Manhunt in the Wild West (16 page)

And he was lost.

C
HELSEA KNEW
she was making a big mistake, but she had to believe it’d be a bigger mistake to let him walk away without taking what she could get of the magic they made together. If it was just sex, then that was all it would be. And if, deep down inside, she knew it was far more than that on her part, she’d deal with that heartache tomorrow.

Tonight she wanted the man,
her
man, for this one final night they had together. So she kissed him, and was prepared to hang on tight if he tried to pull away.

She wasn’t prepared for him to kiss her back. Which was exactly what he did, grabbing on to her and leaning in hard, taking her kiss from an invitation to a demand in the space of a second.

Heat speared through her. Want. Longing. And raw, no-holds-barred lust.

Whereas the night before had at least been cloaked with the illusion of romance, now there was none. He bent her over his arm, ravaging her lips and throat, his grip on her so tight she could do little more than sag back and moan with the feel of him, and the heat that spiraled up within her.

He bore her to the bed where he’d chained her that morning. Chelsea had a brief flash of wishing Sara hadn’t disposed of the cuffs, followed by a hard blush brought on by the thought.

Fax’s rusty chuckle let her know he’d read her expression, or else his mind had paralleled hers. She opened her eyes to find his face very near hers, his eyes gone flinty with passion.

He was breathing hard, with quick rasps—they both were. They were twined together on the yielding surface of the mattress, although she wasn’t sure when they’d gotten there or how. Her T-shirt was up around her throat, and his hands were on her breasts, chafing them, working them until her entire body was a coil of sensation.

She arched back and cried out, dragging at his clothes, at his hard body atop hers, needing more, demanding more.

They parted only long enough to shed clothes and pull aside the cheap bedspread he’d stolen from the airport hotel, and for him to don the second and last of the condoms she kept in her purse. Then they were back on the bed straining together, chasing each other through the flames that licked around her, inside her.

He thrust into her without preamble, a tremendous surge that had her biting back a cry. He buried his own shout in her mouth, both of them aware that they weren’t alone at the motel, yet at the same time unaware of anything but the slide and slap of flesh and the raw need that drove them together and apart, together and apart.

She came fast and hard, clamping around him, vising her calves behind his hips and driving him deeper and deeper still. He plunged into her again and again, spurring her onward, prolonging the pleasure until it passed beyond her comfort zone to something that wrenched her gut and warned that she would never be the same, she would never have another lover who could measure up to what she had experienced with Fax.

Then he cut loose, going rigid against her and muffling a long, hollow cry against her throat. She felt him pulsing within her, felt the long, drawn-out shudders that wracked his big, strong body, and she wrapped herself around him, giving herself to the moment, to the man, as she came again.

Tears tracked from the corners of her eyes and mingled with the sweat that prickled her body and then cooled, binding them together as surely as their flesh was united.

She’d been lying from the start. It hadn’t just been sex for her. Not by a long shot.

Fax shuddered one last time and went limp against her. He looped his arms around her waist and hung on like he never meant to let go, and she allowed it because she was helpless to do otherwise, helpless to stop another tear from building and breaking free.

“Crushing you,” he muttered thickly, and rolled to his side, taking her with him, rearranging them so they were spooned together, her back to his front. Then he pulled the coverlet over them both. He murmured something else, low and sweet, and too slurred for her to understand.

Within minutes, he was asleep.

Chelsea, on the other hand, was wide awake. She knew what she had to do and hated it. She wanted to stay in his arms, wanted to draw out every last precious second they had left together. But, really, their time had already run out. She was already using borrowed hours, time stolen from the people who trusted her, who needed her.

Slipping out from underneath Fax’s sleep-heavy arm, she rose from the bed. Forcing herself not to look back, not to regret, she got dressed in her jeans and heavy shirt, and carried her shoes to the door.

There, she did look back. And immediately wished she hadn’t.

Fax looked fierce even in his sleep. He’d pulled her pillow to his chest, cradling it as though he was still trying to protect her, trying to keep her close. Only, he’d protected her well enough, but he’d never let her close, never let her inside.

And after what she was about to do, he never would.

“Now it’s my turn to say I’m sorry,” she said, hanging on to the door frame to keep herself from going back to the bed and touching him, kissing him the way she wanted to—the way that would be guaranteed to wake him, guaranteed to give him a chance to stop her. Which wasn’t an option. So instead she touched her fingers to her sex-swollen lips and blew him a kiss. “Goodbye, Jonah.”

She closed the door quietly behind her, and tiptoed away from Jane’s room. The other woman couldn’t know what they planned.

At her quiet knock, Seth opened the door to the room he and Cassie were sharing. He was dressed for action, and the others were gathered at his back. “Thought you weren’t going to make it,” he said, his eyes narrowing on hers.

“I’m here now,” she said, refusing to explain, or make excuses. “Let’s go.”

A
KNOCK ON THE DOOR
roused Fax an hour past dawn. He was alone.

More than that, the sheets beside him were cool to the touch, and something inside him said that Chelsea had been gone for a while.

She went for breakfast,
he told himself, knowing it was a lie and hating the dismay that shot through him, the worry.

After yanking on his pants and shirt, he opened the door. He was unsurprised to see Jane on the other side, and equally unsurprised to see that she was alone. “They’re gone,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

Jane nodded. “Around 2:00 a.m.”

Fax stiffened. “You heard and didn’t stop them? Didn’t come get me?”

“What would you have done?” Faint scorn laced her voice. “Get your head out of your pants and into the game, Jonah. If they’re not fully on board with the plan then we’re better off without them.”

“What if they go to the cops?”

“They won’t. They bought into that much of it.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the mountain. “They’re on their way up there, which is just as well for us. It’ll get them out of our way while we do the real dirty work.”

She held his gaze, awaiting a response.

But what could he say? She was his boss. She’d saved his life and been what he’d needed, when he’d needed it. Chelsea and the others were…Damn it, he didn’t know what they were anymore.

Chelsea had gotten to him in a way no other woman had since Abby. Hell, his feelings for her made the feelings he’d had for Abby look like a cheap imitation of lust and caring and—no, he wouldn’t call it love, couldn’t use a word like that, when he knew damn well it’d be a lie.

“Your call, Jonah,” Jane said. But they both knew he’d made his choice long ago and had reaffirmed it just the night before. He was her man in all the ways that really counted.

He jerked his head toward her vehicle. “Let’s go. Two of us will be enough.”

It would have to be or Bear Claw was in serious trouble.

He’d deal with Chelsea’s defection later. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d just leave town. It might be easier for both of them that way.

By 9:00 a.m. Sunday, Chelsea and the others were in place.

They split up: Sara went with Tucker and Alyssa, while Chelsea stayed with Cassie and Seth. They hid off to the side of the main fault line, one group for each of the two mine-top huts they believed would be al-Jihad’s target.

The huts were low steel structures built into the side of the mountain. More importantly, they flanked a hundred-foot-wide swath of unstable mountainside, which had been weakened by mining efforts and seriously destabilized by the recent rains.

Although the engineers swore it would stay put until they got their terracing and trenches in place, allowing them to trigger a so-called controllable avalanche, it looked precarious to Chelsea, and the cluster of buildings making up the ski lodge, which she could see at the base of the mountain, looked very small in comparison.

The idea of someone bringing the mountainside down on the stadium was enough to have her stomach in knots, but she breathed through it, knowing they were there to prevent exactly that.

Since cell transmissions could be detected, they’d agreed on a simple system of whistles and birdcalls to communicate.

The stealth proved unnecessary, though, as nine o’clock turned to ten, then eleven with no sign of company. The six friends were alone on the mountainside, and the parade had to be past the halfway point by now. There should be some activity if this was truly the terrorists’ target.

Either they’d guessed wrong or there’d been a change in plans.

As she waited, Chelsea tried to keep herself from imagining how Fax must’ve felt when he woke up and found her gone, found all of them gone. She told herself it served him right for chaining her to the bed—fair was fair. But no matter how hard she tried to be, she wasn’t the vindictive sort. If there’d been another way to do what she felt she needed to do, without going behind his back, she would’ve.

Unfortunately, he’d made his loyalties all too clear, and Jane had come out on top of that particular battle.

Sorrow and anger mixed inside her, reminding her of what she’d walked away from. Or rather, what he’d chased her away from. Because he’d made it crystal clear: he didn’t want her enough to change.

Well, guess what? She’d already changed and she didn’t intend to backpedal and return to the woman she’d been before. If he couldn’t handle the person she was becoming, he didn’t deserve her.

But even though he’d told her himself that he didn’t deserve someone like her, she couldn’t help thinking their main issue wasn’t what she did or didn’t deserve; it was whether he wanted what they’d had together enough to make the change…and the answer was a resounding “no.”

Damn him,
she thought, checking the time and wincing when she saw it was quarter to twelve.

“This is no good,” Cassie said quietly. “Maybe we should consider heading down the mountain and hooking up with Fax and his—” She broke off with a glance at Chelsea and finished with, “boss.”

Which so wasn’t what she’d been thinking.

“They won’t have us at this point,” Chelsea said quietly. “She’s probably already leaked a hint that we might show up there. The second we make an appearance, we’ll be guests in our own jail.”

Or rather, what had been their jail before they’d gone renegade. Chelsea didn’t regret making the call for herself, but she was seriously wondering if she’d torpedoed her friends’ careers based on nothing but her own insistence that Fax wasn’t like the others.

Only he was, wasn’t he?

“Hey.” Cassie touched Chelsea’s arm, giving it a squeeze. That meant more than it might’ve otherwise, because Cassie wasn’t the touchy-feely type. “This isn’t your fault. If it were easy to anticipate what this bastard was going to do, he wouldn’t have gotten away with half the stuff he’s accused of, and he would’ve been in a cage long before this.”

“And he would’ve stayed there,” Seth agreed.

“We should’ve listened to Jane.” Chelsea’s shoulders slumped. “I was trying to prove a point and it backfired.” She’d wanted to make Fax take her side. Instead, she’d split their forces.

If she didn’t fix the mistake fast, there was a good chance that innocent people were going to die. And she did
not
believe in acceptable levels of collateral damage.

In her world, one unnatural death was one too many.

“I’m going to take a look around,” she announced, rising to a crouch that kept her below tree level in the undergrowth beside the low Quonset hut. “If the coast is clear, I think we should go down the mountain.”

“Keep your head low,” Seth said, but he didn’t tell her not to go, which she took as proof that he also thought they were in the wrong place.

“Count on it.” She worked her way out of the thicket, walking along the faint brush marks they’d left in obscuring their trail. They’d tested each step carefully to make sure they didn’t wander onto unsafe ground, so she knew if she followed the marks she ought to be okay.

She kept careful watch, but saw only mud, stones and uprooted trees thrown around by the last big slide. There was no sign of anybody else on the mountain, no sign that al-Jihad and his men had ever considered attacking the site.

“Damn,” she muttered, though she wasn’t sure why she’d thought there might be something, some indication that—

The blur came at her from the side, a whistle of motion and a thump of impact that spun her and drove her staggering back.

Panic came hard and hot, and she screamed at the sight of Muhammad’s face, the murderous satisfaction in his eyes.

Then there was another thump, and the world went dark.

F
AX HAD A BAD FEELING
about the setup at the stadium. It smelled wrong to him, felt wrong. If he’d been alone, he would’ve banged a U-turn halfway there and headed up into the mountains. Or maybe he would’ve kept going, figuring the others could handle whatever his gut told him was up there, while he needed to deal with the situation at the stadium.

The danger was up the mountain and in the stadium, and inside his own skull, buzzing and tugging at him, and making him crazy.

Or was that the woman making him nuts? Was it Chelsea and the way she’d seduced him, exhausted him to the point that he hadn’t noticed the six of them leave the motel?

Part of him was furious at her deception. Another part of him was a little impressed. Not that he’d ever tell her that. Not that he’d ever get the chance to tell her.

Jane drove fast, weaving in and amongst the traffic as the parade ended and the crowds geared up for the concert. Her jaw was set, her eyes locked on the road with the single-minded determination that’d made her the best of the best and that had drawn the two of them to one another.

They’d been good together because they’d been the same. Still were.

When that rang faintly false and bumped up against the churn in his stomach that said they were headed the wrong way, he tamped down both sensations and checked his weapon for the fifth time since he’d gotten into the car.

“You’re fidgeting,” Jane said without looking at him.

“I’m fine.”

“If you say so.”

They didn’t speak again until she’d pulled into a spot at the stadium. They each got out of the car, and Fax took a good, long look at the horseshoe-shaped rows of stadium benches, which rose high into the mountain air. He muttered a curse and then said, “What are we thinking? We couldn’t cover this place on our own if we had two dozen highly trained operatives. And where is the surveillance equipment?” He turned toward Jane, saying, “I thought—”

“Fax,” Jane interrupted, her voice tight.

He turned and froze in place at the sight of the man standing beside her, sharp-featured and weasely. Lee Mawadi.

Fax’s blood iced in his veins. The bastard had Jane by the arm, and was holding a gun to her side, its muzzle pressed into her waist. He had the stones to smirk. “Not as smart as you think you are, huh, Fairfax?” He dug the weapon in harder, wringing a cry from Jane as he grated, “Toss your weapons back in the car. And don’t try anything or the bitch here gets a few new holes.”

Fax did as he was told as killing rage speared through him. He two-fingered the gun, then tossed it in the passenger’s-side footwell.

“Now who’s the lemming?” Lee jeered.

Fax didn’t reply, didn’t get a chance to, because suddenly the bastard was letting go of Jane and turning the weapon on Fax, and Jane wasn’t doing a damned thing except standing there. Watching.

In a second of ice-cold reality, Fax understood what his gut had been trying to tell him since the night before, the instinct he’d ignored because he’d thought it was a mixture of lust and guilt.

Jane’s reappearance had seemed too convenient because it
was
too convenient. She’d been working for al-Jihad all along.

Which meant Fax had, too. Maybe not all along, but for a while, at least.

Hell, he’d probably gone to jail for the bastard.

How could you?
he wanted to ask her, but he could tell from her stone-set expression that she wouldn’t answer, didn’t care what he thought of her, didn’t give a single damn about him.

She’d never claimed to care about anything but taking down al-Jihad and even that had been a lie.

“Steady, Jonah,” she said, waving for Lee to lower his weapon. “Think it through. Think of the advantages.”

“I’m way ahead of you.” He smiled mirthlessly, cooling his expression even though his blood was quickly heating once again with anger, with panic.

Jane had known the others were headed up into the mountain.

For all he knew, they were already dead.

Jane’s face softened with a hint of approval. “You already knew about my change in allegiance.”

“I guessed,” he said. “Good to know the time in prison hasn’t dulled my instincts too much.”

“He’s lying,” Lee hissed, bringing his weapon up once again. “He never would’ve sent the bitch to Muhammad. He’s too much of a goddamn prince for that.”

“And you’re too much of a rodent to understand the concept of developing an asset for future use, then disposing of it when it ceases to be useful.” Fax forced a smile, although his stomach roiled as he said, “Trust me, she came in
very
useful for a while.”

That startled a chuckle out of Lee, who let the gun drop a notch.

It was all the opportunity Fax needed.

Moving fast, he lunged for the weapon, grabbing Lee at the same time that he swung a kick in Jane’s direction, forcing her to stumble back, out of range. He fought with Lee, kicking and punching as the smaller man squirmed to get free and struggled to bring the gun to bear.

“You don’t want to do this, Jonah,” Jane said, her voice edged with irritation or maybe fear. “Don’t be stupid.”

“No.” Grunting with the effort, he yanked the gun away from Lee and subdued the bastard with a choke hold. When Jane came at him, he dodged and grabbed her, and whipped her arm up behind her back as well. “I’ve been stupid for way too long already.”

Using the gun to keep them pinned down, he yanked off Lee’s belt and used it to bind their hands together at the smalls of their backs.

Then he turned toward the stadium, pointed the nine-millimeter in the air, and fired off four rounds in quick succession.

Screams and shouts erupted, and the people who’d been streaming into the arena only seconds earlier started scrambling to get out. Already set on a hair trigger after the prison break, the citizens of Bear Claw didn’t wait to see where the shots were coming from or where they were aimed.

They bolted en masse, creating instant chaos.

Satisfied, Fax returned his attention to his two prisoners. He was just in time to duck the full-power kick Jane had aimed at his privates. Her foot struck him a glancing blow in the groin that sent a slash of pain through him and had him staggering.

They’d gotten free somehow, and Lee was already running. Jane paused and grabbed Fax’s gun from the passenger’s seat of her car.

She came up firing and she wasn’t aiming into the air.

Fax hit the deck and rolled partway under the car, then scrambled up again. There were more screams, more chaos, and cars started peeling out of the parking lot. By the time Fax was up and oriented, Jane and Lee were both gone. Not good.

On the upside, though, the stadium was more than half empty, and—

An explosion roared from the main entrance, slamming him to the ground.

He heard more screams, dulled now by the ringing in his ears, then the thump of more explosions, the squeal of tires and the crashing impacts as cars collided, starting a chain reaction of accidents, with cars accordioning into each other in the drivers’ mad rush to get the hell away from the bombs.

Which meant nobody was going anywhere, Fax realized as he levered himself up and took in the scene.

The stadium was wreathed in ugly gouts of black smoke that rose from each of the collapsed entrances. There were thousands of people still trapped inside and probably the same number stranded outside in the parking lot and road beyond, which had become impassable due to wrecked vehicles.