Dangerous Ground 3: Blood Heat (12 page)

Will ran around to the driver"s side and slid behind the wheel. He patted frantically for the keys.
Christ
. He could have dropped them anywhere at any time…

No. There they were. He jammed them into the ignition. He had just long enough to wonder how badly the SUV had been damaged by the sedan crashing into it, and then the engine roared to life.

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Taylor cresting the hill and running for the SUV.

Will reversed sharply, rolling back a few feet. He lunged across the console and shoved open the passenger-side door. A second later Taylor jumped in, hauling the door shut behind him.

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“They"re right behind me. I think I winged the guy.
Go
.”

“Gretchen will kill you for that,” Kelila panted.

“Gretchen wants to kill me anyway.” Taylor was reloading quickly, throwing hasty looks out the side window.

Will jammed on the accelerator, and the SUV shot forward. The tires spun on gravel, and they bumped onto the highway. The vehicle seemed to be responding okay. Will spared a quick look at the gauges. No red lights. The left rear was dragging a little.

He gave her a little more gas, and they sped round the first bend only to see the black sedan parked squarely across the narrow road.

“
Shit
.” Will braked hard, steering into the skid, a tight hand-over-hand maneuver so that the SUV rocked to a halt lined up parallel a few inches from the bullet-riddled sedan blocking their way.

There was a long wooded drop on the left and a steep rocky climb on the right.

No way around the sedan and no way through.

“We"ve got to go back.” Taylor gave voice to Will"s thoughts.

Will nodded tightly. “Get on the floor,” he ordered Kelila.

She obeyed, moving with what seemed to him clumsy, shaking slowness.

Taylor rolled down his window and scrambled to sit on the ledge, bracing himself. He thumped the roof of the SUV. “Go.”

“Hang on, for Christ"s sake.” Will reversed, yanked the wheel, and they spun out, hurtling back down the narrow road.

As they swung around the curve, he saw Gretchen and Victor waiting for them. At the same moment, Taylor opened fire.

Will floored it. He felt the
thunk
of bullets hitting the side of the SUV, heard Kelila screaming, felt the burn of glass on his neck as the side window behind him shattered.

Taylor was still firing in quick succession.

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And then they were around the next bend and flying down the road back to Carrizozo.

The sound of shots faded. Gretchen was a tiny, dark figure in Will"s rearview, running out to the blacktop to fire final, wild shots after them.

Taylor slithered agilely back through the window and dropped heavily into the seat beside Will.

Will threw him a quick look. “Okay?”

Taylor assented. He wiped his forehead. His eyes met Will"s “You?”

Will nodded. He looked in the rearview. “Everyone okay?”

No response from the backseat.

Taylor half turned, reaching down to Kelila. “You all right?”

She groaned. “I think the baby"s coming.”

“You always say that.”

“My water broke.”

Taylor returned to facing forward in his seat. “Did you hear that?”

“Roger.”

“Do we try to make it back to Carrizozo or try to find a ranger station?”

“What"s a ranger supposed to do?”

“What are
we
supposed to do?”

“How long before the baby comes?” Will called back to Kelila.

She was carefully picking herself up from the floor and lying on the seat. “I"m not flying anywhere till this baby comes.”

“That"s not what I asked you. How long till he comes?”

“It could be anytime. It could be twelve hours. It could be twelve minutes.”

Taylor said suddenly, like a student recalling the answer to a tough exam question, “Are you having contractions?”

“Yes.”

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“How often?”

“Often enough.”

Far down the road, Will spied another vehicle. The first they"d seen other than the Hart"s sedan. “Let"s head for Carrizozo.” He threw another glance at Taylor, who looked about as tired and disheveled as Will had ever seen him. “How
did
you get out of that cave?”

“I walked. It turned out not to be Carlsbad Caverns, after all.”

“It could have been.”

“Yeah, but it wasn"t.” Taylor sighed wearily. He ejected the magazine, removed the clip, squinted at it. “Two rounds left.”

“Did you nail Victor?”

“It looked like it.”

“Gretchen will kill you,” Kelila offered by way of comfort.

“Been there, done that.”

Will reached out to pat Taylor"s thigh. The approaching car was black. An SUV. Taking the winding road very fast.

Too fast.

“What I want to know is how they found her.”

“Who?” Will asked.

“Victor and Victoria. They didn"t track us from Colorado. I can accept that we missed one tail. But two? No way.”

“Reuben,” Kelila said. “Reuben must have called Mikhail and told him about the baby. And Mikhail sent Gretchen to bring us back.”

“Nanny get your gun,” Taylor said. “If you knew Ramirez couldn"t be trusted, why the hell did you run to him?”

“I didn"t know where else to go. My parents believe all the lies the government has told about me.”

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“Oh right. Like the fact—”

“Trouble,” Will snapped.

Taylor was instantly all attention. He observed the vehicle speeding their way.

“Black SUV,” he said thoughtfully. “You think it"s Nemov?”

“I think I don"t want to depend on coincidence.” He threw back to Kelila, “Get down and hold on.” Will craned his head as Taylor leaned across him to grab his shoulder strap and fasten his seat belt.

Taylor sat back, buckling himself in. His pistol rested between his hands, relaxed and ready.

Will spared him a crooked grin. His gaze returned to the road. Tinted windows, heavy-duty roof rack. Nemov. But what did the crazy bastard think he was going to do?

Wait. Had Nemov recognized them? He wouldn"t expect them coming this direction.

Maybe…

There was a turnout a couple of yards ahead. Will slowed.

Taylor cast him a quick look. “What are you doing?”

“He"s speeding trying to catch us. He thinks we"re miles ahead. He may not even know what we"re driving. Is there a map in that glove compartment?”

“I picked a map up at the motel.” Taylor shook out the folds.

Will braked, and they swung neatly into the turnout. Will grabbed the map, holding it up. Taylor leaned forward, keeping his head beneath the dashboard as Nemov screeched past.

Will watched the black SUV disappear around the bend.

“Go,” Taylor said, sitting up. “He"s going to run into that sedan in about four minutes, and it won"t take him long to figure out what happened.”

Will hit the accelerator, and they sped out of the turnout.

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Neither of them spoke as they wound their way back down through the golden, shimmering hills. The squeal of the tires picked up a kind of rhythm as they banked into the curves and straightened out once more.

Taylor sat half-turned to watch the road behind them, but the road remained empty.

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Chapter Ten

Hedwig"s contractions were coming faster by the time they pulled into the nearly empty parking lot of the small grouping of adobe buildings that comprised Carrizozo Indian Hospital.

“Is this place even open?” Will asked, turning off the ignition.

“It"s supposed to be.” Taylor double-checked the directory on his phone.

“Thirteen beds. Family practice. Inpatient and outpatient.”

“I need a
real
hospital,” groaned Hedwig.

“This
is
a real hospital.”

“You"re going to kill me and the baby both.”

“You couldn"t find anything else?” Will asked, uneasily watching the writhing in the backseat.

“This is the closest. She keeps saying she"s going to have this kid any second—”

“All right. Can you make sure they"re open before we try dragging her out of the car?”

Taylor got out of the car and went up the cement walk. The heat of the day was fading, but the walls of the building still radiated warmth. Wilted flowers struggled in the baked dirt of what was optimistically intended as landscaping. It did look sort of deserted, but there was a shiny new pickup in the parking lot, as well as a very old ambulance.

He pushed through the double glass doors, and a wave of antiseptic-scented, chilled air hit him.

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A plump Indian boy of about seventeen stood behind a counter. His eyes widened at the sight of Taylor. And if Taylor looked half as rough as he felt, no wonder. It had been one hell of a long day.

“Are you open?” Taylor asked.

“Yes.” The kid seemed to collect himself. “If you want to sit down, I"ll bring you the paperwork.”

“It"s not for me. I"ve got a woman in the parking lot who"s about to give birth.

Do you have a doctor on the premises?”

“My mom—that is, Dr. Cruz is over at Happy Pete"s having her evening break.

I can page her.”

Taylor sincerely hoped Happy Pete"s was not a bar. “Could you? That would be great.”

“Sure, I"ll—”

Whatever else the kid was about to say was lost in the jarring sounds of skidding tires, blasting horns, and breaking glass from outside. The unmistakable accompaniment of a car crash.

“It"s an accident!” the kid exclaimed, coming around the counter. “It happens all the time on this corner.” He ran out through the glass doors.

“Are you kidding me?” Taylor asked the empty room.

Apparently the joke was on him. He shoved open the glass doors, narrowly missing being mown down by the kid, who was already racing back, looking stricken.

“There"s a guy with a gun out there!” He ran to the phone on the desk.

Taylor banged out through the entrance. He drew his weapon, keeping his pistol at low ready as he jogged down the cement walk.

“But the baby is coming. I can"t walk.”

“You can walk, milaya moyna. I guarantee you will find the strength. Or perhaps you wish to watch me blow a hole through the chest of this agent?”

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“No, I don"t want that, but—”

“I do not negotiate. Come.”

“Don"t get out of that car,” Will ordered thickly. “Keep the doors locked.”

Taylor leaned against the grainy bricks and poked his head around the rounded corner of the building. Nemov stood by their vehicle. He had one arm wrapped around Will"s throat. He held a new shotgun in the other. It was pointed at Will"s head.

“There you are, little man,” he said, spotting Taylor. “I thought you would be here faster. Come out where I can see you.”

Taylor leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes in brief prayer. He brought his weapon up and stepped out in firing stance.

“Federal agent. Drop your weapon.”

Nemov seemed taken aback. He laughed. “Do you not see I have your partner?”

Taylor"s eyes met Will"s. Blood was running down Will"s face from a cut in his hairline, but he seemed otherwise okay. Taylor flicked a quick look at their vehicle.

Nemov had charged his reinforced SUV into their rental, crunching its nose into the tall brown trash Dumpsters.

Will had either gone for Nemov or been stunned just long enough for the bounty hunter to drag him out of the car. Either way, Hedwig had had the sense to lock herself in. The windows that weren"t broken were firmly sealed.

“The sheriffs are on their way. Drop your weapon.”

“Do you not see we have the Mexican stand—”

Taylor fired.

He had to hit Nemov at exactly the right place in the shoulder in order to paralyze his arm, and that meant grazing Will as well. He didn"t want to, but he couldn"t take the chance of an involuntary reflex of Nemov"s fingers on that trigger.

If Taylor"d stopped to weigh all the possibilities, he might not have made the shot as cleanly as he did going simply by instinct. As it was, Nemov howled his pained Dangerous Ground 3: Blood Heat

97

outrage and dropped the shotgun, which hit the asphalt and exploded, taking out the tire of their SUV.

Will stumbled free and kicked the shotgun farther away. He clamped a hand to his bloody shoulder.

“You shot me!” He was staring at Taylor in utter disbelief.

“I know. Sorry.” Taylor brushed past him, slamming Nemov over the hood of the SUV. “I need your handcuffs.”

Will groped one-handed, found his cuffs, and tossed them at Taylor. “You fucking
shot
me, MacAllister.”

“I know, Will. I"m very sorry.” He adjusted the cuffs for Nemov"s massive wrists, clamped them on, and knocked him to his knees.

“I am injured,” roared Nemov. “I am bleeding.”

“
You
, I did mean to shoot, so just be grateful we"re at a hospital.”

Taylor stood as a white and gray cop car turned into the lot, lights flashing, siren screaming. It was followed by a second car with the sheriff"s insignia.

The SUV door swung open. Hedwig stepped out, clutching her belly, and tottered slowly toward the walkway.

“Where are you going?” Taylor called.

“To have my baby!”

The sheriffs piled out of their cars as still another police vehicle screeched into the lot.