Cherry Adair - T-flac 06 (13 page)

"Damn it to hell, you moron!" she yelled at the unseen hunter as she continued with her battle against recalcitrant clothing and intimately clinging snow. Slapping layers and layers of shirt, sweater and coat out of her way with hands that shook, she swore. Where the
hell
was the zipper? Layers were great protection from the elements, but they were a bitch when one was running for her life and trying to find her own waistband. She must have pulled up seven garments and she still couldn't find the small tongue of the zipper.

Two feet away, snow sprayed up in a mini-explosion.

"Dammit to hell! Do I
look
like a freaking deer?"

Slithering and sliding, Lily tried to get her feet under her while attempting to zip up her pants with thickly gloved hands.
Come on. Come on. Come on
.

The weasel dog, whoever he was! He'd probably been watching her the whole time—Oh, God. That meant that he
knew
she wasn't an animal. The jerk. This was some sick game. She wished she had her own rifle so she could turn the tables and fire off a few rounds, and scare
him
to death.

Lily's face burned with frustration, her behind burned with cold. When had she lost the ability to dress herself, for heaven's sake? Pretty much about the same time someone had started taking potshots.

She grabbed the fingertips of her left glove with her teeth and yanked it off so she could at least get her pants done up.

As she dipped her head to see what she was doing, Lily noticed her sleeve. The blood drained from her head. The shot had torn through two thick layers. The hide of her favorite sheepskin coat sported two neat round bullet holes.

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The stupid son of a bitch. She stuck a finger in the hole the bullet had made and stared at it. Had he hit her? She didn't
feel
any pain…
Move
! What the hell was she doing? No time to sit and assess the damage.

She was a sitting duck out here in her dark coat on the pristine white snow. She might as well paint a red bull's-eye around herself. The only tree or shrub within fifty feet of where she'd been was her little toilet bush. Clearly no match for a bullet. Her footprints stretched down the hill behind her like twin arrows pointing to where she now stood.

Moron or not, she wasn't sticking around to argue with the anonymous and clearly deranged hunter. She wouldn't waste time looking for him either. She started running like a chicken with its head cut off back toward camp.

It was heavy going. The snow was deep and wet. Her thigh muscles ached and her lungs were about to burst with the effort it took to draw in each frozen breath.

Another
weeeeee
of a bullet.

This one slammed into the snow several feet to the front and left of her. A renewed and urgent fear rippled through the irritation burning inside her. She was in the open.

How far had she walked to find the perfect private spot for her bathroom? A hundred freaking miles?

While she'd been in the bushes the shooter could have mistaken her for a deer, but now that she'd reached open ground there was no mistaking her human, two-legged form. Someone was after her.

Another shot. This one zipped past her, barely.
Way
too close for comfort. Breath a white plume, Lily put on more speed, not wasting time looking back.

Another shot. Her hat flew from her head.

"Damn it to hell! Stop shooting!" Lily screamed at the top of her aching lungs as she ran. Surely to God the people back at camp—
Derek
—could hear the shots? Where was everyone? Fear muted her hearing as blood rushed into her ears. Somebody up there was aiming directly at her. Deliberately.

Impossible. Ridiculous. But fact.

Safety was a hundred yards up ahead behind a thick stand of trees. Yet the snow here was too deep for running.

The dark bulk of a man came barreling out of the trees up ahead, running straight for her. Lily turned around and beat it the other way.

"Lily! Down! Get down."

Derek
. Thank God. She needed no further urging. She dropped where she stood. Face-first in the crunchy snow. It hurt like hell, but she kept her face mashed in the icy surface and covered her head with her arms. Like that was going to stop a bullet from entering her brain.

She tilted her frosty face to yell a warning to him: "Watch out." A volley of shots followed in quick succession. A minute, an hour, a year later, Lily heard shouting through the blood pounding in her ears.

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The other mushers to the rescue. Yeah! The cavalry had arrived.

Coats flapping, hats askew, the mushers came charging up the hill toward them.

"What's happening?"

"—heard shots."

"—Who—"

"What the fuck—"

Derek was on her before Lily could stagger upright.

"Are you hurt?" he demanded urgently, wrapping a large hand around her upper arm and hoisting her to her feet in one smooth move. In his other hand he held a rifle.

"Where are you hurt? Did he get you?" He turned her around to inspect her back, her front. Saw her sleeve with the entry and exit holes and went white and tight-lipped. He started yanking off her coat.

"Wait. I'm fine, I'm fine!" Lily yelled as he ripped off her warm coat and started tugging at her sweater to draw it over her head. It was freezing and he was trying to get her clothes off. "Whoa, big boy."

She slapped at his hand, but he was so intent on seeing if she was hurt he didn't hear her. Eventually she grabbed his gloved hand and held it. "It's just my coat. I'm okay. I'm okay."

His dark scowl and grim mouth said he didn't believe her. "Sure?"

"Yes. I lost my favorite hat, and my coat looks like a moth with an attitude dropped by, but I'm okay."

"Rob. Don. Sandy," Derek called over his shoulder, scanning her features with eyes like laser beams.

"Get her back to camp, check her for bullet holes and stick to her like white on rice." The frighteningly remote expression on his face made the hair on the back of Lily's neck stand up. His eyes looked flat and light-absorbing, his mouth grim.

This wasn't the suave, charming, laid-back Derek Wright she knew. This man, this
stranger
, was a warrior.

The three men came huffing and puffing to join them. "I can get myself back to camp," Lily told them urgently. "Go with Derek."

"Stay with
her
," he told them, removing a small handgun from beneath his coat. He then turned and ran toward the trees to the left and above them, gun in one hand, rifle in the other.

"Holy shit," Rob Stuart said with awe as he watched Derek disappear over a berm. "Is he a cop?"

"N-no. A rancher." She buttoned her coat with shaky fingers. She'd never, in the six years she'd known him, seen Derek with that expression on his face as he'd hauled her to her feet.

Intense. Murderous. Terrifying.

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Then… nothing. Blank. Cold. Merciless.

Lily shuddered, cold right down to the marrow. And it had nothing to do with the snow slowly melting inside her pants.

Don Singleton came and put a beefy arm around her. "Were you hurt? Did you see the guy?"

"No and no," Lily told him uncomfortably. She stepped out of his hold as casually as possible. What was it about the men she knew? Oh, Lily, get over yourself, she thought, suddenly amused with her own ego.

Better a little female vanity than thinking about what had almost just happened.
That
made her knees feel like jelly.

The three men gathered protectively around her, rifles in their hands, but they were a lot more interested in watching Derek racing toward the tree line above them and speculating about the shooter.

"Let's get back to camp, little girl," Don said. "Get some hot coffee into you and you can tell us what happened up there."

"Sure," Lily agreed. "Let's." Everyone around her carried a rifle.

As she should have been, damn it. She knew better. But it wouldn't do any good to berate herself now.

Now she could only think of Derek plunging off to do battle with…
who
? How many rounds did he have in his rifle and gun? How many had he started with? And how many were left? And where had he come from? He'd been ahead of the other mushers by minutes.

Lily felt a little foggy now that it was over. Surely
Derek
wouldn't be shooting at her? Nah. That was ridiculous. Embarrassment and an icy butt had addled her brain. The shots had come from behind her, Derek appeared in front of her: couldn't be him.

"Just kids out trying to bag a moose or something," she told the others with conviction. She listened halfheartedly to the wild speculations, and pushed aside the ridiculous notion that the shooting had been intentional and aimed at her.

Definitely, positively not accidental. There'd been too many shots and they'd all been close together.
Had
the shooter been aiming for her? Or had he been aiming for any musher and she'd pulled the short straw?

Some environmentalists or an Iditarod detractor? They could be a bit extreme. But would they stoop to shooting the mushers?

She couldn't imagine anyone wanting
her
dead. Unless… Lily felt bile rise in the back of her throat.

Unless someone knew she'd been in the barn that day. Unless someone knew she'd overheard them talking.

God. Was it possible?

Could this be connected to the bull-sperm sales?

Lily tucked her hands into her pockets and hunched her shoulders to keep her ears warm. "Thanks for coming to my rescue, guys. I'm more than ready for that cup of coffee. If that kid's smart he'll hightail it before he gets busted."

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"Stupid fucking bitch. Did you see that? Flopped around like a flounder and made me miss her by a goddamned country mile." The sniper didn't lift his cheek from the rifle as the other man walked up behind him.

How had the fucking sniper known he was behind him?

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" He couldn't believe they'd sent someone else to do his job. "What the fuck are you thinking, dickhead? How will
shooting
her look like a goddamn accident?"

The sniper shrugged, then squeezed off another shot. "Who gives a damn? Could be a hunter or something."

"Could be a fucking
moron
or something. Get lost. I have the job under control. Go back and tell the bosses that." He'd heard the first shot from down below and raced up here in the snowmobile, dreading who he might find. Of course it
would
be this soulless asshole. He'd do anything or anyone for a buck.

How had he known they'd send someone like this to check up on him? Because he was smarter than the average ranch hand, that's how. "Did anyone
tell
you to fucking shoot her?" he demanded when the sniper kept right on shooting as though he weren't there. "And what the fuck are you doing messing with my job anyhow?"

The sniper squeezed off another shot. "You've had plenty of time to do your job. I'm insurance. Stand still, Leaking Lily," he told her. He'd watched her pee through his up-close-and-personal scope. Nice ass. Of course she'd made him miss that prime shot, doing all that wiggling and squirming and getting him hot. And now having numbnuts behind him breathing down his neck didn't help matters.

"Back off, would ya? You're making me miss my shot, and your breath stinks like you just ate rat turds."

He continued to aim and fire. It was like trying to shoot a lab rat in a maze. Irritating and time-consuming.

And ultimately a waste of good bullets. Not that that was stopping him. There was a chance he could still get her.

"Know what I think? I think I don't like you pissin' in my pond." The man had been paid ten large to off Dr. Munroe. It was a matter of fucking pride. He slid the knife out of the scabbard at his hip, and with a quick, violent movement swiped the blade across the bastard's throat.

The shooter gagged and gurgled; his warm blood gushed out over his hand and the knife. The man's wet glove slipped a little on the hilt of the knife, but he slashed again at the sniper's throat. A little lower this time. Blood spurted out in a showy arc and splattered the snow in red confetti-like droplets. His heart raced. Fuck. This was cool. Really. Amazingly cool. He slashed again. And again.

The moron gurgled, choking on his own blood, but continued struggling in his hold. "Shut up, dickhead.

Just shut the fuck up. This"—he slashed again—"is for pissin' in my pond. And this is for giving me a load of shit about it." Adrenaline raced through his body like the speed he'd taken that time. Fuck. He was invincible. This was un-fucking-believable. He loved it.

He'd found a new hobby. Better than money. Better than drugs.

"Woo-hoo, bro," he chuckled, dancing around while still hanging on to the man slumped in his hold. "I am
diggin'
this. I surely am."

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The sniper's knees buckled—'
bout time, goddamn it
!—and almost pulled him over. "No fight left in you now, is there, you dickhead?"

"As much as I'd enjoy hangin' around and playing some more, I think you prob'ly pissed off the boss man. He's gonna come up here to wup your ass." He laughed out loud at what Wright was gonna find when he showed up. Man. This was startin' to be an interesting adventure. That's for sure.

With an upward thrust, he buried the knife to the hilt in the dickhead's kidney before he knew what was happening. A neat little trick he'd learned in Nam. The shithead crumpled to the ground without a peep.

He stripped off his sodden gloves and wiped his hands on the dead man's coat. Then casually slipped on the nice clean fur-lined gloves the other man had conveniently stuffed into his pockets. "Thanks, man."