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“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.
