Hunting The Colton Fugitive

Chapter 3

Ace’s breath roared in his ears as the two of them pounded downhill, Sierra hauling him by the hand. One of the loan shark’s goons roared threats as the moans of the bearded man, who’d been shot in the struggle, faded behind them.

“Hurry. Car’s this way.” Panting out the words, she spoke urgently into Ace’s ear, “And whatever you do, keep your head low. The big guy’s still got his gun!”

Ace wasn’t sure how ducking was supposed to stop a bullet, but he instinctively heeded her advice as he scrambled after her. Practically blinded by the darkness and the blood streaming into his right eye, he was repeatedly whipped and scraped by branches.

But regardless of the outcome, he’d cast his lot with this woman. And now he had no choice except to trust her to get them both out of this situation.

Even so, when she drew up short and peered around a few minutes later, doubt flooded in. With his injured face throbbing in time with the pounding of his heartbeat, he asked, “You’ve lost the car, haven’t you? Maybe if we crouch down and hide, they’ll pass us by.”

“There! It’s over there.” Her sigh was audible as she let go of him and led him to a small depression partly shrouded by thick undergrowth. “The door’s unlocked, so—”

Needing no more invitation, he clambered over and climbed into a dark-colored sedan. Seconds later she was in the driver’s seat and snapping on a seat belt before cranking up the engine.

The car lurched backward and swung clear of the brush before she dropped it into Drive.

From outside there was a pop, followed by a splintering sound as, just behind Ace’s head, the rear passenger window shattered. “Go, go, go!” he shouted.

The tail end of the car careening, the tires suddenly gained purchase. As the headlights came on to illuminate the path ahead, Ace shouted an unnecessary warning. Sierra was already swerving around tree trunks thicker than his legs.

Belting himself in in an effort to remain upright, Ace said, “Dirt road’s to your left. There! We’re clear now, or I think we are—unless he’s got wheels nearby, too.”

She darted a glance into the rearview mirror, her eyes wide and her face frozen in a grimace. His admiration rose another notch as she visibly pulled herself together, slowing her gasping breaths and mastering her body’s shaking.

“Half blind as he’s gotta be and with his partner shot, we’re sure to lose him.” Sierra flicked a look in his direction as she pulled onto an old logging road and mashed down on the accelerator. “Are you—your face?”

Wiping away blood, he said, “I’ll be okay, I think. What about you? Are you hurt?”

She gave a hoot of laughter. “Ask me once the adrenaline wears off, why don’t you?”

Ace suspected the same might be true in his case, with the thundering in his chest, the crazed buzz of adrenaline drowning out everything except the immediate need to get clear of the two men who would surely kill them, given half a chance.

It didn’t sink it for another mile or two down the dark and tree-lined road that the wound he had inflicted on the bearded man during their struggle might very well prove fatal.

“I’ve never shot a man before,” he said, sounding as numb as he felt. Let alone maybe killed one, despite what half of Mustang Valley and the police seemed to think.

Sierra slid another look his way. In the faint glow of the dashboard lights, he saw her narrow-eyed skepticism give way to a nod. “If it makes you feel any better,” she said, “he wouldn’t have any qualms about putting a bullet in you before he plugged me.”

“I know there wasn’t any choice. It’s just… I’m not—I don’t know how to deal with any of this.”

“I get that, Ace, and I appreciate it,” she said. “Just the same way I appreciate that you didn’t turn your back on me when they gave you the chance to walk away.”

This time it was Ace’s turn to laugh, a humorless sound like the scraping of dry tree limbs in the wind. “I’ve been on the wrong end of enough business dealings to know when I’m flat-out being lied to. Those guys never meant to let me go. They would have sooner shot me in the back the moment I turned around than trust me to leave and keep my mouth shut.”

“You have good instincts,” she allowed. “In their line of business, witnesses are liabilities. But thanks anyway. It means a lot. Without your help, I’d’ve definitely…”

“You’re welcome, I suppose,” he said when it became apparent that she didn’t care to finish the thought. “But where to now? If they do catch up with us, I doubt they’re going to be in the mood to stop with your leg.”

She slowed before turning left onto a hard-packed caliche road. “That’s my problem, not yours. I’m taking you back to the police station, where you’ll be safe from my issues and will be free to start getting your life back in order.”

“Free?” he fired back. “We both know the first thing they’re going to do is lock me up so I don’t disappear again.”

“Haven’t you been in a cage all this time anyway?” she asked. “I don’t see what the difference is, except for this time your family has some high-priced lawyer working on your issue.”

“Oh, there’s a difference, all right. Come on, Sierra. Can’t you see? We’re in this together now. You’ve already said you owe me.”

“I owe you more than getting you killed over what just happened. Which means putting space between us.”

“Or better yet, making sure they don’t find either of us. And I think I know a place where we can hole up, at least for the rest of the night. A little mom-and-pop motel outside of town, well off any of the main drags, where we can get a room in cash—I’ve got enough on me to give you some to register so they won’t see me—and lay low for the rest of the night.”

She glanced his way. “You mean a no-tell motel where you rich boys take your mistresses?”

“Don’t look at me.” He shrugged. “I’m an unrepentant bachelor with my own private condo in town and a home on the Triple R. But I’ve heard about this place…and I’m willing to bet that those two haven’t. They’re from Las Vegas, aren’t they?”

“They are, but—” She gasped and braked hard as a tan blur whisked before their headlights. The tires grabbed the gravel, but not fast enough to avoid the large deer that had come out of nowhere.

As the car shuddered to a halt, the buck thudded down across the hood, its head bent backward and one point of its antler at the center of a fist-size spider’s web in the middle of the windshield.

With her face pale and her hands clenching the steering wheel, she stared openmouthed, tears pouring down her face. “The poor thing—I didn’t—I never saw it coming—Oh, no—I’m sorry, deer. I’m really sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Ace said, struggling to still the shaking in his own voice. And oddly touched to see this experienced bounty hunter, who apparently dealt knockout punches as a boxer, so affected by the animal’s accidental death. “It happened so fast. I can’t imagine he felt anything. Here, let me get out and try to move it. We have to—we need to leave as fast as we can, before those guys catch up with us.”

Bailing out of the car, he tugged and hauled at the heavy carcass and, with a grunt of exertion, rolled it to the ground. After checking out the car, he went around and opened the driver’s side door.

“Move over, Sierra. I’m taking the wheel from here.”

She blinked up at him, her eyes huge and unfocused. “Wha—”

“Car looks drivable,” he told her, “but I need you to move over. Switch seats with me right now. You’ve got to trust that I’m the best person to get us both clear of this in one piece.”

Pulse racing wildly, Sierra stared up at him, weighing the risks against the realities—and her lifelong inclination to fight any man attempting to control her.

Swallowing back reluctance, she told herself that accepting Ace Colton’s help was the smartest, surest way to get them both to safety. For one thing, he knew where they were going. For another, she was shaking so hard her teeth were chattering and she thought she might be sick.

Still in overdrive from the adrenaline the stun gun attack had sent coursing through her, she’d had nothing in reserve—nothing at all—to handle this unexpected accident. And no choice now except to do what she had to in order to survive.

“Okay,” she said, ignoring the hand he offered to climb out unassisted. On the way to the passenger side, she turned to look behind them and breathed a little easier to see no sign of pursuit yet. She also noted, with a chagrined glance, her Camry’s dented steel-gray hood and damaged grill.

The moment her seat belt clicked, the car leaped forward, a few ticks and rattles hinting at some body damage but nothing that seemed to give Ace trouble. As the dark road straightened, he switched off the headlights before explaining, “If anybody’s following, let’s make their job a little harder. I know these back roads well enough to—”

“Just please, be careful,” she said drily as they bumped along. “I’d hate to lose my safe driver discount with my insurance company.”

Over the next twenty minutes Ace proved himself a skilled and confident driver, especially for a man who hadn’t been above ground, let alone behind the wheel, in some time. As they descended from the hills, he turned the headlights back on, and she made out the darkened outlines of low-slung ranch houses and outbuildings with parked vehicles or cattle trailers nearby, along a narrow rural road lined with fence posts. Since it was after 1 a.m., only the occasional security light stood against the inky darkness of the Arizona night.

One such outpost marked an old beige stucco building that squatted before a rocky bluff. The Cactus Flower, read a spot-lit sign beside a once-grand but now tilted and half-dead saguaro—possibly a victim of the moderate earthquake that had struck the area recently. More modest rows of solar lights marked out a rock pathway—cracked across the middle, but otherwise intact—leading to an office with an old-school pink neon sign reading Vacancy.

“What do you think?” Ace asked, the sound of his deep voice startling her out of her thoughts.

“It’ll do,” she said, taking in the bar shape of the apparently undamaged double-sided building, which couldn’t have more than twenty rooms, tops. On this side of the motel, she made out only two parked vehicles, and there were plenty of empty spots, which would allow them to leave the vehicle some distance from whichever room they ended up in—a precaution she preferred.

As Ace peeled off several twenties to go and check in, he said, “I’m not trying to be stingy, but the clerk’s going to find it strange if you try to rent two separate rooms for us.”

His obvious concern for her feelings made her stomach do a funny little slip-slide. Considering their circumstances, they both had a lot bigger worries than anything as old-fashioned as the notion of her honor as a single woman.

“You don’t really think I’m letting you out of my sight, do you?” In spite of her fatigue, she felt a smile pulling at the corner of her mouth. “Besides, we have a lot to talk about before either one of us gets any shut-eye.”

“Starting with what you said about this—this alleged daughter of mine, if you were really serious about that.”

“I may have my moments, bluffing in front of fugitives, but I would never lie about a thing like that,” she insisted. “Never.”

He hesitated, clearly weighing her claim before asking, “You said her name was Nova, right?”

Sierra nodded, seeing in his face how hard the possibility that he had a child had hit him, even if he wasn’t certain he could take her at her word. “Nova Ellis Colton, yes. That’s how I’m told your siblings introduced her. Just wait here in the car, but if you don’t mind… I’ll need to take my keys.”

Anger gleamed in his eyes, like sparks flying off a struck flint. “I thought we were way past that, Sierra, that you’d decided you could trust me. You really think I’d drive off, when you’re my only source of information on a young woman who’s going around pretending to be my last known biological connection on the planet?”

“They’re not treating her as a pretender, not with that DNA test. And she’s not the last. But I’ll tell you more when I come back out. With those car keys in my pocket.” Sierra held her hand out.

Glowering at her, he demanded, “Are you kidding? After a tease like that one? Why on earth would I take off now?”

With a derisive snort, she popped the wide brim of the hat he was still wearing. “I can think of twenty-five thousand bucks’ worth of motivation, cowboy. Which happens to be exactly the same number of reasons I can’t afford to let you go.”

As he sat waiting, keyless, in the car, Ace tried not to take it personally. Of course Sierra didn’t trust him. He told himself he wouldn’t risk it, either, if he were counting on the twenty-five thousand dollars she needed to repay a criminal with a name like Ice Veins and save her leg, if not her life.

Still, her distrust rankled, after what the two of them had been through, the way they’d worked together to overcome the armed thugs. And even more than that, he’d thought, back in the bunker, they’d truly been communicating on a deeper level than fugitive to captor.

You’ve been locked underground like a mushroom too damned long if you think for one moment that bounty hunter sees you as anything but another scum-sucking criminal to be hauled in for a reward. Reminding himself of the way she’d not only decked him but also come back from her tasing to pepper spray her assailant, he realized he had never met a woman half as hard-core…or any less likely to be persuaded by the Colton name, money and position that had drawn so many other women to him in the past.

Well, you can kiss all that goodbye now, he thought. Even if he cleared up the murder accusation, that suspicion would likely taint him for other companies looking for new executives, just as it would for the type of women he’d so long squired to charity events and social gatherings. Though the career part left him troubled—his role as the face of Colton Oil had always been more a matter of personal satisfaction than money to him—the thought of leaving behind those glittering social gatherings and the polished beauties who lived to dress up for them came as a relief. After all he and his family had recently been through, the thought of suffering through another season of superficial conversations about who was wearing what designer, driving which new luxury car, or vacationing at what exclusive beach or ski resort tempted him to head back to the bunker and hide himself away again.

He began to realize how much the past few months had changed him into someone else. Or maybe he had never been the man he’d liked to imagine in the first place. Maybe the real Ace Colton, the man whose life he’d inadvertently stolen, was meant to be that person and he was someone else entirely.

The wild thought chased its tail around his throbbing head until Sierra returned from checking them in, a small plastic grocery sack and a large, flat box in her hand.

“What do you have there?” he asked once she’d climbed in. “That smells almost like—is that pepperoni?”

“Hot and greasy,” she said, her tone light with amusement. “The night clerk’s maybe eighteen, and he’d just pulled a couple of those French bread pizzas out of this toaster oven they keep in there. Luckily, he hadn’t trashed the box.”

“You talked a teenage night clerk into parting with hot pizza?”

“Don’t be too impressed. The kid had another box in the freezer, and it still cost me twenty bucks. But he did throw in a couple sodas.” She added a shrug. “I figured we could use a little fuel.”

Ace’s stomach gave an unexpected growl, and he admitted, “I could eat,” much to his own surprise.

“Apparently.” She chuckled as she directed him to park the car on the deserted rear side of the building.

Afterward, as they walked to the far end of the room block, Ace noticed she was weaving slightly.

When she stumbled, he reflexively caught her arm to keep her from falling forward. “You all right there?”

Sniffing indignantly, she pulled free and straightened the box with the pizza. “Don’t worry, Ace. Our midnight snack is safe with me.”

He let it go at that, following behind her. And filing away the fact that the stun gun attack had taken more out of her than she was willing to let on.

Once inside the room, he locked and chained the door behind them and turned to see her frowning at the cramped space and tired decor.

“Sorry they didn’t have anything with two beds.” She set down the pizza box and the bag on a small, round table and pulled out one of the mismatched wooden chairs. “Apparently, all their rooms are set up like this one.”

“It’s no big deal. I’ll take the sofa.” Making an effort to look and sound more at ease than he was feeling, he pulled off the cowboy hat and tossed it onto the lumpy gold tweed cushions. “Now, about this girl you mentioned, the one claiming to be my—”

Sierra frowned and shook her head. “Young woman, you mean,” she corrected, pulling a couple of cans of Coke and some paper napkins out of the bag. “But first, why don’t you go wash the blood off your face, bruiser?”

Wincing at the reminder of the crack he’d taken from the bearded thug’s gun to his face, Ace ducked into the small bathroom to clean up as best he could. A few minutes later he returned after stripping down to his black tee to rid himself of the now-stained Western shirt and bandanna and washing carefully so as not to reopen the split skin at his cheekbone.

Sierra looked up from the seat she’d taken at the table. “That looks better, though I can already see you’ll have a shiner.” She passed him one of the two Cokes. “How’s it feeling?”

“It’s stopped bleeding.” As he popped the can’s tab, he shrugged, not mentioning the halo of bright specks he’d seen around the bathroom’s bare lights or the dull but steady throb in his head. “I’ll take that as a win at this point. What about you? Seriously, you okay?”

“Nothing I can’t handle,” she insisted with a defiant gleam in her eyes that made him suspect her answer would be the same even if those thugs had lopped off her leg.

Once he’d claimed the chair across from her, each of them grabbed a pizza. Over the next few minutes they ate in silence, making short work of a meal that failed to satisfy but would at least help to energize their tired bodies.

But it wasn’t enough to keep thoughts of their earlier conversation from crowding in on him before Sierra pushed away her last half-eaten bite as he washed down a final mouthful.

“So you’re going to quit putting me off and tell me about this Nova person,” he prompted as he set his soda down. “I need to hear all of it, now.”

Blowing out a breath, Sierra wiped her hands and pulled out her cell phone. When she looked up again into his eyes, he once more felt the impact of their connection, reaching all the way down to his spine and crackling outward through the myriad nerve endings. He felt a buzz of anticipation, the unshakable sense that this tough, smart woman had come into his life to change its course forever.

Or maybe utterly destroy what little I have left…

“I’ll do you one better, Ace,” she told him. “I’ll show you right now. You see, after Selina hired me, I realized I couldn’t do the job without getting to know who’s who in your family before I started interviewing them for clues regarding your whereabouts. I needed a system to document their names and faces since it’s such a large clan, with so many siblings and half siblings.”

“They’re not really mine, though. Not anymore,” he said, thinking of how not one of them was an actual blood relation. Of how he’d been cast adrift by that fateful email exposing him as an imposter.