Chapter Twenty-eight

“How’re you doing?” Dare asked, an hour into the trek. They hadn’t talked much, because both of them had to pay close attention to their footing. The ground was mushy, with a thin layer of ice on top; a misstep like the one she’d made the night of the storm could cause a real emergency.

“I’m okay. The boot’s helping a lot.” The snug lacing and the elastic bandage provided much-needed support, helping stabilize her ankle.

“Are you hurting?”

“It’s kind of a dull ache, that’s all. I’m good.”

Dare kept the pace slow, his eagle eye measuring her progress and the amount of effort she was making. Angie just walked, not making any effort to camouflage her limp; if she had, he’d have known and that would have concerned him more. She was deeply appreciative of the walking stick, which gave her support over the uneven footing and took a lion’s share of strain off her ankle. Tomorrow her arm and shoulder might be sore from the effort, but big deal.

In an ideal situation, she would be sitting on a sofa or recliner with a pillow under her foot and an ice pack on the joint, but “ideal” was dreamland, and reality was that she had to walk. If they’d been moving across flat ground she wouldn’t have had much of a problem, but they weren’t. Downhill, uphill—the angles put a lot of stress on her ankle. Dare tried to mitigate that by moving at a diagonal as much as possible, but the hard reality was that they had to go down.

The mountains weren’t completely tree-covered; there were thick stands of trees, but there were also meadows, rock formations, outcrops, and steep drops. The meadows looked as if they would be the easiest to navigate, but they were so rocky that every step was uneven and her pace slowed to a crawl. They reached one section where there simply was no secure place for her to step. Dare held up his hand. “Wait right there.” He laid his rifle and the saddlebags aside, then returned to grasp her waist. Without noticeable effort he lifted her and swung her over the treacherous part to more solid footing.

She didn’t analyze the moment, she simply put her arms around his neck and kissed him. His size and strength made her feel more feminine than she’d ever felt before in her life, but that paled in comparison to the way he made her feel … treasured. Without hesitation he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in tight, hungrily taking her mouth, kissing her as deeply and thoroughly as if they had all day, as if his plans included pulling off their clothes right there and pushing inside her. Even if that was what he wanted, she didn’t know that she’d object. Her body knew him now, knew his taste and touch and scent, the weight and heft of him, the sounds he made when he came, and she responded to him on what felt like a molecular level, a calling of like to like.

But then he lifted his head and his narrowed blue eyes glinted down at her. “Not that I’m complaining, but what was that for?”

She had to swallow, hard, but she said honestly, “For treating me as if I matter.”

He lifted her off the ground, holding her so their gazes were almost level. His voice went even more gravelly than usual. “You matter to me; you matter a hell of a lot.”

“You matter a hell of a lot to me, too,” she said, and kissed him again, reveling in the moment.

After a minute he pulled his head back, sucking air, his hands kneading her butt cheeks as he worked her back and forth against his erection. “We either stop now, or you’re going to be feeling the wind on your bare ass.”

“If my ass gets bare, yours does, too,” she teased, then rested her face against his and sighed. “But I suppose we’d better keep going. I’m sorry I’m so slow; at this rate, we won’t make it to Lattimore’s before dark.”

“If we don’t, we don’t,” he replied, unperturbed.

Being the cause of their slow pace bothered her, though. At a brisk pace, a person could walk a mile roughly every fifteen minutes; she had no doubt Dare could handle that speed without breaking a sweat if the terrain hadn’t been so rough. She estimated they were moving no faster than a quarter of a mile every fifteen minutes, probably less than that, so not counting any stops to rest or eat they were traveling at less than one mile an hour. What would have been about a four- or five-hour trek for Dare, traveling alone, would take them eight to ten hours because of her, and that wasn’t taking into account any rest stops. There would be places where she could increase her speed, but in the end that wouldn’t be enough to make much difference, especially if they had to take any detours that cost them a lot of time and distance.

They set out again. Determined not to hold him back any more than necessary, Angie did the same thing she’d done when she’d first injured her ankle and was crawling down the mountain: She put the time and distance out of her mind, and concentrated on simply moving. She concentrated on the rhythm of step, walking stick, step; she’d read somewhere that when you were using a single crutch or a cane you held it on your strong side, but that didn’t make sense to her, so she held the walking stick in her right hand and used her upper body strength to take pressure off her ankle. Whether or not her system was as stable as holding the walking stick in her left hand, she couldn’t say, but her object was to keep her ankle from swelling up more than necessary.

Step, walking stick, step. She didn’t let herself flag, didn’t falter. Step, walking stick, step. She kept moving.

If he could have, Dare would have carried her. Did she have any idea how she looked, with her dark eyes so focused and intent, yet at the same time the expression in them was so faraway he doubted she’d hear him if he spoke? She wasn’t going to stop, she wasn’t going to give up.

This was how she’d come down the mountain during the storm, with everything else pushed to the side except what she needed to do; at least this time she was walking instead of crawling. She soldiered on, regardless, with the kind of resolve that the most hardened soldier would be proud to have.

His heart pounded hard, just watching her. There were millions of sweet, regular women in the world he could have fallen in love with, but he’d chosen her, a woman with grit in her gut and steel in her spine. When they fought—and they would fight—she wouldn’t back down an inch if she thought she was right. There might be some hard living in the days and years ahead of him. Hell yeah! He could hardly wait.

Not that he’d even breathed the word “marriage” yet, because he didn’t want to spook her until she was a little more settled with the idea of them being a couple. She was still brooding over the idea of him being her boss, which told him it hadn’t even occurred to her that the situation might be the other way around, that she was thinking about a semiprofessional relationship instead of a one hundred percent personal relationship in which she’d definitely have the upper hand, because, hell, she was a woman.

What was it with her? Weren’t women supposed to be the ones so focused on relationships and shit like that? She’d made one mistake, she’d had the balls to make sure that one mistake didn’t go one inch further, but then she’d beat herself up for not caving and pretending everything was all right, and staying with someone who she knew didn’t love her the way he should. Dare had the feeling Angie didn’t do anything halfway; from the very final and definite step she’d taken to get rid of the man who’d disappointed her, she was willing to go the distance—and beyond—to make her point.

He had to be crazy to be so crazy about her, but there it was, and damn if he wasn’t happy about it … now. Three days ago, he’d thought he needed his head examined, but even as bad as the night of the storm had been, since then he’d recognized what an opportunity God, or fate, had handed him. He’d made the best of it, too. Last night had been damn good. They fit together, physically, temperamentally, even their personalities. They made each other laugh. Even as solemn as she could be sometimes, he’d seen her eyes light up, seen her face relax and her lips curve and damn if she didn’t have some fuckable lips—

He wrenched his thoughts from that direction, because hiking with a hard-on could get damn uncomfortable.

After they’d been walking for two hours, he called a halt to let her rest, and for them both to drink some water. They hadn’t started out until close to nine o’clock, so he figured there was no way they’d reach Lattimore’s before dark, but they’d be okay. They were experienced in the outdoors, and they were prepared.

Angie sat on a rock while she sipped from a water bottle, her gaze sweeping over the rugged valleys opening up before them. Dare sat beside her and studied the same vista. Down below, the flood-swollen creek curved away to the left, but some distance ahead it swept back to the right, and somewhere, somehow, they would have to cross it. He could hear the creek even from this distance, a dull, distant roar as the rushing water tumbled over the rocky creek bed.

He pictured the topography, planning their route. He didn’t want to go all the way down to the creek, because there were rock formations that covered acres, and Angie couldn’t handle crossing them. In some places, going around them would be even more hazardous than crossing the rocks, so their best bet was to stay high enough to bypass the creek bank entirely. There was one place where they might—might—be able to cross the creek, and he’d check it out when they reached the area, but his plan right now was to go far enough south to pick up the road. That would take longer, but ultimately be a lot safer.

What the hell. He didn’t mind spending another night with Angie before they got back to the real world.

Progress was slow. Chad thought he could head east, but a swollen stream kept forcing him farther and farther to the south, till finally he was going in the right direction: down the mountain instead of cutting across it … at least for now. Time after time, just when he thought he was making some real progress, he ran into something that forced him off his chosen direction. He had to backtrack and go around obstacles so often he kind of lost track of how far he’d traveled, and that worried the hell out of him. What if he didn’t make it to Lattimore’s today? As cold as the weather was, he’d freeze his ass off tonight if he had to sleep out in the open.

Common sense told him he hadn’t traveled that far out of the way, that it was his impatience making every delay feel like hours when in reality it hadn’t been that long. The horse wasn’t making great time, but it was still faster than if he’d been on foot. Angie had mentioned that the camp had been almost ten miles away from Lattimore’s ranch, which wasn’t a great distance, so with any luck, he’d be on the road in a couple of hours, four at the most—hooray and hallelujah. His stomach growled, but he didn’t want another protein bar; he wasn’t that hungry yet. When this was over with, he hoped to hell he never had to see another protein bar in his whole life. After he crossed into Canada there’d be time to stop for a good, hot meal before he caught the next flight out to Mexico.

He could almost see it, could almost taste the freedom. Another name, more money than he knew what to do with … and he was so close …

He guided the horse along the tree line of a meadow, studying the land falling away below him, trying to figure out exactly where he was and where he needed to go, when something far down the meadow caught his eye.

He’d grown so accustomed to seeing nothing before him but mud and trees and blessed blue sky, it took him a moment to focus on and identify the movement down and to his right.

People. Two of them—a man and a woman. They were still a good distance away, and unless they turned around and really searched for movement, they wouldn’t see him, because he was still under cover of the trees. They were in a large clearing at the moment, unprotected by the trees that shielded Chad.

He didn’t have binoculars with him, but he did have the scope on his rifle. Moving carefully, he lifted the rifle to his shoulder and peered through the scope; at first he didn’t see anything because the field of vision was so narrow and he had to “acquire the target,” as the man he’d gone to for lessons had called it. Using small movements, he swept the scope back and forth until he found them, then adjusted the focus. Davis had made fun of his scope when he saw it, because it wasn’t one of the fancy brand names, but who was laughing now? Chad hadn’t seen any point in spending a thousand dollars for a scope he didn’t intend to use other than for show. He was pleased now that the scope worked just fine.

The man below was a big son of a bitch, but Chad didn’t recognize him. He identified Angie right away, though: the dark hair, her height, her shape—not that he could see her shape, because she was wearing that heavy coat, but he knew the coat. She hobbled along, with occasional help from the big guy. She’d been hurt after all, somehow, but not badly enough to stop her. He couldn’t begin to imagine how she’d met up with someone else who was also on foot; what were the fucking odds of that?

They both carried rifles slung over their shoulders, and they were on the path Chad needed to take in order to get off this damn mountain. He wasn’t going to waste a minute trying to go around them. Damn it, they were in his way.

Chad dismounted, said a couple of soft words to the horse, and looped the reins loosely over a branch. Rifle in hand, he sighted in on the couple below, but he couldn’t hold the weapon rock steady and at that distance even a tiny waver meant he’d miss his target.

No, shooting from this far away was too risky. He couldn’t be certain he’d hit his target, and he didn’t want to give them any warning. Rapidly he formulated a plan. Kill the man first, before they suspected that they weren’t alone. Not that Angie wasn’t a good shot, but she wasn’t very mobile, and he could outmaneuver her if by chance he couldn’t take her down, too, before she could react.

He’d practiced with both the pistol and the rifle, and he was a good marksman, but shooting downhill was a bitch at the best of times and his targets were moving—slowly, but moving. He had to get closer, but getting closer meant leaving the cover of the trees and exposing himself to view if they should happen to look behind them, not to mention return fire. And if he didn’t manage to get both of them, there would be return fire; he had to plan on it, choose his position accordingly.

The long downward sweep of the meadow was heavily dotted with rock—slabs of rock, boulders big and small, some barely jutting out of the earth and others sitting there like huge lumps. There was a lot of cover to be had, if he could get to it without being noticed.

He took notice of the wind. It had been swirling all day, coming first from one direction and then another, but now it was blowing straight into his face. Marksmanship was mathematics, taking every little factor such as wind and drop and bullet velocity into account. He’d focused more on the pistol, knowing that was how he’d take down Davis, but he knew the basics of distance shooting. This didn’t qualify for true distance shooting, because they were no more than a hundred and fifty yards away at the most, but considering what was at stake he didn’t want to risk a shot that might miss.

They were moving at a snail’s pace, which was to his advantage, but he couldn’t delay too long or they’d reach the tree line below and he’d lose them. With the wind blowing sound away from them, they weren’t likely to hear him. Chad moved to his left, putting one of those big boulders between him and his targets, and headed for the boulder at a half-run, crouched low.

He was getting excited. It looked as if he’d get his hunt, after all. This was the wild, and in the wild survival of the fittest was the rule nature and man—and woman—lived by.

Ninety yards behind him, the bear was padding closer and closer to his prey, the scent now blowing strong in his nostrils.