Dakota Marshal. Jenna Ryan

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СКАЧАТЬ was nothing but candies in that box.”

      “It was the gift giver not the gift that was the point. For the first three years of our marriage you were undercover more than you weren’t. And nothing got better when you ditched your badge and joined the U.S. marshals.”

      “You knew what you were getting into.”

      “Not as well as I knew what I was getting out of.”

      Averting his gaze from hers at last, he regarded the darkened window. “Your point.” When he looked at her again, still at dangerously close range, she saw genuine regret in his features. “I never meant to involve you in this. Rapid City’s where I happened to be when I got hit, and you were the only person I knew I could trust.”

      Okay, that wasn’t fair. Before it could fully ignite, the spark fueling her temper fizzled and died, leaving in its wake a jumble of feelings she couldn’t begin to separate.

      “You always were good—” She halted as his gaze traveled past her and suspicion replaced regret in his features.

      She turned but saw nothing in the misshapen shadows beyond the glass. “Is someone there?”

      “Probably not. Get the lights just in case.”

      It wasn’t exactly a reassuring remark. But she went for the switch and plunged the cabin into darkness.

      “Now what?” she asked twenty silent seconds later.

      “Shh.”

      He eased them both away from the window. Woodsy night sounds filtered in. Beyond that, everything had gone still and quiet.

      Then a twig snapped in the nearby trees, and Alessandra’s senses went on high alert.

      Swearing softly, McBride reached for his gun in the back of his waistband.

      One of the boards on the porch creaked. There was a rush of movement, a thud of feet and finally a crash as a rock flew through the front window. A split second later, the door slammed open. Emitting an attack cry, a man charged in, hands raised and clutching a very large ax.

      EDDIE NOTICED the broken window first, then the tire tracks in the mud. Coming, going, maybe coming again. There was no truck in the vicinity, and no sign of movement inside.

      It wasn’t quite dawn. The sky was lightening but the shadows would hide him for another twenty minutes. Plenty of time to get the deed done.

      He was savoring the moment when a light went on. The front door opened and a man stumbled out. He was tall and dark haired, but too gangly to be McBride.

      The fury that rose was swiftly expelled. Eddie looked at his vehicle, then back at the stranger currently doing his business off the side porch.

      A half-naked woman emerged, wobbled in one direction, then the other, until she finally collided with the man. They giggled and staggered back inside.

      The light winked out.

      Should he do them, anyway, just for being in this remote cabin at this time when he’d been looking for McBride and the pretty veterinarian?

      A nasty grin split his face. No. Leaving a trail of corpses was never a good thing. But he had extra guns, and as long as they were too drunk to walk straight, he might as well have a little fun. He’d cover his face with a bandanna, his head with a hat and do the stick-’em-up thing from behind.

      If they had any information at all, they’d talk. Then depending on his mood, the inclination of his trigger fingers and whether or not they did something stupid, they’d either live or they’d die.

      As for McBride and the pretty vet? Eyes on the prize, Eddie-boy. Bang, bang, cha-ching.

      IT AMAZED ALESSANDRA that anything could shock her. However, a second wild-eyed, weapon-wielding youth in one night was too extreme even for McBride’s world.

      The young man, trailed by a girl in Daisy Dukes and flip-flops, blasted across the threshold with a Tarzan yell and more fear than aggression in his eyes. McBride disarmed him easily, knocking the ax from his sweaty hands and pinning him to the wall. Alessandra shook off her momentary trance and intercepted the girl as she made a beeline for McBride’s back.

      It took fifteen noisy minutes to sort through the confusion. Apparently the college-aged youth was Joan’s nephew. He had his aunt’s permission to use the cabin during his cross-state camping trip. Unfortunately for all of them, tonight was the night he and his girlfriend had reached Dead Lake.

      Alessandra knew that she and McBride could have stayed in the cabin until morning. She also knew they’d be endangering innocent lives if they did. So they left. And drove for more than three hours before McBride agreed to stop.

      Having been raised on a farm, Alessandra didn’t consider herself a wilderness wimp. But sleeping in McBride’s truck, then attempting to eat breakfast while swarms of mosquitoes, horse and deerflies did the same, proved next to impossible.

      Deet was the only answer, and Alessandra wanted the sticky repellant gone as soon as possible. That meant another shower, this one in a crappy public facility that boasted slime-coated floors and a weak spray of barely warm water. They didn’t get back on the road until mid-morning.

      More correctly, on the back roads. It was one wooded cow path after another, roughly stitched together.

      “You know,” she remarked with a quick hiss of pain for her abused backside, “unless he’s taking this same route, which is unlikely for an escaped felon, Rory Simms will be in Mexico before we get out of the Black Hills.”

      McBride maneuvered around a two-foot gouge. “Rory’s a slow mover, Alessandra. He’s an even slower thinker. He’s also not good on his own, which is why I figure he’s heading this way.”

      “Am I supposed to accept that as an explanation?”

      “He’s making his way to his contacts.” McBride divided his attention between the road, his laptop and the on-board map. “People his sister might not know about.”

      “Okay, obvious next question, if she doesn’t know about them, how do you?”

      He didn’t quite avoid a missing chunk of road and as a result almost bounced Alessandra out of her seat. “You should tighten that strap.”

      She sighed instead. “Answer the question, McBride.”

      “Rory likes hookers. Some hookers accept money for services other than sex. My source inside Casey Simms’s organization got a line on Rory’s favorite prostitute. He paid, she talked, we scored.” “You hope.”

      “Yeah, there’s that. But from the text I got last night, X thinks that no matter where Rory appears to be going, he’s really taking an indirect route toward one of his contacts. As far as our particular route is concerned, think Eddie and the more twists and turns, the better.”

      “At the risk of sounding repetitive, if Rory’s using the interstate or even a semidecent highway, he’ll be there and gone before we reach the next mountain pass.”

      “We’ll see,” McBride said.

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