Tami Hoag - Dark Paradise

We’re dead , she thought again. The air sliced in and out of her lungs like the blade of a ripsaw. A million things buzzed through her head-prayers, longings, regrets, images of her family, nebulous thoughts of the children she would never have, J.D. Damn hardheaded cowboy. Too stubborn to know a good thing when he saw it.

Oh, damn, Marilee, this isn’t the time.

From some deep well inside her she dredged up strength she had never imagined possessing and pushed herself to her feet. She propped Samantha up against a tree and scrambled to get a view of their pursuer. She could see the basin they had skirted. The hunting dogs were racing through the high grass. Sharon rode just behind them with a rifle slung across her back. They were moving fast, closing in. Apparently, Sharon didn’t find a manhunt nearly as much fun in the rain. She had probably decided to waste them and be done with it. Go home for a soak in the Jacuzzi and relive her glory moments over champagne.

The rain was coming harder, slicing down through the trees, plastering their clothes to their bodies.

“I don’t want to die,” Samantha mumbled to the world at large. She stared straight ahead as if she were blind.

“Then you have to do what I say,” Mari said sharply. She took hold of the girl’s shoulders and pulled her around to face her. “Do you understand what I’m saying to you, Sam? You have to listen to me.”

Her gaze swept the area for possibilities as her brain did a thumbnail sketch of a plan. It wasn’t much, but it was better than being run into the ground and shot in the back. She laid it out for Samantha as quickly and concisely as she could, and prayed that the girl wasn’t too deep in shock to comprehend. Then she sent Samantha ahead on the trail and hoisted herself into the branches of a pine tree.

There was no sign of Del at the cabin. J.D. shrugged into a rain slicker and saddled a pair of stout, leggy geldings while Will went to the inner sanctum and procured a pair of rifles.

There had been no sign of Mary Lee along the trail. J.D. couldn’t keep his mind off her. Was she lying hurt somewhere? Was she dead? Was her disappearance somehow connected to her search for the truth?

And where the hell did Del fit into this ugly picture? God, he would never forgive himself if Del had done something to Mary Lee. He had allowed his uncle to stew in his own madness up here. If it turned out that Del had gone over the edge, it would be J.D.’s responsibility. What if Del had shot Lucy? What if he had strangled Daggrepont? He didn’t want to believe it could happen, but what he wanted to believe and what was true were increasingly two very different things.

He tried unsuccessfully to clear it all from his mind as they mounted up and headed northwest.

Sharon pulled up at the base of yet another sharp hill, in the shelter of a canopy of ancient pine trees. The rain was turning her mood sour. She had planned to continue riding until the girl turned around and begged her for mercy. But the little bitch was proving to be remarkably resilient and the rain was spoiling everything.

She raised her gun and peered up the trail through the night vision scope. Her quarry was on the ground, lying in a heap, about a hundred and fifty yards up the hill. She could see no sign of the Jennings woman, and assumed she had run on after the girl collapsed. There were no other options for her. She wasn’t armed. She couldn’t hope to fend off the dogs. She had no way of protecting herself from the rifle except to keep on going after the girl had fallen and hope that Sharon would settle for her original target.

The dogs ran circles around Sharon’s horse, frantic for the command to go. She didn’t give it. Not just yet. She wanted a moment to savor the anticipation. She smiled wickedly, wishing Bryce could be watching this. She wanted him to see what she could be compelled to do. She wanted him to know the lengths to which she would go. Just imagining his shock brought her a sense of power. He didn’t realize her strength. He didn’t realize she was his strength. Without her, he was nothing. Without her, he would succumb to the tepid pleasures of a girl like Samantha Rafferty or a petty criminal like Lucy MacAdam and his power would shrivel and die.

She would never allow that to happen.

She urged the horse forward.

Mari looked down on her from the branches of the pine tree. A hundred unforeseen complications thundered through her head. What if she missed? What if she landed behind the horse or on one of the dogs? What if the dogs caught her scent? All Sharon had to do was tilt the muzzle of her rifle up and pull the trigger.

She took a breath and held it, waiting. The dogs were setting up a racket that rivaled the storm, dashing up the trail, then turning back. A memory of the way the dogs had torn into the tiger in the video flashed through her mind, and she shifted uneasily on the branch. Samantha had endured enough horrors without being torn apart by a pack of dogs, but if they weren’t diverted soon, they would undoubtedly make a dash for her.

The horse came a step closer and another step closer. Mari crouched down on the limb, wishing she had a weapon of some kind. But there was nothing at hand, and wishing wouldn’t save their bacon.

Without allowing herself another thought, she stepped off the branch and hurled herself down on Sharon Russell. She caught the blonde around the shoulders with her arms, tipping her backward in the saddle. The rifle went off with a crack.

Startled, the horse bolted sideways, ducking out from under Mari and slamming Sharon’s right leg into the trunk of a tree. She howled her rage and twisted around in the saddle, swinging the gun in Mari’s direction. Mari scrambled to stand and fling herself ahead at the same time, grabbing wildly for the rifle barrel. She caught hold of the fore end of the stock and shoved it aside just as Sharon pulled the trigger.

The rifle cracked again, spitting its load into the soft loam of the hillside. Mari hung on tight to the gun as the horse leapt forward, eyes rolling, hooves scrambling for purchase. Sharon had the choice of giving up her ride or her rifle. She came out of the saddle screaming in fury.

Her momentum drove Mari backward on the steep hillside, and she stumbled and went down, letting go of the gun to try to save herself from rolling down a hundred feet of mountainside. She skidded backward on the rain-slick slope, grabbing for anything she could and catching hold of a broken branch that was three feet long and thicker than a baseball bat. Her fingers gripped it hard as she struggled to get her feet under her, her eyes on Bryce’s cousin the whole time.

Sharon came at her with madness flaming in her eyes and terrible alien cries tearing from her throat. She brought the rifle up against her shoulder. Mari surged upward, swinging the branch, once again knocking the gun to the side. Without wasting a second, she lunged closer and swung again with all her might, catching the woman hard enough in the upper arm to make her lose her grip on the rifle.

The gun dropped and bounced down the hillside, twisting and flipping. Both women scrambled after it, pushing and shoving at each other until they went down in a tangle of arms and legs.

Samantha watched from up the trail, thinking she should do something, but she couldn’t think what. Her brain felt numb. The rain pouring down gave the scene a weird, dreamlike quality and separated her from the other women like a wall, like a window she could see through but not move through. She could actually feel her consciousness retreat inside her mind. She wanted to shut down, to black out, to fall into oblivion where she couldn’t be hurt and she didn’t have to exist in this nightmare. But a small, strident voice inside her shouted for her to hang on, to get up, to do something.