Page 6 of Hunted

“There’s no way out,” she said. “And you know the bounty on you is ‘dead or alive.’ Lucky for you, I want some information, so if you Change and come quietly, you get to not die. You’re welcome.”

Tension filled the air as he stared at her, eyes golden in the growing dark. Damn. If she had to shoot him again, he might be too weak to talk.

Then there was a crunch and crackling of bones, and Harrelson Changed—crouched on his hands and knees, still panting. He lifted his head, eyes still golden. “Poison…” he gasped. “Need antidote… Don’t… kill…”

“I said I wouldn’t if you stay down—”

Too late, she realized he wasn’t talking to her.

The man dangling from her trap grabbed the rope and twisted around so he was upright, pulling a gun and keeping it expertly trained on her even as the rope swung. Two more men stepped out from behind the tumbled boulders on either side of Dobe, wearing nothing but ragged army pants—and pistols.

That would teach her to go into a bottleneck with the breeze at her back. She could almost hear her training officers yelling at her.

“This bounty’s mine,” she said. “Back off.”

She was hoping they’d start with threats, demands or trash talk, but her only answer was a bullet. It grazed her shoulder, cutting a burning furrow through her flesh. Well, hell.

Michelangela dove to the side, rolled, and sprang up to the top of one of the giant boulders. Without stopping, she launched herself at the nearest gunman. Both of them crashed to the ground, rolling over and over and preventing his buddies from shooting at her, in case they hit him instead.

He was a wolf shifter too, by the smell—with crazy quick reflexes and trained in hand-to-hand combat. Michelangela kept him in a close grapple, driving her elbow into his face and then his throat, possibly breaking his larynx. As he lay gasping for breath, she did a forward somersault across the path and flipped to her feet at the base of the tree, pulled her knife, and slashed the anchor line for her rope trap.

The rope gave way and the guy in the tree crashed to the ground, cursing, just as the second gunman dove on top of her.

He was heavily muscled and outweighed her, but she was well-trained with a rabid wolf inside. She got one leg wrapped around his neck and while she pummeled the rest of him—ribs, knees, whatever she could reach.

His neck had to be made of iron—she couldn’t cut off his air. He shook her off and she just barely squirmed out of his grasp and got to her feet. It took two roundhouse kicks in a row to put him to the ground.

The guy from the tree was just about staggering to his feet, so she grabbed his gun, reversed it, and slammed it across his head. He dropped.

Surveying the carnage around her, her wolf howled in triumph.

Michelangela gazed at Dobe, who was hunched on the ground, on the verge of passing out, but with his eyes still on her.

She said, “I win.”

The ghost of a smile touched his face. “Not yet.”

Michelangela heard a faint step behind her, and a man’s voice whispered, “Kaboom.” Something hit her like a lightning bolt, and she was out.

Chapter 4

Gunn paced the floor of the medical center, his eyes on Dobe, tucked into one of the narrow hospital beds. He wished—not for the first time—that they had a full-on healer at Outlaw Ridge.

Usually they didn’t need one—shifters healed crazy fast and they didn’t get infections or diseases. Most of the men had enough experience to do the rough-and-ready first aid that was all they needed.

But this was different. The damn bounty hunter had shot Dobe up with some kind of shifter-specific toxin—and nobody knew what the hell to do about it.

He turned to Rex, sitting in a moth-eaten upholstered chair pulled up to the side of the bed. “How’s he doing?”

Rex shook his head. “Not good.” Dobe was tossing and turning, his voice a constant murmur of pointless shit. Right now it was the multiplication tables—starting with ‘one times one’ and going straight through.

Sometimes it was so soft Gunn could barely hear it, even with his wolf’s enhanced hearing, but it never stopped.

Rex said to Dobe, “Hey, buddy, it’s me. Rex. You’re here at Outlaw Ridge. You’re safe.”

“Seven times three is twenty-one. Seven times four is twenty-eight.”

Dobe’s voice was getting raspy, and his face was pale and sweaty. They had to get him the antidote for whatever that bounty hunter bitch had given him.