Lawman on the Hunt Read online

  “There’s a problem with the power,” Travis said, still watching Leah out of the corner of his eye. “We should have it repaired shortly.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Time seemed to speed up after that. The driver reached under his jacket. “Down, Leah!” Travis yelled as he drew his own weapon. She shoved open the passenger door and dropped to the ground as he and the driver exchanged fire. Travis dived for the cover of the electrical box as Leah rolled toward the ditch. The driver revved the car and veered off the driveway, crashing into the underbrush.

  In the silence that followed, Travis studied the slumped figure of the driver and decided he had been wounded, or maybe killed. He needed to check on the man in a minute, but first he had to deal with Leah. She crawled to him. “Travis, what are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Maybe I wanted to see you,” he said. “Maybe I wanted to ask why you couldn’t even bring yourself to say goodbye to my face.”

  Two bright spots of color bloomed on her pale cheeks, as if she were feverish. “I thought it would be easier if I left quietly.”

  “You left me a letter. A freaking Dear John letter, like some bad movie cliché.” The diamond engagement ring he had given her only six weeks before had sat beside the letter, another bullet to his heart.

  “I really don’t think we should be talking about this.” She glanced up the drive toward the wrecked car. “I have to go.”

  He moved in front of her. “I think it’s past time we talked.” This really wasn’t the best place for this conversation, but he couldn’t keep the words back. “I loved you. I thought you loved me. We were going to be married, and then one day I get home and all I’ve got left of you is a note on the kitchen counter.” The note had read I’m sorry, but I’ve changed my mind. Please don’t come after me. This is for the best. Love, Leah. The “love” had trailed off at the end, as if her hand had shaken as she’d written it.

  She wouldn’t look at him, staring instead at the ground. Her hair was coming undone from its ponytail, and she had a streak of dirt across her cheek. “Sometimes things aren’t meant to be,” she said.

  “Are you married to Braeswood now? Or should I call him Ellison?”

  She jerked her head toward him, her eyes wide. “No! Why would you think that?”

  “The neighbor called you Mrs. Ellison.”

  “Oh, that. That’s just...” But she didn’t say what it was. He filled in the blank. Her cover story. The lies they told to hide their terrible purpose here.

  “I get that you don’t love me anymore,” he said, letting that harsh truth fuel his anger. “But I don’t understand this. Do you know what Duane Braeswood and his friend Eddie do? They’re terrorists. They kill people. It’s fine if you want to hate me, but do you hate your country, too?”

  She bowed her head and closed her eyes. “I know what they do,” she said softly. “And I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “You’re right, I don’t understand.” He leaned toward her, his face so close to hers he could smell her perfume. An image flashed in his mind of her naked, her body soft against his, his nose buried in the satiny skin of her throat, inhaling that floral, feminine scent.

  He blinked to clear his head, and the blare of a horn yanked him back to the present. He looked past her, down the road, where the Escalade was barreling toward them. “I have to go,” she said, and turned as if to run.

  He snagged her arm and dragged her with him into the underbrush, seconds before the Escalade screamed into the drive.

  Chapter Two

  Travis had a glimpse of Duane Braeswood at the wheel, his face a mask of rage, as the SUV flew by.

  He retreated farther into the underbrush. One arm wrapped around Leah, holding her to his chest, he used his free hand to pull out his phone. “Abort!” he shouted as soon as Gus answered. “Braeswood and Roland are here. And two other guys. I didn’t get a look at them.” They had been only dark figures in the backseat of the SUV.

  Gunfire reverberated in the trees before he had the phone back in his pocket. “Let me go!” Leah pleaded, and struggled against him.

  “You’re under arrest.” He pulled a flex-cuff from his back pocket and wrestled it over her wrists.

  “No!” she wailed, but he cut off the cry by pulling out his handkerchief and stuffing it in her mouth. She glared at him, her brown eyes almost black with rage.

  “Don’t worry, it’s clean,” he said. “The last thing I need is you letting the others know where I am.”

  He debated binding her ankles also and leaving her out here in the woods, but if the fight moved in this direction, she might get caught in cross fire. Besides, he didn’t trust her not to find a way to escape. Better to keep her with him.

  He dragged her up the steep slope toward the house. The blasts of gunfire became almost constant as they neared the building, and when they reached the edge of the clearing his heart twisted at the sight of a khaki-clad figure slumped in the drive. He couldn’t tell which member of the team had been hit, but knowing they had lost one of their own was enough to make him want to get back at these guys.

  He checked his weapon. The Glock wasn’t going to be of much use at this range. What he wouldn’t give for a sighted rifle right now. He would sit here and pick the bad guys off as they exited the house.

  He looked at Leah again. Tears glistened on her cheeks, and he had to harden himself against the pain in her eyes. “Killing a federal agent is punishable by life in prison,” he said. “You can be convicted of felony murder even if you didn’t fire the shot, simply by your association with these killers.”

  Something flickered in her eyes—regret? Fear? He once thought he knew her better than anyone, that he could always read what she was thinking. But that was obviously only one of the many things he had been wrong about when it came to her.

  He turned away from her to study the house again. Several windows had been shot out. At one, long drapes fluttered in the breeze. The gunfire had ceased, but he thought he heard someone moving around in there. What was the best way for him to help the agents inside? Braeswood and his men would probably expect an attack from the front, but if he could get around back he might be able to reach his trapped fellow agents.

  “Is there a back door?” he asked. “Another way inside?”

  She nodded.

  “How do I get to it?” He pulled the handkerchief out of her mouth so she could answer, but remained ready to stuff it back in if she started to yell.

  “There’s a path through the woods, on the side,” she said softly. She nodded toward the west side of the house. “The door leads into the garage. There’s a back door, too, but it leads from an enclosed patio. You can’t get to it without being seen from the house.”

  “Right. Here we go then.” He started to stuff the handkerchief back in.

  “Don’t,” she said. “I won’t say anything, I promise.”

  “Since when can I trust your promises?” He replaced the handkerchief in her mouth, ignoring the hurt that lanced him at her injured look.

  He took her arm and led her around the house toward the back door, keeping out of sight of anyone inside. His phone vibrated and he answered it.

  “Recon Three, this is Recon One. Where are you?” Blessing spoke in a whisper, but his voice carried clearly in the silence around them.

  “Outside the house. West side.”

  “They’ve got us pinned down on the second floor. Looks like a rec room. Did you say there’s four of them?”

  He looked to Leah for confirmation. Four? he mouthed. She nodded. “That’s right. Braeswood, Roland, and two others,” he said.

  “It’s too high up to jump out of the window, though it may come to that,” Blessing said.

  Leah tugged on his arm. He shook her off, but she tugged
harder, her expression almost frantic. “Hang on a minute,” he said, and pressed the phone against his chest to mute it.

  He jerked the gag from her mouth. “What is it?”

  “If they’re in the rec room, there’s a dumbwaiter,” she said. “In the interior wall, behind the panel with the dartboard. It goes down to the garage.”

  He pressed the phone to his ear again. “Check the panel behind the dartboard,” he said. “There’s a dumbwaiter that goes down to the garage.”

  “Won’t they know to block it off?” Blessing asked.

  Leah shook her head. Travis muted the phone again. “They know about it, but I don’t think they’ll think about it,” she said. “I’m the only one who uses it, when I unload groceries.”

  “I’ve got the woman with me,” Travis said. “She says she’s the only one who ever uses the dumbwaiter—Braeswood and the others won’t remember it.”

  “You don’t think she’s setting a trap for us?” Blessing asked.

  “I don’t think so.” Maybe that was his old image of Leah, fooling him, but he had to trust his instincts now.

  “Then we’ll have to chance it.” Blessing sounded older. Bone-weary. “If you can, station yourself to lay down cover fire.”

  “There’s a side door in the garage that leads outside. I’ll cover you there.”

  He and Leah repositioned to conceal themselves as near to the garage as he dared, taking cover first behind a propane tank, then behind a section of lattice fencing used to block trash cans from view. He half reclined, bracing his right hand on the fence. “Get down behind me,” he ordered her.

  “If you have another weapon, I can shoot it,” she said, reminding him that he hadn’t replaced her gag after his phone call with Blessing.

  She knew he carried a small revolver in an ankle holster. She had certainly seen him remove it enough times when he had come home to his Adams Morgan townhome where she had spent many nights. “You may have played me for a fool before,” he said. “But I’m not a big enough idiot to give a wanted felon a gun.”

  Anger flashed in her eyes and she opened her mouth, then apparently thought better of whatever she had been about to say and remained silent. “Get down,” he ordered.

  She did as he asked, reclining in the dirt behind him. The warmth of her body seeped into him, along with an awareness of the jut of her hip bone and the curve of her breast. He forced his attention back on the door. “Come on,” he muttered. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

  Long minutes passed in silence so intense he imagined he could hear the hum from the power line that connected the house with the transformer at the road. He pictured the team assembling in the garage, arriving one or two at a time via the dumbwaiter designed to carry parcels up from the garage to the living quarters. They would wait until everyone was in place before they made their exit.

  “Why haven’t they come out yet?” Leah whispered, when he judged twenty minutes had passed. Too long. Braeswood and company would be wondering why things in the rec room were so quiet.

  “I don’t know,” he said.

  Just then, the door from the garage eased open. Blessing’s face, dark and glistening with sweat, peered out. Then the door burst all the way open and men poured out.

  The first bullets thudded into the dirt around them, followed by the sickening sound of ammunition striking flesh. Heart racing, Travis scanned the area and located the source of the shots. Cursing, he fired off half a dozen quick rounds at the man stationed behind the tripod-mounted machine gun on the deck overlooking the garage. The felons must have figured out what was going on in the rec room and stationed themselves to ambush the agents as they emerged from the garage. Travis was too far away to get a good shot at them. All he succeeded in doing was attracting the shooter’s attention.

  “Go!” Travis shouted, and pushed Leah ahead of him. “Run!” She started running and he took off after her. They fled the hail of bullets that bit into the trees around them and plowed the leaf litter. When she stumbled, he pulled her up and dragged her farther into the woods, running blindly, praying they wouldn’t be struck by the bullets that continued to rain around them.

  He didn’t see the edge of the bluff until it was too late. One moment his booted foot struck dirt, the next the ground fell away beneath him. The last sound he remembered was Leah’s anguished scream, echoing over and over as they fell.

  Chapter Three

  Leah had thought she was ready for death. In the past six months there had been times she had prayed to die. But falling off that cliff, gunfire echoing around her, the ground rushing up to meet her, she wanted only to live. Her hands bound behind her by the cuffs, she had only Travis’s strong arms to save her as he wrapped himself around her. She buried her face against his chest and prayed wordlessly, eyes closed against the fate that awaited.

  They hit the ground hard. Her head struck the dirt and she rolled, a sharp ache in her shoulder. Stunned, she lay slumped against a tree trunk, aware of distant shouts overhead and the sound of the rushing creek below.

  Travis! Frantic, she struggled to sit and looked around. He lay ten feet down the slope, his big body still, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead. Crawling, half sliding on the steep grade, she made her way to him. “Travis!” she called. She nudged him with the toe of her shoe. “Travis, wake up.”

  The shouts overhead grew louder. She looked up toward the house, but trees blocked her view. Had Duane and the others seen them fall? Would they come down here to look for them? She leaned down, her face close to his, so that she could smell the clean scent of his soap, mingled with the burned cordite from the weapon he had fired. “Travis, you have to wake up,” she pleaded. “We have to get out of here before they find us.” Duane would waste no time killing them, as she had seen him kill others before. She nudged him with her knee. “Travis, please!”

  He groaned and rolled away from her, clutching his injured head.

  She scooted after him. “We have to get out of here.” She kept her voice low, fearful Duane and the others might hear. The shouts had died down, but maybe they were only saving their breath for the climb down.

  He groaned again, but shoved himself into a sitting position and studied her, his gaze unfocused. “Leah? What happened?”

  “Duane was shooting at us and we went over the cliff.” She glanced up the slope again, expecting to see Duane or one of his thugs barreling toward them. “We have to get out of here before they come after us. Please, untie me.” She half turned and angled her cuffed hands toward him. Her shoulder ached with every movement, but she couldn’t worry about that now.

  He frowned at her, his vision clearing. “I remember now,” he muttered. Some of the hardness had returned to his gaze, and she knew he was recalling not just what had happened moments before, but the ugly history between them.

  “Please cut me loose,” she said. “I can’t move in this rough terrain with my arms behind my back like this. I promise I won’t try to run away.” He was her best hope of finally escaping from Duane Braeswood and his ruthless gang.

  Travis hesitated, then shifted to pull a multi-tool from a pouch on his belt and cut the flex-cuff. She cried out in relief, then pain, as she brought her arms in front of her.

  “You’re hurt.” He was on his knees in front of her, concern breaking through the coldness in his expression. “Were you hit, or did it happen in the fall?”

  “I landed on my shoulder.” She rubbed the aching joint. “I’m just a little banged up. But you took a nasty blow to the head. You’re still bleeding.”

  She reached toward the gash on his forehead. He shied away from her touch. “I’m okay,” He shoved to his feet, stumbling a little as he fought for balance. “Where are we?”

  “Above the creek that runs below the house.”

  “Which direction
is the road?” he asked.

  “That way, I think.” She pointed to their left.

  “What’s in the other directions?” he asked.

  She tried to visualize the area, but in the two weeks since they had relocated here, she had spent most of her time in the house, or running errands in Durango. Duane never left her alone, and he would have laughed in her face if she had expressed a desire to hike in the woods behind the house, though she had grown up hiking and camping very near here. “I’m not sure. It’s pretty rugged country. Duane had a map in his office of the Weminuche Wilderness area, so I think we’re very near there.”

  “So no houses or roads?”

  She shook her head. “Maybe some hiking trails, but nothing else. Wilderness is, well, wild. Undeveloped.”

  A gust of wind stirred the aspens, and a tree branch popped, making her jump. “We have to get out of here before they come after us,” she said.

  “Why wouldn’t they be more interested in going after the rest of the team?” he asked, even as he ejected the magazine from his gun and shoved in a fresh one. “They don’t even know who I am.”

  “They’ll have figured out I’m with you.” She stood and brushed dry leaves from her jeans. “Duane won’t let me get away.”

  “Because you mean so much to him.” No missing the bitterness behind those words.

  “Because I know a lot about the things he’s done and I can testify against him.” And because he never let anyone cross him without making sure they paid for their betrayal. She started to move past him, but he snagged her arm.

  “We’re not leaving,” Travis said. “We’re going back up there.”

  She stared at him. “We can’t go back. They’ll kill us.”