Dakota Marshal Read online

  She almost missed the relevance, until she remembered where they were and why. “Rory’s contact?” At his nod, she frowned. “That’s not good.”

  Rather than unwrap the second burger, McBride took a bite of hers. “It’s not completely bad, either. Larry recognized a picture of Rory.”

  “When did Larry see him?”

  “Late yesterday. Rory bought a six-pack from Moe and asked for directions to Creek Road.”

  “Where Cheech lives—lived.”

  “He went crazy and died last April. Hydrophobia.”

  Rabies. Alessandra winced. “Did they catch the animal that bit him?”

  Taking another bite, he glanced into the bag. “I didn’t ask.”

  “Of course not… Uh, McBride, wait a minute.” She snagged his sleeve and motioned at the window. “There’s someone in the bushes over there.”

  He followed her line of sight, then set a hand on her hip and eased her away from the glass. “Get our stuff.”

  She didn’t hesitate, simply pushed everything that was loose into their backpacks and hooked her fingers through the looped tops. “What now?”

  “Don’t move—and I mean it this time.”

  His kept his eyes on the bushes. “Come on,” he said under his breath. “Let me see who you are.”

  Maybe the bush man heard him because a shot blasted across the gravel lot and blew out half the motel room window.

  Alessandra knew a high-powered rifle when she heard one. She ducked.

  Already on one knee, McBride returned fire twice.

  The bushes rustled, then shook apart. A man, doubled over and clutching two guns, darted out briefly, only to vanish in the shadows.

  “I might have hit him.” Taking Alessandra’s arm, McBride drew her toward the door. “This is the only way out. When I say go, run. Keep low and stay behind me. I’ll cover you.” He withdrew a second gun.

  “Are you ready?”

  “Yes.”

  He used the barrel of a gun to point east. “Head for that old school bus. Get to the side that’s not lit by the motel.”

  She prayed he wasn’t planning to hot-wire the thing. But they’d need a vehicle, and there didn’t appear to be a lot of choice.

  He opened the door. “Okay, go.”

  Thoughts rushed through her head as she ran. Someone had printed California or Bust in red on the side of the bus. Nothing about the words or the vehicle reassured her, because it was a bus, after all, and because Eddie was close by with a rifle and likely very little patience at this point.

  The silence remained unbroken until she reached the painted side. Then Eddie let loose, McBride returned fire and everything around them seemed to tilt.

  The sound was deafening, especially when McBride squeezed the trigger.

  She saw the lobby door open and Ruthie’s terrified face emerge. McBride shouted for her to get back inside. As a fresh round of bullets shattered the night, she did just that and extinguished the light.

  Alessandra scrabbled through her pack for Dr. Lang’s .45. It wasn’t until she tried to load it that she realized the good doctor had bought the wrong bullets. “Figures.” She nudged McBride between shots. “Give me your second gun.”

  “Can you shoot?”

  “I’m a farmer’s daughter, McBride.”

  “Mennonite farmer’s daughter.”

  “Farmers kill and cull when necessary. I just made a point of always missing.”

  Another flurry of bullets erupted. Alessandra ducked instinctively, then almost jumped out of her skin when a hand descended on her shoulder.

  She knocked it away, whirled—and stared in disbelief.

  “Larry?”

  “You bet.” Reaching past her, he tapped McBride’s back. “I heard the first shots, saw someone running for cover.”

  “Yeah, we got that much ourselves. Did you happen to notice how many weapons the guy was packing?”

  “Saw three good-size guns and pretty sure some blood on the front of his shirt. I reckon he’s hunkered down in that gully behind those two big pines.”

  But McBride shook his head. “Shots are coming from that stand of trees next to the lobby.”

  “Does it matter?” Alessandra asked in a whisper. “Either way, we’re trapped behind this bus.”

  “No, we’re not.” Larry pointed his finger. “My truck’s parked at this end of the motel. I stopped to have a chat with Ruthie and heard the ruckus as I was pulling out. I figured you must be in trouble, so I came back.”

  McBride glanced at the motel. “Okay, we go on three. Stay behind me and down.”

  Once again, Alessandra’s world tipped toward the surreal. Her feet felt like lead, and everything unfolded in superslow motion.

  Bullets peppered the air in both directions. The idea that something wasn’t quite right flitted through her head, but it came and went so quickly she couldn’t examine it.

  “There’s my truck,” Larry wheezed behind them. “Get in. We’ll lose him in the dark, circle ’round to my place.”

  McBride negated the plan. “It’s too dangerous for us to stay with you.”

  The old man spun the steering wheel like a pro. “What’s your plan, then?”

  “Lose Eddie, and I’ll tell you. Here you go, darlin’.” Belatedly, he handed his backup gun to Alessandra. “Keep the safety on, and don’t shoot to miss.”

  She tucked the Sig Sauer in the pack she’d instinctively grabbed and sent him a level look. “Your work sucks, McBride.” Which was, she reflected, the one constant in their lives.

  “I knew you weren’t being truthful back at Moe’s station.” Larry zigzagged along a series of nearly invisible roadways. “Then, when you asked about Cheech… You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

  “Was,” Alessandra corrected. “Back when he valued his life.”

  “She gets cranky when she doesn’t get enough sleep.” McBride looked behind them. “Can you take us to Cheech’s place?”

  “We’re almost there. What about the fella who’s after you? Won’t he think to look for you there?”

  “I doubt if he knows about it.”

  He doubted? Alessandra stared at him. “I’m taking an awful lot on faith here, McBride.”

  “It’s one of your best qualities.”

  “You two really married?” Giving the wheel a hard, two-handed crank-over, Larry started down a steep incline.

  Alessandra dug in with both feet. “It’s a long story.”

  “She means yes.” McBride checked their tail again as he filled Larry in on their identities and their dilemma. “You’re risking a lot for us, Larry.”

  “Well, hell, I’m seventy-eight, and the highlight of most days is a game of checkers with my brothers.”

  Alessandra smiled. “He means he’s bored.”

  “Stiff as old Cheech when Morley found him snout down alongside the creek bed.” He stopped his truck to let them out. “See that ridge there? You go up and over, then head south about five hundred yards. You spot an old ’47 Airstream trailer, you’re there.”

  And twenty minutes of hard slogging later, they were.

  Alessandra’s nerves were stretched well past their breaking point by the time the dried-up creek bed led them around a final bend. She swiped at spiderwebs and hoped neither of them had stepped in the ants’ nest her flashlight had discovered.

  She played her beam in a cautious arc. “You know there are mountain lions in these hills, right?”

  “Think of them as a step up from Eddie.”

  “Speaking of, something wasn’t right about that—whatever you want to call it back there.”

  “It was a shoot-out, Alessandra, and I know.”

  “Good, then explain it to me, because all I got was a feeling, not the specifics.”

  “I’ll let you know when it clicks.” After clearing away a huge web, he gestured forward. “There’s the trailer.”

  It looked more like a rusty tin can to her, but as long as Eddie wasn’t there, s
he really didn’t care.

  When McBride remained stationary, she glanced up at him. “Aren’t we going in?”

  “Switch off your light.”

  She angled it down and complied. “What?”

  “Don’t you hear it?”

  “All I hear are insects, frogs…” Then her senses tuned in. “And a motor.”

  “Yeah, a motor.” McBride regarded the dented rear section of the Airstream. “Coming from the trailer of a man who died four months ago.”

  EDDIE COLLAPSED in his truck, breathing in grunts and sweating like a pig.

  How the crap had this become a triangular shoot-fest? Had the geezer with the pickup been helping McBride and the lady doc, or was Rory on some kind of drug that erased yellow backbones, because he’d sure as hell never been one to plant and confront before.

  Peeling his shirt away with care, Eddie examined the bullet hole in his side. No exit wound meant the frigging thing was still inside him. That made them even, he supposed, him and McBride. They’d both shot at the phantom in the trees for good measure. McBride more than him, but maybe one of them had gotten lucky and the rifle guy had taken a hit, too.

  Whatever. Getting back on his feet was the priority here. The phantom could be popped later—unless it was Rory, in which case, he’d whack McBride and the pretty vet, belt Rory a good one in the chops, then see to it that the rest of big sister’s orders were carried out as specified.

  Megabucks, Eddie thought, and a couple weeks in a banana republic would send the pain in his side packing fast enough. Either way, he had plenty of ammo and a real itchy trigger finger right now.

  Looking down at the blood that continued to ooze, he gave a rusty laugh and reached for the bourbon he kept under the seat. The first slug helped him relax. Halfway through, the bottleneck slipped from his fingers. That’s when he looked around and noticed the shadows falling over him had suddenly gotten a lot deeper….

  Chapter Seven

  “There’s no one here, Alessandra.”

  She believed him but maintained her position in the doorway of the spartanly decked out Airstream trailer. “Someone was here,” she pointed out. “The fridge is running and the fuel tank on the generator’s half-full.”

  “Could be a vagrant.” However, from the way McBride was looking around, she knew he didn’t believe that.

  “Could also be Rory,” she remarked. “Either way, we’re left with a big question mark. All we can say for sure is that Eddie was at the motel tonight, Rory was at Moe’s filling station yesterday and someone was in the home of his dead contact as recently as today. It’s your dime, McBride. What do we do now?”

  McBride studied a cigarette butt plucked from an overflowing ashtray. “This is Rory’s brand.”

  “I guess it’s not a vagrant, then. That still doesn’t tell me what we do now.”

  He picked up and sniffed a fast-food container. “We lock the door, camp out until morning.”

  “And if Rory shows up?”

  “Then I’ll have him, and we’ll head back to Chicago via Rapid City.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting Eddie?”

  “Trust me, he’s at the forefront of my mind.” McBride’s mouth quirked. “Pretty much.”

  She couldn’t help laughing. “You know you’re sick, right?”

  He shrugged as he stood. “I’m a man. My mind has layers. You hover near the top. Lock the door, Alessandra.”

  She leaned against the frame, eyeing him with amused suspicion. “Seriously.”

  He grinned back at her. “I’m hungry.”

  Her brows went up.

  “For food, I’m sorry to say. So park that spectacular butt of yours, and tell me there’s something edible in your backpack.”

  Because his pack, she recalled, was still at the motel.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” she warned him as she walked over to the table. “There isn’t much.” She hunted, produced a square box and sighed. “One slightly squished pie, a handful of granola bars and half a bottle of orange juice.”

  “I got all the heavy stuff, huh?”

  “You’re the one who’s ripped.”

  When his eyes darkened to storm gray, one word echoed in her head. Oops. Very wrong thing to say.

  He started toward her, his eyes raking over her. “You look damn fit to me, Alessandra.”

  She pulled out the serrated knife. “Lose the gleam, McBride. Just cut the pie, and tell me what we do if Rory’s a no-show and Eddie doesn’t figure out where we are.”

  He was close enough now to affect her breathing, but he didn’t touch her. He only stared at her for a long moment, before extending his hand, palm up.

  “I need your BlackBerry.”

  “Right.” She rummaged through one of the zipped compartments. “You’re lucky I’m a tolerant…” A frown knit her brow. “Rifle shot…”

  He began punching buttons on the BlackBerry she’d absently produced. “Not following you, darlin’.”

  “I finally realized what didn’t seem right about the shoot-out at the motel.” Her mind skipped backward, frame by frame. “The window was blown out with a high-powered rifle. But when we saw Eddie running from the bushes, he was only carrying a pair of guns. You could say he dropped the rifle, except we heard it again a few seconds later.”

  McBride’s gaze traveled sideways. “The shots Larry heard came from the gully across from the motel. The ones I heard came from the trees next to it.”

  “Can’t be in two places at one time,” Alessandra reasoned. “Assuming you’re both right, there must have been two shooters.” She bit her lower lip. “Eddie and Rory?”

  “You don’t know Rory. Two hit men, maybe.”

  But that seemed inefficient to Alessandra. “What about one guy sent to kill you, and another to bring Rory back? The two could have met, decided to work together and split the money.”

  McBride toyed with the idea, then returned his attention to the BlackBerry. “Let’s see what I can find out.”

  A chill feathered along Alessandra’s spine. The trailer had taken on an eerie ambience. She regarded a small wall clock whose hands were stuck at 3:10 a.m. Even so, it ticked and ticked and struggled to move. Like a bomb with a faulty timer. One that could tick forever—or go off at any second.

  SHE WAS ON A BUS, speeding along a tree-lined road. Needle-sharp bullets, like slivered glass, jackhammered the sides as they passed. It was only a matter of time before one of those slivers penetrated the rusty metal.

  She felt her pulse accelerate and a scream lodge itself in her throat. Then one of the bullets split the side of the bus, aiming right at her. She closed her eyes and took her last breath….

  She woke with a gasp in her throat, rolled to get away from the shots from her nightmare and wound up facedown on the floor. Rather, on something lumpy. Something that moved.

  Her eyes flew open, and the gasp escaped. She scrambled to her knees. “McBride!”

  “I’m right here.” He gripped her waist, held her firmly in place. “You’re kneeling on my stomach, Alessandra. A few inches lower, and I’ll be a sexual cripple for life.”

  “What? Oh.”

  Realization dawned in stages. It was McBride underneath her. They were in a trailer and the glass bullets she thought she’d heard were merely raindrops pummeling the roof.

  “Knee,” McBride reminded when she tried to climb off, a feat made doubly difficult by the fact that she was tangled in her sleeping bag.

  She shimmied up and off, squinted at the wall clock— 3:10 a.m. and holding.

  Sweeping the hair from her face, she attempted to separate her hideous dream from the gruesome reality. Then she spied McBride’s bandage, and concern blotted out fear. She reached over to tug the edge free. “How’s your shoulder? Ouch, ouch, ouch.”

  “What is it?” He came upright instantly.

  Hissing, she ditched the sleeping bag and pounded her left ankle. “My foot’s asleep.”

  He fell back on his el
bow. “Lucky foot.”

  “You can eighty-six the sarcasm, McBride. Rory’s buddy’s army cot is straight out of a World War I trench. The floor can’t be any more uncomfortable.”

  He grinned when she flexed her foot and winced. “You need to apply pressure, Alessandra.” Catching her by the calf, he used his thumbs on her instep and arch. Almost immediately, the needles and pins began to recede.

  Resting her weight on her hands, she welcomed the relief and at the same time tried not to acknowledge the warm sensations snaking up her leg.

  “You’d have made a great massage therapist, McBride.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind if the marshal thing doesn’t pan out.”

  She regarded him through her lashes. He was such an incredible man to look at, the quintessential male to her mind. Except for the death wish so many believed he carried around inside. Deep inside, yet omnipresent, as if he really did blame himself for his father’s actions, or at least believed it was his responsibility to atone for them.

  That was ridiculous, of course, but she knew it went that way sometimes. Children watched, assimilated and slowly became what they saw. In McBride’s case, what he’d seen, absorbed and become had taken on a life of its own. The lower his father had sunk, the more determined he’d been to soar. Unfortunately, he’d done so with the same reckless abandon as the man he’d resolved never to emulate.

  Although he didn’t look up, a slow smile formed on McBride’s lips. “You’re psychoanalyzing me, aren’t you?”

  “No.” She lowered her lashes farther. “Maybe.” When he squeezed her foot, she jerked and opened her eyes. “Okay, yes. I keep hoping that death wish inside you will disappear, but it never does.”

  “If that were true, last night’s shoot-out wouldn’t have gone the way it did.”

  “You mean you’d have seen it through to its conclusion, one way or the other.”

  “I would have hung at the motel a while longer,” he agreed. His eyes met hers. “I don’t want to die. I’m just willing to go right to the edge for what I believe. Last night, getting you out of there was more important than going another few rounds with Eddie.”

  “And that second shooter.”