minutes of her life. Somewhere between where they’d been and where they wound up, the rain stopped, the clouds broke apart and shafts of light began to filter through the trees.
By the time her mind slowed enough for her to register her surroundings, they were well into the mountains near what had probably once been a logging camp.
The moment McBride halted, she slid from the truck. Thick stands of pine and spruce towered over them. The fallen trees, now moss covered and decayed, were more likely the remnants of a windstorm than a timber man’s ax. She let her head fall back and, finally, some of her tension ebbed.
“Please tell me we lost that creep, because five more minutes of those ruts and my brain will be permanently scrambled.” He didn’t answer. Rubbing her backside, Alessandra turned. McBride was still in his seat with his head resting on the back. His eyes were closed. She climbed back into the cab to shake him. “McBride. Are you conscious?”
“Enough to tell you there’s only a fifty-fifty chance we lost him.” He spoke but didn’t open his eyes or move.
“That’s better than your odds of surviving if you don’t let me restitch that gunshot wound.”
“Nag, nag, nag.”
Alessandra refused to be alarmed by his pallor. Leaning over, she opened his shirt. The bandage covering the gunshot wound was soaked through. “Out of the truck, McBride.”
A half smile grazed his lips. “Forest floor works better for you, huh?”
Straddling him, she caught his hair and pulled until his eyes finally cracked open. “I see a lot of clouds in there, pal.”
“Yeah, but what are you feeling?”
Part of her wanted to laugh. Only McBride would be thinking about sex under these conditions.
“Apparently your sick mind hasn’t changed since the last time I saw you.” She pushed the door open. “How can you be hard when you’re bleeding to death?”
His eyes closed, but the vague smile remained. “From where I’m sitting, best answer I can give you is, ‘Duh.’”
“Great. I’m on the run with a crazy man.” He was going to black out, she just knew it. She hopped off. “Time to get down and dirty.”
She supported him by his good arm as he tumbled from the cab. An old gray blanket from the back served as a cot. Once he’d dropped onto it, Alessandra rolled up her sleeves and reached for the medi-pack.
“No sign of Eddie?” he asked in a slur.
“No sign, no sound, no need.” Partly because he deserved it, but mostly in an effort to startle him awake, she gave the rubber tubing in her hand a snap, smiled, then bent down until her lips grazed his ear. “Let the bloodbath begin.”
MCBRIDE SURFACED to shadows that were thick and air that was heavy with the prospect of yet another rainstorm. His limbs weighed fifty pounds apiece, and he swore someone was using a blunt ax on the back of his skull. Still, he managed to get his eyes open and make the connection between his brain and his vocal cords.
“Where am I?”
Alessandra didn’t seem the least bit surprised by the sudden question. “You’re propped up against a fallen tree in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and, by some miracle, still alive.” Sitting cross-legged in front of him, she folded a bunch of strange-looking leaves into a cloth and tied a string around it.
“Why don’t I trust that serene expression on your face?”
“Relax. If I wanted you dead, you’d have passed on before sunset.” She gave the string a hard tug.
Alarm bells began to clang in his head. “What’s that?”
“A medicinal poultice. We use them on horses after they’ve been gelded.” The glitter deepened. “I say ‘we,’ but I really mean I use them. Dr. Lang believes in the more traditional forms of pain management, his favorites being those that are introduced rectally.”
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Only for the past thirty seconds. Until then, I was calling you a bastard in every colorful way I could think of.”
He used his good hand to push himself away from the trunk. “You’re father’d be pissed.”
“No, he’d just straighten his shoulders, look stoically upward and blame my mother for influencing me. Then he’d sag and blame himself for giving in to temptation once and marrying her. I’m a sort of by-product of his lust. I don’t think he’s ever quite figured out where I fit into his straightforward, methodical world.”
It was a tragedy, to McBride’s mind, that Alessandra’s mother had died of an aortic aneurysm mere days after her only child’s eleventh birthday. Sadder still was the fact that she’d apparently really loved Alessandra’s father. Why else would any sane woman endure twelve years of marriage to a man who lived, worked and would ultimately die by an archaic set of rules that were more of his own making than those of the religious order to which he belonged?
Alessandra’s grandmother, her father’s own mother, called him a tight-ass. Not in those particular words, but that was the gist. She’d liked her son’s beautiful Bahamian-born wife and had, McBride knew, run interference for her granddaughter up to and including his and Alessandra’s wedding day—which was an entirely different memory.
As if she’d been following his thoughts, Alessandra’s lips curved. “You can puzzle it out for the rest of your life but you’ll never understand him.” She threw McBride the poultice and stood in a single graceful motion. “Sun’s set, you need rest and I want a shower. I’m also hungry. All I found in your truck were nacho chips, candy bars and some energy drinks.”
“Never know when you’ll need a quick buzz.”
“Mmm, I found the whiskey bottle, too.”
“Buzzes come in many forms, Alessandra. You’re right, though, we need to get out of here.” The pain had less of a rapier-sharp edge after he worked his way into a crouch. He tucked the poultice in his shirt pocket. “Can you drive a loaded 4x4?”
He knew she was watching him for signs of disorientation. He must have passed the test, because she began folding the blanket. “On good roads, yes. On a wilderness obstacle course, we’ll find out.”
He could go with that. “Do you know where we are?”
“More or less.” She caught his arm when he stood and the rapier took a nasty swipe at him. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d consider returning to Rapid City.”
He slanted her a dark look that brought a fleeting smile to her lips.
“Figured as much. In that case… Can you walk?”
Like a man who’d taken several pulls from that whiskey bottle. And her touching him didn’t make him any steadier. Her father’s thoughts for her mother were Puritanical compared to the ones currently flying through McBride’s head. He knew and vividly remembered every inch of her butt, her legs, her breasts and, God help him, her hands. She’d
