Passion to Protect (6 page)

“I printed it out for you,” Camille said defensively.

After fishing his glasses from his shirt pocket, he snatched the paper from her hand and skimmed the message, which stated that McCleary and his coconspirators had stolen a cell phone and credit cards from an elderly homeowner they’d burst in on only hours after their escape.

Unfortunately for the escapees, their victim had managed to crawl to another phone before succumbing to injuries from a brutal pistol-whipping. Since that time, Richards wrote, a multi-agency task force had been hot on the heels of the convicts, who had been using both the credit cards and the cell phone—until those items were finally found discarded to the southeast, just over the Arizona border.

Since one of the fugitives, Juan Carlos Guzman, had family in Mexico, Richards and his task force were acting on the theory that the group was making a beeline for the border.

“So where’s the proof,” Harry muttered to himself, “that the four of them are still together?” In his experience, alliances among criminals were about as stable as the weather, and just as dangerous for everyone involved.

“Didn’t you see that last part?” Camille chirped, clearly convinced she was off the hook for her incompetence. “The part where he says he’s absolutely confident they’ll have all four in custody in no time?”

“Spoken like a true bureaucrat,” Harry grumbled, not believing a word of it. The more he thought about it, the more certain he was that McCleary had to be here. Nothing else made sense, especially considering what Harry knew about Mac’s motives. “Email him back, why don’t you, Camille? See if Mr. Computer Expert can be convinced to pick up the damned phone.”

“But what do you need to talk to him for?” she asked.

“I want him to pull whatever strings he needs to get some manpower out here and help me find the Masons—” furious at being questioned, he pounded his fist down on top of his desk hard enough to topple a messy stack of unfiled paperwork “—while there are still any living Masons left to find.”

Chapter 5

W
ith all the billowing smoke, Mac had no way of knowing where Smash and Goose were, but they had to be mad as hell that he had managed to steal the rifle from their sporting-goods haul and then leave them in the dark of night. He only knew he’d lost them for the moment, and that they would kill him for certain if they ever managed to catch him.

As far as he was concerned, if the cons who’d come with him became hopelessly lost and burned to death in this unfamiliar territory, so much the better. From the moment he’d felt the shallow bite of Guzman’s knife at his throat, every lie he’d ever told himself had fallen from his eyes like scales.

What was left was cold reality. The high cost of his stolen fortune. The pointlessness of his struggle to reclaim it. The legacy he would leave behind: a son who had grabbed his sister, then screamed and run from him as if he were a monster.

Without his help, they would undoubtedly die out here. Worse, would die hating and fearing him, never understanding that their grandfather had forced his hand by reaching for a weapon—not to mention that the old bastard had stolen the money Mac had skimmed off the top of his own boss’s far more extensive fraud in order to secure his family’s future. But maybe if he found and saved his children now, he might still have time to explain things.

There might even come a day when they would be proud to claim him as their father.

The idea took hold in his imagination, giving him the strength he needed to push forward, along with the determination to destroy anything or anyone who got in his way.

* * *

Glowing cinders rode the wind at least a half mile ahead of the flames, tiny fireflies that ignited grass and foliage wherever they alighted. Liane stared at their approach, horror hollowing out her heart.

A huge pine caught fire not fifty yards away, its branches going up with a loud
whoosh,
followed by the crackling of flames feasting on dry bark
.

Time was almost up.
She cried her children’s names again, desperation breaking her voice. And as a crimson dawn touched the horizon, she saw the gleam of moisture in Jake’s eyes.

“We have to go now,” he said. “I’m sorry, Liane.”

“Wait!” she cried, freezing at another sound, carried by the wind.

A voice. A child shrieking, “Mommy!”

There. She heard it again. It was Cody. She would swear to it.

“Cody! Kenzie!” she shouted, racing downhill in the direction of the sound, with Misty racing just ahead. They were racing straight downhill, toward the fire.

“Wait!” Jake called after her. “Not that way. Over here.”

Drawn by the sound of her son’s voice, she didn’t stop to look where he was pointing.

She was shocked when he caught up moments later, grabbing her arm and physically turning her to her left, toward an as yet untouched section of woods.

“This way!” he shouted above the crackling of dry tinder. “They’re over there. You see that?”

She jerked her gaze toward the spot he was indicating and made out movement in the shadows. But from this distance she couldn’t even be certain it was a person, much less one of her kids. “Cody?” she called.

Though there was no answer, she broke loose from Jake’s grip and started to run. Jumping fallen limbs and scrambling over rocky outcrops, she picked up speed with the downhill incline.

She heard Jake not far behind her, but his progress over the rough terrain was slower as he picked his way among the debris. Though he urged her to wait for him, she pulled farther ahead....

Only to come to an abrupt stop when Misty planted her feet and started barking, the hair along her spine bristling in a stiff ridge. That was when Liane realized that the person trotting toward her wasn’t Cody but a grown man, his features hazed by smoke and distance.

Before her mind could fully grasp what she was seeing, nausea seized her and she screamed in horror. It was impossible, unthinkable, that
he
could be a part of this. But the broad shoulders, the loping gait—the certainty ripped through her that this was the same figure that had rushed at her out of a thousand other nightmares, except this time he was real.

“Mac!” What was he doing
out of prison?

“They ran from me. Hid out here,” he called, his voice strained and gravelly. “Help me find the kids. I heard their voices—over this way.”

How could he have gotten here, much less tracked her family to the canyon and—with a horrifying jolt of insight, she realized that he must have been the predator that had surprised her father.
That had
killed
her father, who never would have let Mac within a mile of the children. In fact, he probably would have shot him on sight if he hadn’t been taken unaware.

Now Mac meant to kill her, too. Kill her and take the children, or maybe murder them, too, unless she could get away from him and save them.

From behind her, Jake shouted her name, but her attention remained riveted on Mac. Though she still couldn’t make out his face, his intent was clear as he charged toward her like a maddened bull, a rifle in his hands.

Her instincts screamed that he was about to take aim at her, that he’d come all this way to finish what he’d started in that hotel room in Las Vegas.

“No!” she shrieked, changing course abruptly, zigzagging back toward the fire in the desperate hope that the smoke might hide her.

In moments she was picking her way among burning trees, her lungs rebelling and eyes watering, her skin stinging with the heat.

Behind her, she heard yelling and then the boom of gunfire, followed by a shout. Jake! She swallowed a sob, sickened that Mac might have killed again to keep Jake from rushing to her aid.

A closer cry came from her right. “Mommy!”

Startled, Liane slid to a stop so quickly that her own momentum nearly toppled her. “Cody? Cody, is that you, baby?”

She held her breath, praying for an answer. Praying that her child’s voice was more than a dream-come-true trapped inside a nightmare.

* * *

Bullets flying past him, Jake shouted and dropped to the ground and landed facedown, then held himself motionless. His brain was racing, though, factoring the progress of the deadly wall of fire with the appearance of the man—and Liane’s terrified reaction.

The stranger she’d called Mac had used her name, then talked about the children, who still bore the last name McCleary. Which meant this must be the ex-husband, the man she’d met after leaving him behind and heading off to find a new life.

But whatever else he was, the bastard had to be Deke Mason’s killer. And Liane clearly considered him more dangerous than the inferno.

Jake looked around before climbing to his feet, the canister of bear spray in his right hand. Apparently Mac had resumed chasing Liane after deciding Jake was no threat.

“We’ll see about that, you son of a bitch,” he ground out, then took off running, praying he could catch McCleary before Liane became his next victim.

Plunging into the thick smoke, Jake was immediately forced to leap a patch of burning weeds as the fire chewed its way closer to him. With a grunt of pain, he landed but somehow managed to avoid falling on the blackened, smoking ground.

All around him, he heard crackling as falling cinders made huge torches of the scattered clumps of bushes. The heat pushed him back several times, forcing him to alter course.

From somewhere nearby came the echo of Misty’s frantic barking. Was Liane trapped ahead?

Wiping soot from his watering eyes, he spotted movement, a figure silhouetted against flame. A split second later a buck bearing a huge rack of antlers came bounding past him, leaping over rocks and paying him no heed. Though both training and instinct urged Jake to follow the animal to safety, he was too committed to his course to turn back now. Continuing into the maelstrom, he made out something else, something moving on two legs this time, and he quickly saw it was Mac.

A dark-haired man armed with a rifle, he moved in the direction of Misty’s barking. He never noticed as Jake braved blistering heat to cut between two burning spruces in an attempt to head him off. But unlike him, Mac had two good legs, and he was moving at a clip Jake couldn’t match. As his quarry pulled away, Jake spotted Liane in the distance, leading her children by the hand.

Torn between relief that she had found them alive and fear for their safety, he continued moving toward Mac as quickly as he could manage.

“This way!” Mac stopped as he shouted at Liane. “Come this way or you’ll get us all killed.”

Did the man mean to murder his ex-wife or save her? Jake hesitated, confused, but Liane seemed to have no question. Picking up six-year-old Kenzie and balancing her on one hip while still holding Cody’s hand, she turned back uphill toward the rocky ridge, keeping as far from her pursuer as she could.

“You stupid bitch!” Mac roared, his patience at an end. “Put them down, or so help me, I’ll leave you here dead, too.”

Charging toward Mac, the shepherd barked frantically, providing enough of a distraction for Jake to move in from behind. As Liane’s ex took aim at the dog, Jake sprang forward, tackling Mac with a flying leap.

The gun went off as Mac slammed forward with a shout, Jake pummeling his ribs. With no room to maneuver the long barrel, Mac was forced to drop his weapon to defend himself, twisting toward Jake and hammering his left eye with a crushing blow.

Pain exploded, blackening Jake’s vision and buying Mac the moment he needed to scoot away and reach for his gun, his face transforming into a mask of pure rage—the face of a maniac Jake knew would surely shoot him.

Misty darted in again, snarling and snapping, allowing Jake—who could barely see out of his swelling eye—the instant he needed to come up with the canister of bear spray and fire. As the noxious cloud struck Mac’s face, he screamed in agony, curling into a fetal position and clawing at his own eyes.

Jake dove for the rifle, then rolled to his feet. Almost immediately the gun flew out of his hands as Mac managed to wrap his arms around Jake’s ankle and knock him back to the ground.

“I have to get to my kids!” Mac shouted, swinging blindly.

Thanks to the bear spray, he couldn’t see the flames tightening like a noose around them, but Jake knew he had to feel the searing heat and hear the crackling hiss.

Pulling away, Jake rose and reclaimed the rifle. For an instant he hesitated, understanding that if he left the helpless man here, he would burn to death.
Then let him,
he thought, a vision of Deke’s staring eyes and blood-soaked body roaring through his mind. Still, he found himself saying, “I’ve got the gun. Now stop fighting and let me help you before we both end up trapped.”

“You think you’re taking me in? I’d sooner burn in hell.” Twisting in the dirt, Mac whipped around, hurling a fist-sized rock toward the sound of Jake’s voice.

Ducking, Jake barely avoided being struck in the head.

With one last look at the man groping for another stone to hurl, he made his decision. He was happy to risk his hide to save Liane and her children, but he wasn’t going to waste another instant worrying about Deke’s murderer.

* * *

With her daughter wheezing in her ear and Cody choking on smoke, Liane’s only imperative was getting them to clearer air. The rocky ridge should have formed a firebreak, but a massive tree had fallen right along the crest, its flaming bulk blocking her path. As she tried to move around it, the roiling smoke forced her eyes nearly closed. Missing her footing, she lost her hold on both children as she rolled back downhill.

Scrabbling toward the sound of Misty’s barking, she cried, “Cody! Kenzie!”

“Mom!” Cody yelled, attempting to pull Kenzie to her feet.

The six-year-old moaned and turned her head away but didn’t get up, so Liane hoisted her daughter into her arms the minute she reached them and told Cody, “Here. Hold on tight to my belt. We have to get out of the trees and onto the rocks.”

But which way was it? Disoriented by her fall and the smoke that made the day as black as midnight, Liane was confused. So she sucked in a deep breath and took off in what felt like the right direction, praying she’d guessed right.

She wanted to cry out for help, but she was terrified of drawing Mac back to them. Terrified and confused, because he’d undoubtedly killed her father and might very well have shot Jake, too, yet he had sounded desperate to get the children to safety.

Had she been wrong to flee him, to risk losing Cody and Kenzie to the fire? Had she cost her children their best chance of survival out of fear for her own life?

As she blundered forward the burden of her daughter’s weight slowed her steps, and her thoughts were slowed, too, by the lack of oxygen. Suddenly aware that she could no longer feel Cody’s tug at her belt, she reached back for him.

But her firstborn child had vanished, along with the dog.

A jolt of pure electric panic ripped through her. She forgot about Mac and cried out, “Cody! Misty!” and frantically scanned the area, blundering through the smoke on muscles recharged by adrenaline. When no one answered her repeated calls she choked on a sob, on a pain so intense it felt as if some unseen hand had gripped her heart, then wrenched it from her body.

Then she spotted movement to her left, no more than a fleeting shadow in the thick smoke. Convincing herself that it must be—had to be—her son, she followed, hanging on to Kenzie for dear life.

* * *

His mom was going the wrong way. Cody had to tell her. Had to get her and Kenzie up to the rocks where they would be safe. ’Cause Grandpa wasn’t here, so they were his responsibility.

When Cody tried to yell at her, all that came out was a lot of coughing. His eyes were burning, and his arms and legs felt heavy. So heavy, he let go of his mom’s belt. He tugged at her jacket, but he guessed she didn’t feel it, ’cause she kept right on walking.

“Mommy,” he choked as he fell down, but she didn’t hear him, either, and now he couldn’t see her.

He tried to stand up and run after her, but he was so tired, and it was easier to breathe down here by the ground. He remembered Mr. Jake telling him and Kenzie that if their house ever caught on fire, they should crawl out, just like babies. So he tried crawling for a while, but he was never gonna catch up like that.