Dangerous Tease (18 page)

Josie's fingers had turned white from the cold without gloves or coat pockets to protect them. She rubbed them together, pain pricking down their lengths as the blood returned. Outside the snowfall grew denser.

Once frostbite stopped being an immediate concern, she took inventory. One socket wrench. Her car keys. The pay-as-you-go
cellphone Cy had given her. She flipped it open. No bars. Of course not, that would have made getting the hell out of here too damn easy.

She stood and extended the arm holding the phone high above her head the circled the room. In the corner closest to the animal nest, one of the bars flickered to life, then went dark. Willing circumstances to change, Josie crossed the room. No luck.

The phone
snapped closed with a click and she slid it into her back pocket. She hunkered down by her other weapons. She balanced the socket wrench in her hand. Heavy, solid. It felt good. That would add some umph to her right hook.

Feet crunched on the icy snow outside of the boarded-up window.

As soundlessly as she could, she backed into a dark corner, gripping her makeshift weapons in each hand. Predator
or rescuer, one wrong move and he was going to get a mouth full of metal.

Gloved fingers wrapped around a board blocking up the door and yanked it free.

They were within two feet of the front door when a high-pitched cry broke the silence and a blur of light gray burst from the homestead's front door.

The coyote ran serpentine around Sam
and Hank before breaking into a straight run across the flat land and disappearing into the snow.

Hank recovered first and started back toward the house. He disappeared inside the doorway and returned a moment later, his eyes downcast.

Fear bristled along Sam’s spine. Were they too late? He sprinted to the door and pushed past Hank.

His gaze traveled the darkened expanse of the room, searching
each shadow for Josie's bright platinum curls.

Nothing.

Dread filled him and threatened to knock him to his knees. Damn Rebecca and her treasure.

There is a beauty to this hard land more valuable than treasure, but for those who insist, I give you this
, she'd written.

Sam stumbled outside and into the vast shadow of McPherson's Bluff. Oh yes, it was beautiful in the same way a cobra about
to strike could be breathtaking.

He tried to hold on to hope, to the belief that this time he would be able to save a life. He pushed away the doubts, but like a spurned, angry lover, they refused to leave.

Hank clapped a hand on Sam's shoulder, displacing some of the snow piled there. “Don't worry, we'll find her.”

But would they? And if so, would they be in time?

W
ell, Josie girl, I told you we'd find you.” Snips stepped through the gap between boards nailed across the empty door. “And to think we found you right where we wanted to stop in the first place. I told you we went too far, Linc.”

A shadow moved in front of the partially boarded-up doorway, which Josie assumed belonged to Linc. The muscle man must be too big to fit through
the opening. Who would have thought the big man's size would finally work to her advantage?

She gripped the socket wrench tight in her left hand, held at an angle behind her back. She curled her right hand into a fist and rested it against her thigh. Surprise would only be on her side once and she'd need it to knock out Snips. The steroids had shrunk his balls but they'd also pumped up his muscles
and temper. Of course with the amount of pissed-off adrenaline pumping through her veins, she figured she still had the upper hand. She'd flatten him. Then she'd have to get past Linc in the doorway, which wasn’t as likely to be successful unless she timed it just right.

“What, no smart remark this time?” Snips strutted closer.

Josie barely kept the instinct to swing wildly at him in check.
Like a poker player, she needed to stay calm, keep emotion out of it and wait for the perfect time to make her move.

“I think I like you better now that you've finally shut the fuck up. You ready to play ball?” He was almost within reach now.

Just another step closer.

He stopped and raised an eyebrow. “Whatever you're cookin', Josie girl, you better just give it up.” His left hand whipped
out and he backhanded her across the cheek.

The metallic taste of blood filled her mouth.

“That should make sure you keep your smart mouth shut.”

Josie spit the mouthful of blood to the floor, splattering Snips' snow-covered boots. “Not even close.”

She smacked the smirk off his face with an uppercut to the jaw with her right fist, followed by a haymaker utilizing the socket wrench in her
left. The silver cylinder cracked against Snips' jaw and he went down hard.

“Mr. Esposito, you okay in there?” Linc peered through the slits between the boards. “What's going on in there?”

Snips moaned out an unintelligible response.

Linc wrapped his meaty fingers around a two-by-four and yanked.

Blackness ate into the edges of Josie's line of sight and she couldn't catch her breath.

A chunk of sky appeared in the doorway and Linc reached for the next board. Two more and he'd be able to squeeze in.

Motivated by a desperate need to live another day, she patted down Snips' pants, looking for a gun, a knife, anything. She came up empty.

Another board hit the floor.

Her blood pressure spiked.

Josie sprinted to the hearth and gathered as much dirt and twigs from the animal
nest as she could. She made it back to the doorway a half second after Linc tore the last board from the wall.

Without giving herself time to doubt, she tossed the debris in Linc's face.

He cried out in shock and slapped his hands to his eyes.

Before he had a chance to wipe the grime away, Josie took off out the front door. Her boots slapped across the porch and down the creaky steps. The
world was awash in white, making it impossible to tell which way led back to Dry Creek and which farther into the sticks. She hit the snow-covered ground, cranked up her speed and shot toward McPherson's Bluff.

“You better find a damn good hiding place, girlie,” Snips shouted. “Because when I find you, you're going to pay with that pretty ass of yours.”

Josie heeded his warning and ran. The
air burned her lungs from the inside out and every snap of frigid wind against her bare arms reminded her of just how long she'd been out in the elements without a coat or gloves.
The pain beat being dead
.

In better conditions and with actual running shoes, she'd clear the half mile to McPherson's Bluff in about five minutes. But with every step, her boots sank in the snow. The wind and snow
picked up, bringing visibility to a few feet beyond arm's reach. Her chattering teeth had overtaken the wind's howl in the noise contest. After a few minutes, she wasn't so sure she wouldn't be better off numb.

But she tucked her chin into her chest and pushed forward. Every few steps, she glanced over her shoulder to see if Snips and Linc were on her trail. She couldn't see them or the abandoned
house anymore. However, her danger detector hadn't stopped blaring a warning siren, so she continued with one foot in front of the other until she came to the bluff's base.

Rising eight hundred feet from the prairie, it stood tall and proud, unbent by time or the weather. The damn thing reminded her of Sam. When she'd left him, he'd been hurt but alive. If she could keep Snips and Linc following
her, they wouldn't be able to return to Dry Creek to torment Sam.

“You still out there you shithead, Snips?” she hollered in the direction of the abandoned house. “You better find me before I find you because one of us isn't coming out of here alive.”

Not that she had any weapons to back up that threat since she’d left the socket wrench in the cabin, but since when did bravado require a strong
sense of reality? Warmed with defiance, she took off around the bluff, looking for a place to hide or a path to take. She crossed her arms and shoved her hands into her armpits as great shivers racked her body. The snow had begun to slow, but the temperature hadn't left the freezing zone. She had to find somewhere to hide out quick, or hypothermia would get her before Snips ever did.

The snow
disguised any easy path up the bluff. She'd trudged past the four-foot high triangle-shaped boulder twice before its meaning connected with her foggy brain. Rebecca's map had shown a similar formation next to a path. At the moment she didn't give a damn about the treasure, but a place to bury Rebecca’s Bounty could make the perfect hiding place from the wind and the men chasing her.

Another blast
of wind smacked against her body, burning her with cold. Damp hair stuck to her neck and forehead. Her ears ached with pinpricks of agony as her veins constricted in her extremities to retain heat in her core. Tears sprung to her eyes, not of sadness or fright but of pain. Snow had found its way into her boots during the run and melted, turning her socks to wet cloth.

She had to move. Now.

Her mind urged her body to scramble up the incline to the triangle bolder, but her legs were mired in molasses. The distance to the four-foot-high rock seemed miles. But she hadn't come this far to lie down and wait for Snips to do his worst.

One boot-clad foot clomped in front of the other as she made her way upward. With nothing to hold on to, she slipped on the wet snow a few times but managed
to fight her way to the bolder. Climbing the two-foot incline zapped more of her energy than it should have and she leaned her back against Rebecca's landmark. Icy snow soaked through her T-shirt along her spine, from the small of her back to between her shoulder blades, and another set of shivers shook her.

She glanced around, hoping to find a nice little cabin with smoke billowing from the
fireplace. No such luck. The only things she spotted were rocks and a few pine trees covered in white. A natural path had been worn in the stone bluff from centuries of people traveling across it, curving around into what she couldn't see. Well, she knew full well what kind of trouble followed behind her so she might as well go forward.

Josie marched on, too exhausted and cold to worry about
the tracks she left in the snow. The path's slope grew steeper and she had to lean forward as she walked. Higher and higher she went, passing snow-covered rocks and trees, but not finding anything that would offer protection from the wind. At least the snow had stopped. Thank God for small favors.

By now, her body twitched with cold on an almost constant basis and she'd begun to lose hope of
ever finding a safe spot to stop. The bluff's limestone walls went straight up on the right. On the left, the landscape dropped in a steep slope to a badlands of deep ravines. Looking out at the blanket of white as far as she could see, she couldn't help but remember Rebecca's words. There was a harsh beauty to this place. If it didn't turn you into a human Popsicle first.

Bringing her gaze back
down to the snowy path, she forced herself to keep moving. Her pace had slowed to the speed of an eighty-year-old crossing the road, but she was making progress. As a bonus, the frosty temperature didn't bother the white tips on her fingers anymore.

A few minutes, hours or days later—really, she'd lost all ability to track time—she passed into a deep shadow. She blinked a few times in response
to the light change and glanced up. A slab of rock crossed above the path, creating a land bridge from one part of the bluff to another.

A fuzzy picture formed in her mind. A sketch. Had she painted a similar formation? No. Rebecca. It was the third or fourth drawing on the map. Somehow, she'd stumbled upon it.

She pressed her back against the limestone wall and looked up at the rock, her entire
body weary. With no destination in mind, would it really matter if she took a short rest? Her eyelids drooped. Just for a couple of minutes of shuteye and then she'd get moving again.

Darkness surrounded her and sank into her bones. Everything became heavy. She was going to die out here, only to be found by some hiker in the spring. What a fucking way to go. Maybe she should have taken her chances
with Snips.
Too late for second-guessing now
.

Even the effort to stay upright proved too much and she slid down the hard limestone wall. Rocks shook loose behind her, showering her shoulders with chunks of the chalky limestone.

The wall crashed around her and Josie tumbled back into a small cave, landing flat on her back.

The impact knocked the breath out of her frozen lungs and jarred to
the surface the pain that had been waiting just under the numbness. Agony pierced her skin and she curled into the fetal position in an instinctual attempt to block it all out.

Desperate to think about anything but the stabbing pain, she forced herself to take in her surroundings. If this qualified as a cave, it was the studio apartments of caves. It was so small she could reach out and touch
both walls at the same time. It ended about eight feet back from the entrance, where the two walls came together to form a V.