Kiss and Tell by Cherry Adair Page B

ahead, back stiff, eyes straight ahead. Under her breath, very, very softly, she called for her dog.
    Jake came alongside her. "No talking. Sound carries."
    "You promised you'd keep my dog safe." She narrowed her eyes at him but kept her voice below a whisper. "I want her back. Now."
    "Too damn bad. Right now I'm trying to save our human asses. Keep walking."
    She gave a smart salute, spun on her booted heel, and trudged forward.
    Jake sensed no one around them as they scrambled for handholds on the steep, rocky incline. Not the dog, not the bad guys. The bastards were probably congratulating themselves on an easy job.
    Behind them the river, now swollen with the unexpected flood, rushed over boulders and swept trees and shrubs in its muddy wake. Soon it would be back to normal, but for now it was impossible to cross. Another barrier between them and civilization.
    Snow continued to fall as the sky darkened. The air was crisp and icy with the sharp scent of pine stinging his nostrils. Marnie's breath plumed as she grabbed at bushes to keep her balance. Jake worried about her wet clothes. They had to get to shelter before hypothermia set in. He had to get her safe and out of the line of fire before he could retaliate. Being reactive wasn't his style.
    Jake's skin burned with the cold. He hastened his steps, urging Marnie to a faster pace. The shadows lay long and cold on the ground now. It got dark fast in the mountains – faster with this snowstorm brewing. In fifteen minutes it would be blacker than pitch.
    The terrain varied extremely. One moment the going was soft and steeply inclined, the soil slippery with mud, moss, and pine needles; the next, stone broke through in outcrops or buried boulders. Both were treacherous.
    Jake closed the gap between them, ready to give her a hand if she needed it.
    He could see her hunched shoulders under her wet green parka. She had her hands jammed into her sodden pockets. And she was still frantically whispering for the damn dog.
    The bad guys might have failed to drown them, but if they didn't get to shelter soon, the mountain would take their lives in the darkness with silent snow. The air seemed to freeze his lungs. He pulled up the collar of his coat just as Marnie did the same, not that that would do much good.
    At least ten men, maybe more.
    Overkill.
    Jake pushed ahead with a frown. Why so many? It wasn't practical or logical. He was only one man. And it had been purely by chance that he'd had advance warning of their arrival at all. Whoever they were, they would have no way of knowing what his resources were up here.
    If he'd been safely in his lair, they wouldn't have known where to find him at all. Which led him to another question: How had they found him on this mountain in the first place? Only a handful of people had even known he owned property up here. The few that had were all dead now. And he would have staked his life that none of them would have divulged his whereabouts to anyone.
    Which brought him right back to the delectable Miss Marnie Wright and her unlikely presence.
    *
    Marnie had forgotten how dark it got in the mountains. And cold. God, she was cold. The moon played coyly between the clouds, but at least it had stopped snowing.
    At the best of times she had an abysmal sense of direction. Up here, where every tree looked pretty much the same as the last, she was hopelessly lost. It didn't help her sense of direction much when she kept anticipating a bullet slamming into her spine.
    There'd been no sign of the bad guys. No shots, no voices. They'd walked for what seemed like hours.
    When she ran smack bang into a boulder, she stayed where she was, cheek resting against the cold stony face, arms limp at her sides.
    "I'd love you forever if you got us somewhere warm and dry, PDQ," she mumbled under her breath.
    "You're in luck," Jake said quietly, so close he barely had to raise his voice above a thought. "We're here."
    Here was an enormous outcrop of rocks,