“That painkiller is wearing off.” She took her arm from around his shoulder. “I need to rest.”
“Just over here.” He took her across a flat expanse littered with Spirea, Huckleberry, Juniper and dry, yellow grass to a clump of boulders beside a cliff that rose up another one hundred feet or more. “There’s a cave we can hide in.”
The cave was little more than a hollow in the cliff face twelve feet high by ten feet deep, but boulders as big as tanks blocked it from view to anyone coming along the expanse. The four men would be the exposed ones walking into an ambush.
Once they were inside the cave, she asked, “And what kind of plan do you have for me?”
“I don’t suppose you’re talking about how we’re going to get out of this.”
“Since returning, I’ve had this persistent feeling that everyone else has their own plan for me. They know everything there is to know about me—some, it turns out, know more about me than I know myself—and they all have a plan. And then there is you. Do you know everything there is to know about me, too?”
“I think I’m screwed no matter how I answer that.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Harry told me a bit about you after you were hired.”
“What bits?”
“You had recently gone through a number of personal challenges. He didn’t tell me what they were, only that you were going to have some trust issues for the first while on the job. He asked me to help you settle in any way I could. I didn’t think he meant I was supposed to meddle with your life.” He went to look out through a v-shaped opening between the two largest boulders in front of the cave. “Or fall in love with you.”
Pain rose from her thigh up to the back of her neck and along the back of her leg down to her foot as though someone had just inserted two hot needles under her skin. She inhaled sharply. “What?”
“How many bullets do you have left?”
“Not enough. What did you just say?”
“I’ve got one dart left in each pistol.” He looked back at her. “They must have split up. I only see two of them.”
She limped over and leaned against him to look out through the crack. “Where are the Cotton brothers? I did hear you, you know.”
“You can cover me from here. I’m going up to get a clear shot. And remember, I’m no marksman. I know you heard me.”
“They’re needles. You should be better at sticking needles into people than bullets. You stuck a needle into me.”
“You were only six inches away and I wasn’t trying to shoot you with one, though I did have your lovely red butt in my face. That was quite the distraction.”
“Men.”
“Yes, don’t hold it in, we’re all pigs.” He took a look through the crack. “Can we do this? They’re getting closer.”
She grabbed him and kissed him. “I had an affair with my FBI partner. It consisted of one night together at a conference in San Francisco. We agreed it wasn’t love and wasn’t right for either of us, but, still, I did it and I can’t take it back. I was planning to leave my husband before he died, but it had nothing to do with my one-night stand. Unfortunately, both of them were killed on the job and people started rumors that didn’t fit the facts.” She kissed him again. “Even Shana has a distorted view of what really happened and I haven’t had the courage to sit down with her and straighten her out. And I wasn’t looking for any kind of personal relationship with a man. Now you know everything there is to know about me. What’s your plan?”
His smile might be wonderful to wake up to, along with those twinkling grey-blues. “We take out the two who aren’t the Cotton brothers. We save ourselves, then we save Shana, then we see where this relationship that you found without even looking goes.” He circled around the boulder and started climbing.
An eagle circled overhead and screeched.
She peeked out at the two men and aimed her Beretta. It was difficult to get a good line of sight. The shrubs were no barriers to the men. They didn’t have to stay on any defined trail so they could spread out, but they also had fewer things they could use for cover. They knew they were vulnerable. They walked about twenty feet apart, crouched down and avoided taking a straight line.
Where were those damn Cotton twins?
The eagle screeched again.
One of the men stopped to look up.
“If he aims at it,” she muttered, “I’m going to shoot him right in the balls even if I have to stand clear.”
The eagle screeched and flew away.
Buzzing descended from above. One of Colter’s whirligigs lowered itself to hover over the clearing.
She heard the phfft of the dart gun. The man who’d been looking up staggered back and reached for his right thigh. He pulled out the dart and looked for the shooter. A second phfft had him reaching for his stomach only to crumple to the ground before he could pull the dart out.
The other man, the short, thick one, opened fire at the top of the boulder.
She heard Craig drop off it somewhere behind her as she looked through the crack. Where was the second man? She shifted onto her left leg and almost went down until she fell against the boulder to prop herself up.
The man was firing short, controlled bursts at the boulder as he ran toward it. The drone came along with him.
She aimed the Beretta and fired when he stopped to check for any results. Her fifth shot struck him in the neck.
“Two down,” Craig said from the cave.
Another fusillade of bullets hit the boulders and the rocks around the opening of the cave.
She opened fire on the drone. At least two bullets hit it. It wavered and spun wildly before dropping onto the second man. Without looking, she then pointed the Beretta through the crack and fired until her gun was empty. The other shooting stopped.
Craig took hold of her arm and led her to a narrow footpath between two boulders on the left side of the cave, something a mountain goat might use. They had to place their hands against the two boulders they were squeezing past and hop onto the trail.
She glanced back to see Billy and Bobby crossing the field. Had they forced the other two men to go first, giving them the choice of being shot if they didn’t and possibly shot if they did?
They gave their two fallen comrades no more consideration than to pick up their rifles and ammo clips.
There were two down and only two to go, except those two were probably the most vicious men under Colter’s command. Each one of them carried grudges against her and Craig along with two automatic rifles. And she was still getting farther away from Shana.