Anger seared through her and she veered sharply to the right, heading back toward the shoreline. With her sudden turn, he followed and fell.
She decided to go for her gun. But he already had his weapon in hand and pointed at her. Unzipping her coat, she reached for her shoulder holster while keeping her stride. She grabbed her weapon and yanked it out, but her stupid knitted mittens prevented her from getting a finger on the trigger.
Behind her, he shouted something stupid like “stop or I’ll shoot”, but she figured if he wanted her dead, he would have shot her already. Hopefully he didn’t mean he’d wing her and bring her down that way. With him flat on his ass and thankfully not shooting, she gained a significant amount of distance. She dared hope that maybe, she just might get out of this situation. Once she hit land, she could get better bearings beneath her feet, ditch the mitts and blow this son of a bitch away if he came any closer.
The powers that be obviously had other plans. About three feet from the shoreline, her right foot caught on a rock and she sailed through the air.
The black ice rushed up at her with mind-numbing speed and she managed to protect her face by breaking the impact with her arms. Her elbows smashed into the ice, sending jarring pain up her arms and into her neck, making her gasp at the intensity of the collision. The gun careened from her grasp and frustration ripped through her as the weapon sailed along the ice out of reach. The rest of her body, stomach and legs, hit hard, sending the air whooshing out of her lungs as she landed squarely, belly first on the ice. For a horrible few seconds, pain slithered through her chest and she lost her breath. Another few precious seconds passed as she struggled to grab some air and finally sucked in a lungful, and then two lungfuls, before managing to get her feet beneath her again. As she stood, she went for the second gun she kept in a thigh holster, but then froze as the cold metal of a knife blade kissed the right side of her jugular.
Oh, she was so screwed.
“Make one move and I’ll give you a red necklace to go with that red hair of yours.”
She didn’t recognize the voice, but his ice-cold tone informed her he was quite pissed off. Rage wafted off him as his powerful arm snuggled like a vise around her waist, holding her captive. The man held her close enough, the scent of soap wafted off his skin and into her nostrils. So close, his hot heavy breath caressed the chill from her cheeks. Although her brain screamed at her to fight and free herself and kill the bastard, her highly trained senses told her to do what the man instructed.
At least for the moment.
“What do you want?” she whispered as the prickly rasp of his five o’clock shadow rubbed her cheek.
“You,” came his hot reply.
Damn!
Panic punched her stomach like a two-by-four and she tensed. She thought about stomping on his foot to get out of his tight grasp or going for the gun in her thigh holster again, but his light chuckle and the increased pressure of the blade on her jugular made her pause.
“Don’t even think it, Red. Now I want you to spread your legs for me.”
She couldn’t help but inhale sharply at his command as panic threatened to burst through her like a bolt of lightning.
“I’m not joking, Red. Spread your legs. Now. I won’t ask again.”
Reluctantly, she spread her legs. The position would make it that much harder to take off at a full-speed run.
“That’s a good girl,” he breathed.
He withdrew the blade from her neck, but his strong arm continued to clutch her waist. She was trapped. Her panic notched up a few degrees. She steadied her breath.
“Now I want you to move slowly, Red. Lift your arms up to the back of your neck and clasp your fingers.”
“I’m wearing mittens,” she snapped.
“Take them off. Easy…no sudden moves…” The undertone in his otherwise soft voice was deadly serious.
She tugged off her white knitted mittens, probably not as slowly as he wanted, but she was ticked at being caught. Cold air splashed against her fingers as she dropped the mittens and did as he instructed, bringing her hands up and clasping her fingers behind her neck.
“You’re considered armed and dangerous, so I can’t see why you’d let me catch you so easily, Red. That is, unless you wanted to be caught?”
He said the last sentence in a low, sensual voice as he moved into view. Although they’d never formally met, she knew him—bounty hunter, Cade Outlaw.
He was her ex-boss’s brother.
She relaxed and almost laughed at the irony. She’d worked with this man’s brother overseas during the Terrorist Wars. She’d been his youngest brother’s teaching assistant. Tyler Outlaw had joked on more than one occasion that she and his brother Cade would be a good match. Something to do with both of them having fiery tempers.
She had to admit, luscious heat did whip through her as she inspected the enemy. He was a good-looking man, in a rugged sort of way. His lips were perfectly shaped for kissing and, if his mouth hadn’t been fashioned so sensually, she might have said his nose was too straight and gave him a hardened appearance.
He was tall. Very tall. Probably six-foot-three to her five-foot-four inches. He was big framed with wide shoulders. He had the appearance of a renegade Indian with his dark tan, probably due to his working the fields of the Outlaw farm with a couple of his brothers.
This Outlaw brother was considered lethal. During the Wars he’d been a professional torturer, carving up terrorists nice and slow. They said his cold heart allowed him to keep his captives alive for days until he’d extracted the information he needed from them. He might even have been hired to torture her so she shouldn’t—in the least bit—be reacting to him.
