside?
Riley slowed, then pulled onto the shoulder and ahead of the vehicle.
When he climbed out, the first thing he saw was that the windshield of the truck was crazed. Maybe a rock had spun up from the road—causing a one-car accident.
Shivering in a sudden blast of cold, he was glad to be wearing a heavy shearling coat, a Western hat, boots and gloves.
The snow was up to his boot tops, making the shoulder surface slippery, and he walked carefully as he started back the way he’d come—his eyes trained on the truck.
He’d been thinking nobody was inside. Now he revised his assumption since he saw no footprints around the driver’s door and the windows were fogged. He couldn’t see much, but he did detect the vague outline of a figure behind the wheel.
He cupped his hands around his mouth as he approached. “You okay?”
Nobody answered, so he reached for the handle and pulled the door open.
Several impressions registered at once. The person inside the cab was small. A small man—no, a woman.
Her features, what he could see of them, were definitely feminine. Large camel-colored eyes. A delicate nose. Nicely shaped lips. A bit of reddish-brown hair poking from below her wool ski cap.
She was wearing a man’s heavy coat and a wool scarf. For further protection against the cold, she had wrapped a blanket around her legs. But the blanket wasn’t the main detail that smacked him in the face.
The woman held an old-fashioned, long-barreled revolver in her right hand, and it was pointed directly at his chest.
The weapon might be old, but it looked to be in excellent shape.
“Get away from me, you bastard,” she ordered in a shaky voice, “or I’ll kill you.”
Chapter Two
Riley raised his hands to shoulder level, gloved palms outward, thinking he was in deep swamp water now. Make that freezing swamp water.
He hadn’t expected an attack when he opened the door. So he hadn’t drawn his own weapon. It was a SIG-Sauer P-226—not the standard issue with Western wear. But he’d figured that enough guys carried them around here that he could get away with it.
“Put away the six-shooter. I came to help you.”
“Sure,” she answered. “That’s why you shot at me.” Her words were slurred, her face was pale, and he knew in that dangerous moment that she was suffering from hypothermia. She wasn’t thinking clearly, and she could shoot him if he blinked—or if he took a step back. On the other hand, if he stood here with snow swirling around him and tried to keep talking to her, she could drift dangerously close to death.
“Let me help you,” he said calmly.
“Get away.” Just the effort to talk seemed to be draining her remaining energy.
“Don’t do anything foolish,” he answered, edging closer. When the pistol wavered, he made his move, diving for her gun hand, pointing the weapon toward the floor even as he wrestled the gun away from her.
She had the strength of desperation, and she wasn’t willing to give up easily. As she fought him, he kept imagining disaster—one or the other of them with a gaping bullet wound turning the snow crimson.
It felt like centuries as he fought her for the gun, trying to keep either one of them from getting hurt. Probably it was only seconds.
She moaned as he twisted the weapon from her grasp. To hide it from sight, he set it on the ground below the truck.
“Oh, sugar.” She said it like a curse, and he found the combination of vehemence and ladylike language oddly endearing.
“It’s all right. Everything’s going to be all right,” he murmured as he cupped one gloved hand over her shoulder.
Tears welled in her eyes, yet he saw her struggling for control. In the next moment, he found that letting his guard down was a big mistake.
Still on the offensive, she made her gloved hands into small fists, pounding against his chest and shoulders.
“Hey, cut it out,” he growled. “There’s only so far I’m willing to carry chivalry.”
The situation was still deteriorating, and he couldn’t help wondering which one of them was going to end up getting hurt.
Luckily, the hypothermia had sapped the little wildcat’s strength, and he was able to lean into the cab and wrap his arms around her, drawing her close.
“Honey?” she said.
Before he could answer, she whispered, “You came back to help me.” Whoever her honey was, he had a calming effect on the woman.
She let her head drop to his shoulder, and he cradled her against his body, thinking she felt delicate and feminine under the heavy coat she wore. Holding her was no hardship.
Her hands came up again, and he braced for an attack. But she only opened one of the buttons on his coat and slipped her gloved hand inside. When her fingers flattened against his shirtfront, he felt his heart thunk. Then she turned her face and stroked her lips against his cheek.
Easing away, he looked into her sleepy camel-colored eyes. “We need to warm you up,” he muttered.
“Oh, yeah,” she answered in a voice that had gone from panicked to sultry.
He’d climbed out of his SUV to rescue a stranded driver, and he’d expected to be greeted with relief when he opened the truck door. Instead she’d fought like a wounded tiger. Now she was coming on to him—and she probably didn’t even realize what she was doing.
Keeping his voice even, he said, “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else. I saw you on the road and figured you needed help.”
He watched her pull herself together and focus on him. Maybe she was really seeing him for the first time. In any event, her expression went from sexy to sharp in the blink of an eye.
“If you’re here to help me, why did you take a pot-shot at me?”
“I didn’t shoot at you,” he said, hoping he was putting the right amount of sincerity into his voice.
“Oh, yeah? If you’re on the level, then go away and leave me alone.”
He struggled to rein in his exasperation. “It’s too cold for that. Just for a minute, try to think logically. If I’d wanted to kill you, I could already have done it.”
Either the reasoning had sunk in, or she was too exhausted to keep up the struggle because he saw her shoulders sag.
He picked up her gun from the ground and shoved it into his belt. Then he reached for the lady.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Getting you out of the cold.”
She was back in fighting mode, kicking against him, and he ignored the thuds from her Western boots as he carried her back to the SUV, set her in the passenger seat and slammed the door before hurrying around to the driver’s side. To his chagrin, he almost lost his balance.
As he climbed behind the wheel, she was already reaching for the door handle,
He yanked her hand away. “Don’t do anything foolish. Let me get you out of this storm.”
She gave a sigh and leaned back against the seat as though admitting defeat.
But he wasn’t going to trust that. Not hardly. She was too far out of it—and too determined to fight him.
He tucked the blanket more firmly around her and fastened her seat belt, wishing he’d feel her shiver. That would be a good sign.
After starting the car, he turned up the heat and drove slowly down the road, squinting into a swirl of white and wondering how far he’d have to go before he found both of them shelter.
After twenty minutes, he spotted a red-and-blue neon sign just visible through the driving snow.
Leaning forward, he struggled to make out the words. Finally he saw Buckskin Motel. Vacancy.
“Thank God,” he murmured, then looked toward his passenger. She was sitting with her eyes closed, breathing slowly and evenly.
Was it safe to leave her?
He thought about the scene in the lobby if he showed up carrying her over his shoulder like a caveman dragging his mate off to make love. No. Better leave her in the car—unless she was going to make a run for it.
Wondering how fast he could get in and out, he pulled up beside the office door and cut the engine. Next to the office was a small restaurant. All the comforts of home.
“Do us both a favor and stay put, sugar,” he ordered, then quickly exited the SUV and dashed into the lobby.
“I need a room to wait out the storm, and maybe something to eat later,” he told the old man who came through a door in response to the tinkling bell over the door.
“You’re in luck. We’ve got a few rooms left. And Molly just made a big pot of her beef and vegetable soup.”
“I may try some,” Riley allowed. He kept one eye on his SUV while he filled out the form and paid with a credit card. His passenger didn’t move. And he felt reluctant to talk about her to the man behind the counter.
She’d said someone had shot at her, and she had a serious hole in her windshield. What if it wasn’t a stone that had done the damage? And what if the shooter was looking for her—and somebody talking about her led the bad guys to this motel?
He put long odds on that scenario. But in his years with the Special Forces and then with Big Sky, he’d learned caution. So he decided to keep her under wraps, so to speak, until he could have a coherent conversation with her.
Completing the transaction as quickly as possible, he hurried back to the SUV, then drove down the row of motel rooms and around the back where the old guy had directed him.
When he came around to the passenger door, the woman stirred. “What?”
“You can’t stay in the car. I’m no medic, but I know what you need. I’ve got to get you inside where it’s warm and cozy.”
She roused herself enough to slit her eyes and ask, “Are we at the ranch?”
“No, a motel.”
