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was here?”
    “Maybe someone else called them? Saw your car wreck?”
    “You see anyone else driving out in this weather? Get us the hell out of here!”
     

 
     
     
    CHAPTER 4
     
     
    Lucky’s chauffeur jumped and he toned it down a notch. “It’s okay. Take it easy. Just get us off this road.”
    Idiot. She was probably even more frightened than he was. It wouldn’t help things to make her nervous to boot. Although she seemed like a steady customer, cool in a crisis. And that driving—now he knew where the expression hell on wheels came from.
    He turned the computer off to save its battery. He’d learned enough to scare the crap out of him, enough to tell him that the Liberty Hunt Club wasn’t what it seemed. Felt like old times, like last month with Chase—stranded in the cold, out in the middle of nowhere, people shooting at him. 
    Someone up there was trying to send him a message. Like he should stay in his nice, friendly demolition lab and out of the field.
    And stay as far away from The Preacher as he could. But here he was, up to his neck in psychofreaks who worked with The Preacher and his fanatical militia aimed at starting World War Three. Looked like they had the local police on their payroll as well.
    Right about now, Chase and KC would be wondering where the hell he was. Lucky only wished he knew.
    He looked over at his companion. A government-issue name tag was pinned to her olive-green wool shirt. VD Ryan, it read. She had a heart-shaped face, long, thick black hair pulled into a single braid that was tucked into the back of her parka. 
    Dark eyes, high cheekbones and thick lips. He couldn’t tell much about her shape beneath the thick layers of winter clothing she wore, but he knew she was strong, she’d hauled him from the BMW almost effortlessly. 
    Tough broad, this VD Ryan. VD? Bet that got her a lot of ribbing at the office. Victoria? Violet? Velma? 
    He turned to ask her when she hit the brakes, jolting him forward against the seat belt. Pain fired through his left arm at the sudden movement. 
    She spun the wheel hard and the Forester bounced off the paved road onto a narrow rutted dirt track. They headed back up the mountain, this time in a more direct, steeper path than the one they had followed down.
    “Where are we going?” he asked.
    “Only place left to go,” she said through gritted teeth, hunched forward, straining to see in the white-out conditions. The snow swirled around them and wind lashed against the car, enveloping them in an impenetrable curtain. “Into the woods.”
    “Why don’t I like the sound of that?”
    She was silent, fighting to maneuver the car onto another road, this one even more rugged than the first. Was it even a road? Lucky wondered. Maybe she’d gotten them lost on a cow path or mountain goat trail. 
    She almost got them mired several times but was able to coax them back onto the trail without incident. Finally she stopped the car.
    The headlights illuminated a wooden sign on a gate. In between gusts of snow, he could make out the words: Lost River Wilderness Area. Authorized vehicles only beyond this point.  
    “Wait here,” she said, jumping out and heading into the glare of the headlights.
    She unlocked the gate and pushed it open. After returning to the car, she drove them past it and exited again to close it behind her. The storm swallowed her figure before she waded past the rear bumper, like something out of a Grimm Brother’s fairy tale. Or nightmare. 
    Ghosts and goblins and flesh-eating witches lived in woods like this. Not to mention hungry wolves and other four-legged predators. 
    Ryan seemed familiar with the terrain, but Lucky was feeling more and more nervous the farther they got from civilization. Who ever thought a two lane, narrow, paved road would represent civilization? Of course, with that civilization came men with guns. Shooting at them.
    He would have to trust her. For now.
    She opened the driver’s door, a