Manhunt in the Wild West Read Online Free PDF Page A

gauging her. “I need to get something out of my shoe. Can I trust you not to try to run?”
    She nodded quickly, though she didn’t mean it. The second an opportunity presented, she was so out of there.
    He gave her another, longer look. “Yeah. That’s what I thought.” As though he’d read her mind, he stayed between her and the mouth of the cave, which was little more than a crevice in the rock, probably part of the canyon that’d been pushed up and over ground level by a long-ago glacier or earth shift, or maybe even one of the recent landslides.
    Fairfax worked at his right shoe for a moment and came up with a small ampoule of pale yellow liquid. He crowded close to her, leaving no room for retreat or escape. “This is going to knock you out and depress your vitals so far that it’ll look like you’re dead, but you won’t be. You’ll come around in twelve hours or so, and we’ll be long gone.”
    Then, before she could react, before she could protest, or scream, or any of the other things she knew she damn well ought to do, he’d broken off the tip of the ampoule, jammed the needle-point end into her upper arm, and squeezed the yellow liquid into her.
    Pain flared at the injection site, hard and hot.
    She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out. She struggled to stand up and run, but her legs wouldn’t obey. Her muscles turned to gelatin and she started sliding sideways, and this time Fairfax didn’t catch her or break her fall.
    She heard him stand, heard a weapon’s action being racked in preparation for firing. Then there was a single gunshot.
    Then nothing.
     
    F AX KNEW HE didn’t have much time, if any. He went to his knees beside the body bag containing the dead guard, whom he’d just shot. Pressing his hand against the wound, he got as much cool blood as he could from the dead man, and slathered it across the unconscious woman’s face, concentrating on the hair above her temple.
    When he heard footsteps at the entrance to the cave, he readjusted the body bag and wiped off his hands on part of the woman’s coat, then tucked the stained section beneath her before he stood.
    Feigning nonchalance, he put the safety on his gun and stuck the weapon in his waistband before he turned toward Lee, hoping like hell the lemming wouldn’t notice that the blood on the woman wasn’t exactly fresh.
    Only the newcomer wasn’t Lee. It was al-Jihad himself.
    The terrorist leader stood silhouetted at the cave mouth, a lean, dark figure whose presence was significantly larger than his physical self.
    A shiver tried to crawl down the back of Fax’s neck but he held it off, determined to brazen out the situation and keep himself in the killer’s good graces. Gesturing casually toward the woman, he said, “She’s all set. Want me to go help Lee with the other guards?”
    Al-Jihad moved past him without a word, gliding almost silently, seeming incorporeal, like the demon he was. Crouching down beside the woman’s motionless, blood-spattered body, he touched her cheek, then her throat, checking for a pulse.
    Fax forced himself not to tense up, reminded himself to breathe, to act like the cold, jaded killer Abby’s betrayal had made him into. Only the thing was, something had changed inside him. He’d been playing the role of convict for so long it’d become second nature to hold the persona within the prison, but he found he was in danger of slipping now that they were outside those too-familiar walls.
    Hell, face it; he’d already slipped. There was no rational reason for him to jeopardize his position by faking the woman’s murder. The ampoule of the death-mimicking meds he’d tucked into a false, X-ray-safe compartment inside one of his not-quite-prison-issue shoes was supposed to be a safety net, a way for him to fake his own death if the need arose. Similarly, the GPS homing device he’d activated and placed in her coat pocket was supposed to be used only if he thought he was in imminent