Warrior Spirit

The guard snapped his billy club against the bars. “Shut up.”

If Lyle had been free, he’d strangle this moron guard with his bare hands. “Get the damn warden.”

“I’m here.” The warden strode across the concrete floor. “I want a close look at the man who thought he could break out of the Fortress and get away with it.”

For a moment, Warden Craig Green stared into the flat blue eyes of Lyle Nelson, knowing that he was face-to-face with pure evil. The recapture of this fugitive was the worst possible thing that could happen to Green.

He turned away from the bars and gestured to the guards. “Leave me alone with him.”

Grumbling, they filed out of the room.

Lyle stood close. His white-knuckled fingers clutched the iron bars. “I want out of here, Green.”

“That’s not going to happen.” Only a few weeks ago, Green had arranged for all the imprisoned Militia to escape. He’d been well paid, but he couldn’t take that sort of risk again. “I can’t pull off another prison break.”

“You’ve got no choice,” Lyle hissed. “If you don’t break me out, that cushy little retirement you’ve got planned is going to blow up in your face.”

Green had been afraid of this threat. “You can’t—”

“The hell I can’t. I’ll squeal. I’ll tell everybody about your part in the escape.”

“Okay, Lyle. Hang tight. I’ll take care of you.”

He turned on his heel and marched from the room. On the way back to his office, the warden made a detour through cell block A. As he passed the inmates, he paused outside the cell of a hulking, dark man. Nobody remembered his real name. They called him Snake because he was the most vicious and feared inmate in the Fortress.

Warden Green had a special relationship with Snake. They exchanged a nod.

THE NEXT MORNING, Green sat behind his desk in his office. He wasn’t surprised when the door was flung open and one of the guards darted nervously inside. “Sir, we have a situation.”

Calmly, Green asked, “What kind of situation?”

“It’s Lyle Nelson, sir. We found him hanging inside his cell. He’s dead.”

Green lowered his head to hide the grin that curled the edges of his mouth. “Notify the coroner.”

Chapter One

It was a beautiful day for a funeral.

At the edge of the pine forest overlooking the only cemetery in Ponderosa, Trevor Blackhaw reined in his dappled mustang stallion. He gazed into clear blue October skies. Beyond the western edge of the wide valley, distant peaks glistened with new snow, but the fields were dry. The wheat and alfalfa had been harvested.

Trevor heard the crunch of hooves on dry pine needles as Mike Clark expertly maneuvered through the old-growth forest. His sweet little gray mare nuzzled up beside Trevor’s mustang. The stallion—a ladies’ man—gave an appreciative snort.

“You gotta love this countryside,” Clark said.

Trevor agreed. Though he’d grown up on the Snake River Plain in Idaho and was accustomed to spectacular scenery, he loved Montana. It felt more like home than anywhere else he’d lived, including the year he’d spent on the reservation in Oklahoma looking for his full-blooded Cherokee father. Trevor never met his father but was proud of his heritage. In spite of his blue eyes, his features showed his Cherokee ancestry, and he wore his black hair long.

He turned toward Clark. “The burial of Lyle Nelson doesn’t deserve such beautiful weather.”

“Damn right,” Clark said. “That miserable worm should have been dumped with the garbage, left out in a cold ravine to be torn apart and eaten by the coyotes and grizzlies.”

“Yeah?” Trevor tipped back the flat brim of his battered western hat. “Tell me how you really feel, Clark.”

“Look at that crowd at Boot Hill Cemetery. It’s not right that Nelson’s funeral is a big event.”

A couple of hundred yards from where Trevor and Clark watched on horseback, the black-clad mourners gathered around a pine casket. These were the people who sympathized with the terrorists who called themselves the Montana Militia for a Free America.

Standing outside the weathered picket fence encircling Boot Hill was a much larger contingent—the townspeople who hated the Militia. Some of them held signs. Others shouted insults.

And then there was the media. Swarms of them.

Anything to do with the Militia made headlines. For two months, the authorities had been chasing Militia fugitives who’d escaped from the Fortress penitentiary. They seemed uncatchable and had taken on an aura of ghostly infamy. None of them would be foolish enough to show up at the funeral.

“Let’s get started.” Clark flipped open a minireceiver no larger than a cell phone. Last night, they’d planted a listening device on the coffin. The transmission was excellent—good enough for them to hear the mourners clearing their throats and sighing. “What are they waiting for?”

“The preacher.” From his saddlebag, Trevor took out a pair of high-definition binoculars and focused on a bald preacher wearing a long black overcoat. “I see him over by the parked cars. Looks like the preacher’s giving an interview to CNN. Praise the Lord and pass the microphone.”

Clark took out his own binoculars. “Tell me again what we’re looking for.”

“I’m not sure.”

“Any specific individual? A signal?”

“We’ll know when we see it,” Trevor said. “We need a lead on our next bounty.”

Trevor and Clark were members of Big Sky Bounty Hunters. Their job was to track down criminals and return them to justice. And they were very, very good at their work. All the bounty hunters were former Special Forces commandos, bonded in brotherhood and recruited by their leader to this new life in Montana. Each of them was well-trained in a specific field.

Their current bounty was the escaped MMFAFA. The payoff for each member was one hundred thousand dollars. Not that the money mattered. Trevor would have gladly apprehended these murderous bastards for free.

“There’s another reporter coming over to the preacher,” he said. “It’s Kaitlyn Wilson.”

That lovely little investigative reporter had shown herself to have a heart of steel in uncovering corruption at high levels.

“If Kaitlyn’s here,” Clark said, “Campbell can’t be far behind.”

They both scanned the crowd for a glimpse of bounty hunter Aidan Campbell, who had his hands full, trying to protect the headstrong Kaitlyn. Trevor had been surprised when Campbell, the extreme sportsman, had fallen hard for that female tornado. A man just couldn’t predict where his heart might lead.

“I know what you’re really here for,” Clark said. “You’re looking for somebody to interrogate.”

“Whatever it takes to get the job done.”

Clark cocked his head to look at Trevor. “Someday I’d like to observe one of your interrogations. To study your technique.”

“Negative,” Trevor said. “You don’t want to know what goes on in the interrogation room.”

Clark shrugged and looked away. “Probably not.”

Even among the bounty hunters, Trevor had a reputation for ruthlessness. He was kind of a legend, recognized as the most effective interrogator ever to be trained by Special Services counterintelligence. When he went after information, he never came up empty-handed. Grimly, he said, “I should have had a chance to question Lyle Nelson.”