was looking right at her. He couldn’t possibly see her through the fog, in her little stand of trees, yet she felt certain he knew she was there. Could he feel her presence the way she felt his? The possibility set her blood pounding even harder.
His head snapped to his left. Brush crackled and twigs popped.
Bravo? Had he caught up to Marco already?
She moved from behind the tree trunk to call instructions to the dog. As she did, Marco leaped into a clump of scrub around the base of a cottonwood tree.
A few bushes wouldn’t protect him from Bravo. She ordered her feet to run. Heading out along the edge of the precipice, she opened her mouth to yell.
The words never had a chance to form in her throat. She saw the muzzle of a gun flash from the spot where Marco had disappeared. Instinctively she skidded to a halt, bracing for the impact of the bullet even before she heard the shot.
Her feet slipped on the rocks. She flailed her arms, struggling madly to regain her balance. A puff of air breezed by her temple. She wasn’t sure if the bullet hit her or not, because she was already falling.
She grasped at branches, at roots, but couldn’t hold on. Down she fell, tumbling, twisting, bouncing along the slope until there was nothing but the pounding of her body on rock, the snaring of her clothes and skin on brush.
Her last thought before darkness overcame her was of Marco, not as he’d looked on the rocks in prisoner’s garb, but as he’d looked in her bed. Naked. Virile.
And hungry.
Lying in the brush behind the man he’d just choked into unconsciousness, Marco forced himself to ease his forearm off the shooter’s throat just short of killing him.
The bastard had shot her. Shot Paige.
Pushing the man’s prone body away, Marco jumped up to run, but spared one last scathing glance for the limp form at his feet. He needed to get to Paige, but if he was going to make any sense of what was happening to him, to them, Marco needed to know who this man was.
That evening, while working on a prison crew cleaning up litter from the side of the highway, another prisoner, Tomas Oberas, had picked a fight with Marco, getting them both sent back to the lockup early. At the time, Marco had wondered what was going on. He’d never had a problem with Oberas before. On the way back to the prison, he got his answer.
The fight was a setup. Someone had wanted Marco on that van, with only one guard and no other prisoners except for Oberas. They’d wanted him there because they’d wanted him. And they’d nearly gotten him.
He’d barely escaped alive when they’d forced the van off the road. Then this man, and others like him, came after Marco. If it hadn’t been for the dense woods and nightfall, he would never have evaded them.
He hadn’t escaped them, yet, he thought, reminding himself not to get cocky. They were a determined group. He wasn’t sure what they wanted from him, but whatever it was, they wanted it badly.
Counting each precious second wasted, Marco dug his toe under the man’s shoulder and flipped him over. Whoever the guy was, he wasn’t the one behind all this, of that much Marco was sure. Arranging a prison break took money. More money than a man wearing a stained sheepskin jacket, faded camouflage and boots with cracked soles would have.
He was just a hired gun. But whose?
Most likely the same person who had hired the other prisoner, Tomas Oberas, to pick a fight with him. Marco’s being on that van tonight hadn’t been a coincidence any more than the wreck had been an accident.
Fingers fumbling in his effort to hurry, Marco bent over and checked the man’s pulse. Steady and strong, but he’d have a headache when he woke, not to mention a sore throat. Next he pulled the man’s wallet out of a pocket. Kind of the shooter to bring credit cards along—those might come in handy. Another valuable moment flew by while Marco glanced at the driver’s license, memorizing the name—Lewie Kinsale—then holding the cards in his teeth while he ejected the rounds from the man’s rifle and flung the bullets as far as he could.
As long as he was helping himself, he shimmied the man out of his coat. Marco figured he needed it worse than this guy did. Skinny-dipping in the lake had nearly turned him blue. He’d known the water would be cold, but he hadn’t figured on the swim taking twice as long as it should have. On a good day he could swim the mile in less than twenty minutes. But today was definitely not a good day.
Knowing he would need dry clothes to prevent hypothermia when he reached the other side, he’d held his jumpsuit out of the water with his one good arm. With the other arm, the one he’d wrenched in the wreck, he’d pulled himself along as best he could, glass shards grinding inside his shoulder with every movement. For the last ten minutes of his swim, he hadn’t been sure he’d ever see the far shore. The cold, black bottom of the lake had seemed almost inviting.
Marco shivered at the memory. He hadn’t given up then and he wasn’t about to give up now.
He gave the sheepskin sleeve a final yank and clutched the coat to his chest. Pulling the man’s belt out of its loops next, he fashioned a pair of makeshift handcuffs to slow the man down in case he woke sooner than Marco predicted. Finally, urgency battering his chest like a jackhammer, he turned to run.
He hadn’t taken the first step before he had to pull up short again. He froze, face-to-face with the most intense whiskey eyes he’d ever seen. Familiar eyes. And familiar lips, peeled back to reveal two rows of teeth. Very long, very sharp teeth.
“Bravo,” he finally managed to say, pushing the childhood horrors out of his mind. “Hey, boy.”
Bravo growled, low and deep.
“Long time no see.” The dog’s diesel rumble kicked up a gear. Marco swallowed. Hard. “You know who I am, don’t you? You remember me. You’ve been looking for me.”
Bravo took a menacing step forward. It took all the will-power Marco possessed not to step back. God, he hated dogs. Especially big ones like this—giant furry bundles of claws and fangs and eyes that locked on like laser-guided missiles.
Bravo swung his head around to check the trail behind him, a whine intermixed with his growls. Marco recognized the dog’s confusion. Hopefully he could use that uncertainty to his advantage. Slowly he wrapped the sheepskin coat around his left forearm, just in case Bravo wasn’t as confused as Marco thought.
“What’sa matter, boy? Don’t know what to do without Paige here to tell you?”
Marco took a brave step forward. The dog’s attention snapped back, but he didn’t attack. Marco’s confidence soared. He could do this. Bravo knew him. Marco had watched Paige handle the dog enough times. Had worked crime scenes with them. He even knew a few basic commands.
Paige had insisted on introducing him to Bravo up close and personal when he’d come into her house, despite Marco’s reluctance to be in the same room with the dog. Bravo was trained to protect her, she’d said. He needed to know Marco wouldn’t hurt her.
Marco had agreed quickly enough then. God knows he hadn’t wanted Bravo to mistake the, uh, gymnastics with Paige as a struggle. Not with the most vulnerable part of his anatomy attracting trouble like a lightning rod.
He’d sweated
