Jenna Ryan - Dakota Marshal

A nasty grin split his face. No. Leaving a trail of corpses was never a good thing. But he had extra guns, and as long as they were too drunk to walk straight, he might as well have a little fun. He’d cover his face with a bandanna, his head with a hat and do the stick-’em-up thing from behind.

If they had any information at all, they’d talk. Then depending on his mood, the inclination of his trigger fingers and whether or not they did something stupid, they’d either live or they’d die.

As for McBride and the pretty vet? Eyes on the prize, Eddie-boy. Bang, bang, cha-ching.

IT AMAZED ALESSANDRA that anything could shock her. However, a second wild-eyed, weapon-wielding youth in one night was too extreme even for McBride’s world.

The young man, trailed by a girl in Daisy Dukes and flip-flops, blasted across the threshold with a Tarzan yell and more fear than aggression in his eyes. McBride disarmed him easily, knocking the ax from his sweaty hands and pinning him to the wall. Alessandra shook off her momentary trance and intercepted the girl as she made a beeline for McBride’s back.

It took fifteen noisy minutes to sort through the confusion. Apparently the college-aged youth was Joan’s nephew. He had his aunt’s permission to use the cabin during his cross-state camping trip. Unfortunately for all of them, tonight was the night he and his girlfriend had reached Dead Lake.

Alessandra knew that she and McBride could have stayed in the cabin until morning. She also knew they’d be endangering innocent lives if they did. So they left. And drove for more than three hours before McBride agreed to stop.

Having been raised on a farm, Alessandra didn’t consider herself a wilderness wimp. But sleeping in McBride’s truck, then attempting to eat breakfast while swarms of mosquitoes, horse and deerflies did the same, proved next to impossible.

Deet was the only answer, and Alessandra wanted the sticky repellant gone as soon as possible. That meant another shower, this one in a crappy public facility that boasted slime-coated floors and a weak spray of barely warm water. They didn’t get back on the road until mid-morning.

More correctly, on the back roads. It was one wooded cow path after another, roughly stitched together.

“You know,” she remarked with a quick hiss of pain for her abused backside, “unless he’s taking this same route, which is unlikely for an escaped felon, Rory Simms will be in Mexico before we get out of the Black Hills.”

McBride maneuvered around a two-foot gouge. “Rory’s a slow mover, Alessandra. He’s an even slower thinker. He’s also not good on his own, which is why I figure he’s heading this way.”

“Am I supposed to accept that as an explanation?”

“He’s making his way to his contacts.” McBride divided his attention between the road, his laptop and the on-board map. “People his sister might not know about.”

“Okay, obvious next question, if she doesn’t know about them, how do you?”

He didn’t quite avoid a missing chunk of road and as a result almost bounced Alessandra out of her seat. “You should tighten that strap.”

She sighed instead. “Answer the question, McBride.”

“Rory likes hookers. Some hookers accept money for services other than sex. My source inside Casey Simms’s organization got a line on Rory’s favorite prostitute. He paid, she talked, we scored.” “You hope.”

“Yeah, there’s that. But from the text I got last night, X thinks that no matter where Rory appears to be going, he’s really taking an indirect route toward one of his contacts. As far as our particular route is concerned, think Eddie and the more twists and turns, the better.”

“At the risk of sounding repetitive, if Rory’s using the interstate or even a semidecent highway, he’ll be there and gone before we reach the next mountain pass.”

“We’ll see,” McBride said.

Too bruised and tired to pursue it, Alessandra let the subject drop. Keep talking and she ran the risk of biting her tongue off.

Although her pride seldom allowed her to complain, neither the day nor the traveling conditions improved. They weren’t going in anything resembling a straight line. By late afternoon, she figured they could be anywhere from the Big Horns to the Rocky Mountains.

Fanning her face slowly with a service station map, she finally asked, “Where are we, McBride?”

“About twenty miles from Ben’s Creek. There’s a good chance Rory will be there.”

“And hopefully Eddie won’t.” She stopped fanning to cock her head. “Isn’t Ben’s Creek north of Rapid City?”

He smiled in profile. “Your point being?”

“What happened to ‘we need to head southwest’? Never mind.” She waved him off. “Message from your X-man, indirect routes, et cetera. My brain’s running on empty at the moment. Are you sure about this source of yours?”

“Sure enough. I got an email update while you were texting your assistant about what we were doing at her cabin last night and why you won’t be coming into work tomorrow.”

She summoned a pleasant expression. “If I said I hate you, would you be kind and ditch me in Ben’s Creek?”

“I’ll take that to mean you want to stop. Next place we pass, I promise.”

True to his word, ten minutes later he pulled off the ancient two-lane highway that was probably only used by logging trucks now and into a dusty roadside clearing, complete with a tippy wooden shack, two gas pumps and a rear yard full of abandoned vehicles.

Alessandra took one look, stuck his hat on her head and shoved the door open. “I hate you, McBride. This place better have a washroom.”

To her relief, it had two. The man tearing a seat out of an ancient Oldsmobile took one look at her and stabbed a thumb at the shack. “Ellie’s my wife. Buy one of her blackberry pies, and she’ll let you use her private john.”

Alessandra thanked him, bought two pies and was immediately ushered into Ellie’s paying-customers-only washroom.

It smelled like pine cleaner and the toilet did flush—if she pulled really hard on the chain. The cold-water tap almost worked, as well. The mirror didn’t. A haze over the glass gave her face a tintype-photo look that would have made her laugh if she hadn’t glimpsed the remnants of an old bus through the window behind her. The thing had fallen on its side like a drunk elephant with its fire-blackened underside fully exposed.

For a motionless moment, Alessandra’s throat muscles seized, so badly that she couldn’t swallow. Voices swarmed in her head.

An elderly man: “I’m off to Chicago to visit my brother….”

A geek: “I’ll have this textbook read by the time we hit the city limits….”

A wispy woman from Arizona: “Excuse me, do you suffer from motion sickness…?”

A young marine: “I’m getting married in three months….”

Words and faces overlapped. She felt the floor moving, the bus skidding, rolling. She heard glass shatter, metal shriek, murmurs turn to screams.

With a huge effort, Alessandra tore her eyes from the mirror. But not until she saw another face that drifted in. McBride.

Sexy, smoke-gray eyes stared at her. “Don’t worry, I’m a cop. Give me your hand. I’ll get you out of here….”

“You all right, dear?” A rusty female voice shattered the spell.

Alessandra jolted back to the present. She breathed out, dried her hands and checked her reflection one last time. “I’m fine, thank you.”

When she opened the door, Ellie offered a toothy, yellow smile. “I thought maybe you’d passed out from the heat. We don’t get many customers here, us being so remote and all. When we do, I like to give them a special parting gift.”