Wes spread his arms wide and flashed his most guileless grin. “What can I say?”
“I won’t fool you, Wes, you had me scared.”
He slapped Dutch on the shoulder. “Let’s go get this bastard.”
But when Dutch turned away to mount his snowmobile, Wes’s easygoing grin collapsed.
• • •
Lilly wanted to scream with frustration when her cell phone started to ring for the second time. It had been left on the end table, within sight but well out of reach. Tierney had made sure of that.
If Dutch had received her scanty message two nights ago, he would be frantic to reach her, knowing she’d spent all the time with Blue.
Or maybe it wasn’t Dutch calling at all.
Maybe her call to him hadn’t gone through and he’d never received her message. As she had said to Tierney last night, perhaps Dutch thought she’d been safe at home in Atlanta for the past two days. She had made it plain to him that their life together was over. If he had taken her at her word this time, he would no longer be concerning himself with her.
But when her cell phone began to ring for the third time, she prayed that it was Dutch, or someone, anyone, who would reach her before Tierney returned.
• • •
Tierney’s breathing was loud and labored. The vapor it formed in front of his face was sometimes dense enough to obscure his vision. His heart seemed to have inflated to fill his entire rib cage.
He had resolved to ignore the sprain in his ankle, but in this instance, mind-over-matter determination wasn’t working. The ankle had become weaker and more painful with every step. He could withstand the pain only because he was running for his life.
The minute his name had gone out over the airwaves, he became a target. Every man, woman, and child in Cleary would be out for his blood, and they wouldn’t hesitate to defy the authority of the FBI to get it. If Dutch Burton had received the message that Lilly was trapped with him, he would be at the forefront of this bloodthirsty band.
That was why Tierney had stayed off Mountain Laurel Road and was keeping to the woods. If an armed search-and-rescue party from Cleary was coming after Lilly—and Blue—the main road would be the route they’d take.
From yesterday’s experience, he had known what to expect when he set out. But knowing how arduous it was going to be didn’t make it any less so. He had to move both speedily and carefully, and those two modes were irreconcilable. He feared another injury, but he feared a fire-breathing mob of sharpshooters even more.
Eventually he reached his first destination—the road on the mountain’s western face. Relieved that he’d made it this far, he leaned against a tree trunk and sucked in huge drafts of oxygen, even though the air was so cold it hurt to take it in. He drank from the small plastic bottle he’d filled with water before leaving the cabin.
He’d driven this road only once before. Knowing that it was rarely used because of its disrepair, and that it would be virtually impassable now because of the accumulation of ice and snow, he figured it highly unlikely that anyone would be on it today.
Another advantage was that it didn’t intersect with Main Street, as the other road did. When he reached the end of this road at the foot of the mountain, he would be several miles from the center of town and less likely to be spotted before he could get someplace where he could think about what to do next.
He removed his cell phone from his coat pocket. Although it registered that he had service, his battery was dead. It had run down during the two days he’d left the phone on. He couldn’t make a call. But since service had been restored, others could. That was to his disadvantage.
Time to move.
He stepped out from the cover of the trees and onto the road. The going was rough, but nothing compared with the difficulty of trekking through the woods. He ducked his head against the fierce wind that cut through his inadequate clothing. The glare was so intense he had to squint his eyes nearly shut in order to see at all. He concentrated on nothing except placing one foot in front of the other. He could favor neither his left nor his right side because both hurt equally.
He tried not to think about Lil
ly.
Doing so made him second-guess his decision to leave her behind.
He’d had no choice, really. He couldn’t have brought her along.
Goddammit, why had she ventured into the shed and looked inside that box? She—
He stopped in his tracks and paused to listen, hoping that his ears were deceiving him. Over the loud soughing of his own breath and the howl of the wind, he picked up another sound. An approaching motorized vehicle. A snowmobile? No, not just one. Two at least. Growing louder, coming closer.
No, not closer. Here!
CHAPTER