Manhunt in the Wild West. Jessica Andersen

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СКАЧАТЬ attorney had lodged appeal after appeal, but the filings had wound up logjammed in the legal system, which Fax figured was no accident. The courts had no love of terrorists.

      The delay had given Jane time to formulate Fax’s cover and arrange to have him locked up in the same prison as the terrorist leader and his two lieutenants. She’d turned Fax’s honorable military discharge into a dishonorable ousting, cast him in the role of anarchist, invoked the USA PATRIOT Act and held him without trial, making him that much more attractive to an anti-American bastard like al-Jihad.

      And thus, an unholy alliance had been born, right on schedule.

      In person, the terrorist leader was tall, thin and angular, and graceful enough in his movements that he almost appeared effete…except for his eyes, which were those of a killer.

      From reading the available reports, Fax had known that al-Jihad would be a smart, driven, dangerous man. Meeting him in the flesh had reinforced that impression and added a new realization: the bastard wasn’t just dangerous; he was completely without a conscience when it came to killing Americans. Worse, he enjoyed the hell out of it.

      That put Fax in an even more tenuous position than he’d anticipated, making it a seriously bad idea to draw attention. Yet that was just what he was risking if he fought too hard to save the pretty medical examiner from becoming part of the collateral damage.

      “Boss?” Lee said plaintively, looking at the passenger’s seat of the van, where al-Jihad sat silent and square-shouldered.

      The terrorist leader sent his follower a dark look that all but said “get a spine,” yet he said nothing.

      Muhammad aimed a kick at Lee and growled, “Get in the damn van.” He jerked his chin at Fax. “You, too. And bring the woman. We’ll need a hostage if things get sticky on the way out.”

      The original plan had been for Rickey Charles—whom al-Jihad had somehow contacted and bribed—to cover the switch for as long as possible, giving them time to get well away. In the absence of that help, their window of opportunity to escape cleanly was closing fast.

      “But—” Fax bit off the protest, knowing he was already on tenuous footing with the terrorists.

      The only reason he was there at all was because he’d developed the contact for the death-mimicking drugs they’d needed to get on the meat wagon. He’d contacted al-Jihad through a Byzantine trail of notes hidden in the few common areas the prisoners were given access to, one at a time. He’d offered the drug in exchange for a place within al-Jihad’s terror cell, and the plan had been born.

      Frankly, he was somewhat surprised they hadn’t tried to kill him yet, now that they were outside the prison walls. That they hadn’t tried to off him indicated that they still had some use for him, but he had a feeling that amnesty wouldn’t last long if he started arguing orders.

      She’s acceptable collateral damage, he told himself, and went back for the woman.

      Damned if she didn’t stir a little and curl into him when he picked her up and held her against his chest. Surprised, he looked down.

      She had dark, chestnut-highlighted hair and faint freckles visible through a fading summer tan. Her cheeks and lips were full, her chin softly rounded, and her nose turned up slightly at the end, giving her an almost childlike, vulnerable air. But there was nothing childlike about the curves that pressed against him, and there was sure as hell nothing juvenile about the unexpected surge of lust that slammed into him when she shifted and turned her face into his neck, so her hair tickled the edge of his ear and feathered across the sensitive skin beneath his jaw.

      “Move your ass,” Lee snapped from inside the van.

      Muhammad finished disabling the vehicle’s state-issued GPS locator and got in the driver’s seat, then gunned the engine to warn Fax that he was running out of time.

      Sometimes it’s necessary to sacrifice a few to save the rest, Fax reminded himself. Still, his stomach twisted in a sick ball as he slung the woman through the side door of the vehicle, so she landed near her dead friend, whose corpse was stacked with two of the guards’ bodies. The other two bodies were still on the gurneys, one of which was jammed in at an angle where Lee had shoved it in after their escape plan had blown up in their faces.

      Even without Rickey Charles, they might’ve bluffed their way through the body transfer and talked the woman into signing off without confirming the identities of the corpses, but once Lee killed the morgue attendant, even that slim chance had disappeared.

      Their escape could get real messy real quick, Fax knew. Problem was, he needed them to get free so the terrorists would reach out to their contacts and plan their next move.

      Which meant the woman’s life—and his own, for that matter—were expendable in the grand scheme of things.

      Hating the necessity more than he would’ve expected to, he jumped into the van and rolled the side door closed just as Muhammad hit the gas and the van peeled away from the ME’s office.

      The four men braced to hear the alarm raised any second, to see pursuit behind them. But there was no alarm, no pursuit as al-Jihad’s second in command navigated the city streets of Bear Claw.

      Fax noted that they were heading roughly northward, back in the direction of the prison rather than away, but he didn’t ask why, didn’t even let on that he’d noticed or even cared. He simply filed the information, and hoped like hell he’d have a chance to get it to Jane before al-Jihad and the others decided he’d outlived his usefulness.

      Maybe five miles outside the city limits, well down a deserted road that wound through the state forest, Muhammad pulled off into a small parking lot that served a trailhead leading into the wilderness.

      Al-Jihad, who was still riding shotgun, turned to Lee and Fax, and said in his dead, inflectionless voice, “Kill the woman and dump all of the bodies in the canyon. We won’t need them where we’re going.”

      Which is where? Fax wanted to ask but didn’t because he knew the game too well. The more he followed orders without question, the longer he would live, and the more information he’d gain about the structure of al-Jihad’s network inside the U.S.

      So instead of asking the questions he wanted answered, he nodded and rolled open the side door, then waited while Lee climbed out. When the other man turned back, Fax shoved one of the body bags at him.

      Lee caught the dead guard and nearly went down. “Watch it!” he snapped, glaring at Fax.

      “Sorry,” Fax said with little remorse, having already figured out that al-Jihad and Muhammad liked the fact that he didn’t let the lemming push him around. Jerking his chin in the direction of the trailhead, he said, “I’ll be right behind you.”

      Lee muttered something under his breath, but slung the body bag over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, and headed off into the woods, struggling only slightly under his burden.

      Hyperaware of the scrutiny he was receiving from the two men in the front of the van, Fax reached down for the woman, his mind spinning as he desperately tried to figure out a way to keep her alive while protecting his cover.

      He didn’t know her name, but somehow she’d become the symbol of all the warm, civilized things he’d dreamed of from the confines of his cell, all the beauty and laughter he lived in the darkness to protect.

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