When Lightning Strikes

She pulled the sleeping bag up to her chin and thumped her head back onto the cold ground. She stared up at the blanket of stars and thought of her bedroom at home, so cozy and welcoming and warm.

  For the first time since the ordeal began, she cried.

  Chapter Six

  f

  Killian woke with a start.

  He tensed, concentrated on the sounds of the desert. Behind him, the little creek gurgled a quiet, sloshing melody as it moved over the rocks and branches in its path. A breeze, cool and sharp and crisp, whistled through the cottonwood trees, jostling their leaves. From far away came the keening cry of a hawk; its shadow glided against a sheer, rust and brown cliff. Everything was as it should be here, quiet and peaceful.

  Then he remembered the woman. He could feel her beside him, feel the warm heat of her leg pressed against his, the bony knob of her shoulder wedged alongside his forearm.

  A memory filtered through his mind, as soft as a sigh, a whisper. He frowned. Crying. He'd heard it last night as she'd lain beside him, her slim shoulders jerking with each shuddering, indrawn breath. She cried unlike any woman he'd ever heard. No sobbing theatrics, no hiccuping coughs, just soundless tears, somehow all the more heartbreaking for the silence of them. For an incredible moment, he'd found himself almost responding to her, almost turning on his side to say something.

  The memory irritated him. A heavy frown ribbed his forehead.

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  Beside him, she lay as still as stone, but her breathing was quick and uneven. It was not the sound of sleep.

  Reluctantly he glanced sideways at her.

  He didn't know exactly what he expected to see, but it wasn't this. She lay stiff as a board, her arms crossed across her body, corpselike and cold. Her eyes were lifeless and dull, an almost muddy green against the pallor of her skin. She looked as if she hadn't slept in a lifetime.

  "You didn't sleep," he said, wondering how he'd known that, and why he'd bothered to say it.

  "No." There was a wealth of pain in the simple word.

  Killian didn't know what to say. She looked so ... vulnerable right now, beaten.

  She turned slightly and met his gaze.

  The pain and hopelessness in her eyes hit him like a physical blow. It came to him suddenly?crazily?that she'd looked at him like this before. He felt ... disjointed ... confused. Something about this moment was impossibly familiar.

  She bit down on her lower lip, but it was too late. He'd seen the tremble in her mouth. "I'm in a coma," she murmured. "That's the only explanation. I've had hours to think about it, and it's the only answer that makes sense. I'm in a hospital bed somewhere, with needles sticking out of my arms. Maybe on Demerol." She glanced up at him, her face drawn into an earnest frown. "I want to wake up now."

  He almost asked her who Demerol was, but he stopped himself just in time.

  It didn't matter. Demerol could be her husband and it didn't matter. None of this craziness mattered. All that mattered was getting her back to the ridge and finding out how the hell she knew so much about him and his men.

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  "You're not listening to me," she said, her soft voice becoming a bit more strident. "I said I need to wake up now."

  "You are awake," he said.

  "Ha. Naturally you would think so. This is the only world you know."

  Another meaningless statement to which there was no rational response. Thank God. The more she talked, the less he cared about the vulnerability he'd seen in her eyes.

  He pushed the sleeping bag back and reached for his boots, checking them quickly for snakes. Plunging his stockinged feet in the worn, broken-in leather, he got to his feet. "Grab a few more sticks for the fire. I'll get the coffee started."

  She sat up and gave him a wry, forced smile. "I suppose a double tall latte with skim milk is out."

  "Huh?"

  She sighed, shook her head. "I've got to work harder on your dialogue."

  His eyes narrowed. "Is that an insult?"

  "It depends on your point of view." She sighed. "Aw, hell, I don't feel up to fighting with my own imagination. Coffee's great. What are we having with it?"

  "Beans."

  "One of my favorite breakfast foods." She peeled the sleeping bag back from her legs and crawled out, then she turned and started rolling up the bag.

  Killian watched her. She was crouched low, her once stiff and now wavy hair flopping against her cheek. The earrings she wore?and there were at least three in each ear?glinted in the early morning sunlight. Her profile was sharp and defined, her skin creamy and pale. There was a sadness to her mouth, a downturn to the edges

  that made him wonder what kind of life she'd had. She was damned young to look so sad.

  He pulled his gaze away from her and stared at the rock wall behind them. He was losing his mind. What the hell did he care why she looked sad? She meant nothing to him.

  She finished tying the sleeping bag and sat back on her heels, running a hand through her hair. The short black curls bounced immediately back in place, covering one eye. "I need some mousse."

  He ignored her. At least he tried to. "Uh-huh."

  "And an Excedrin. This Demerol is giving me a headache." She stared at him, obviously waiting for him to respond?as if he had a moose standing by?and when he didn't, she sighed dramatically.

  He shook his head, completely at a loss. "Where in the Christ are you from, lady?"

  She gave a hollow laugh and didn't look at him. "The posse left way before dawn. They wanted to get the jump on you."

  He stared at her for a second, feeling the blood drain from his face. What in the hell had he been thinking, for Christ's sake?

  He made a growling, angry sound of disgust. That was the problem. He hadn't been thinking. He'd been staring into her goddamn eyes and wondering why she was so sad, wondering who would let a child smoke at eleven.

  He cursed his own stupidity. It didn't occur to him to wonder how she knew about the posse. He accepted it as truth. Somehow he knew she was right, and the knowledge made him even angrier. He'd been so caught up by the sorrow in her eyes that he hadn't even bothered to question her.

  But as soon as they got back to the hideout, he'd

 

  remedy his negligence. He'd back her against the wall and tie her up if he had to. Somehow, he'd figure out who in the hell she was and why she'd been at the bank.

  "Get up," he growled.

  "Don't blame me," she snapped. "It's not my fault they're following you."

  He spun on her. "It is," he said tightly, and as he spoke the words, he knew they were true. "Somehow, it is."

  She shrugged and tossed him the sleeping bag. "Arguably, of course, you're right. Everything in this dream is my fault. But you 're the outlaw."

  He stomped on the fire, making sure it was completely out, then saddled up their horses. He gave her exactly two minutes of privacy behind a bush, then he grabbed her around the waist and dragged her toward her mount.

  Naturally, she kicked and screamed. "Let go of me, damn it. I need a toothbrush."

  He flung her onto the horse and glared up at her. "Do I need to tie your hands?"

  "No." She spat the word.

  "Does the posse catch me today?" he asked.

  She smiled, a sickeningly sweet display that made him want to punch her. "Believe me now?"

  He gripped her forearm hard. "Does the goddamn posse catch up with me today?"

  "Yes. At Bloody Gorge."

  He frowned, feeling a brush of cold fear at her smile. Bloody Gorge was a deadly box canyon?the perfect place to corner an outlaw and kill him like a rabid dog. He started to turn away, then he noticed her expression. "Why are you grinning?"

  "You're going to die there. Slowly, horribly, with

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  blood spurting out of several attractive orifices." She shook her head, made a tsldng sound. "It's one of the better action scenes I've written."

  "Lady," he s
aid, "if I die, you're comin' with me."

  "Oh, I don't think so. It's my dream, you see, and I'm going to be rescued by Joe Martin." She smiled at the thought. "And he's a hunk of burning love, believe me."

  He turned his back on her in disgust and strode to his horse. Vaulting into the saddle, he smacked Captain and The Bitch on the butts. Both unsaddled horses trotted alongside the black.

  The woman's face twisted into a grimace. She clutched her reins and clung to the saddle horn. "Oh, hell ..."

  He felt a moment's satisfaction, then he kicked the black hard. The stallion surged into a gallop. The woman's roan leapt alongside, keeping up as Captain and The Bitch followed close beside them. They sped across the bumpy, uneven ground, raced up and down hills, and wound through canyons.

  But even as they ran, Killian could feel the posse behind him, closing in for the kill. He glanced back time and again, searching for a sign, but all he saw was endless golden desert.

  Joe Martin was back there, shadowing Killian's every move, waiting and watching, closing in.

  For the first time in fifteen years, Killian felt an honest-to-God sense of fear. Somehow?he didn't know how he knew, but somehow he did?this woman was going to get him killed.

  They were on a narrow trail carved from the sheer face of a treeless mountain. A blistering hot sun beat

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  down on them, battered Lainie's face. She sighed tiredly; it was an oddly disembodied sound.

  "Damn!" Killian cursed and yanked back on his reins. The black slid to a bouncing, clattering stop on the edge of a sheared rock slope. Thousands of tiny pebbles rattled and rained down the crevasse beside them. The two riderless horses behind him slowed, then halted.

  Lainie yanked back on her reins to keep from ramming into Captain's huge, spotted butt. Her horse stopped dead, sending Lainie crashing into the saddle horn. The leather horn drove into the tender flesh of her stomach. She gasped hard, tried to find a breath.

  "We'll have to go back. Shit."

  Dully Lainie lifted her head and followed his gaze. Ahead of them was a narrow, high-walled canyon that seemed to have magically appeared between two immense, twisted rock spires. She'd been staring straight ahead and hadn't seen the opening. The space between the two stalagmitelike towers was invisible until you were directly in front of it.

  She could see that ordinarily it would be a hell of a getaway door. But not today; now there was a huge, triangular rock wedged into the opening.

  "I take it that rock is a new addition to the entrance," Lainie said tiredly, retreiving the canteen from her saddle and opening it. She took a drink, letting the sun-warmed, metallic-tasting water soothe her aching, dust-clogged throat.

  He grabbed his own canteen and took a long drink. "Yeah," he growled, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. "It's new."

  "So, what now?" She glanced around. They were on a slick sandstone ledge. The trail was one horse wide, a skinny path of level dirt gouged along the side of a textured

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  stone mountain. A gaping maw of red earth slid down to their right, slumping into a valley of shale and fallen rock. Far below, a thread of brown water pushed through a band of dying green.

  He didn't even bother to look at her. He twisted in his saddle and gazed back at the thin, inhospitable path through which they'd just come. "We'll have to backtrack and make a run for it."

  "Backtrack? A run for it?" That didn't sound good. In fact, it sounded really, really bad. "We haven't exactly been walking." She peeked down at the crevasse and shuddered. "And it's no place to run."

  He pulled back on his reins. The black dipped his head and hunkered down, picking his way backward.

  Lainie watched in horror as the riderless horses followed suit. She saw their big, muscled backsides moving toward her. She gripped her reins and shook her head. "I don't think so. Uh-uh. I am not backing out of this canyon."

  Her horse dropped his head.

  "No," she whispered. "Please, no ..."

  The four horses backed up; their slow, clomping steps rang through the air. Lainie clung to the saddle horn, her eyes squeezed shut. The rapid-fire thumping of her heart drowned out the horses' plodding steps.

  "Lainie!"

  Killian's shout roused her. She opened her eyes and stared at him, breathing hard.

  "You have to turn."

  Lainie looked down to her right. The world dropped away from her, slid in a red-rock wash one thousand feet below. "Oh, my God ..."

  "Don't panic?"

  She gasped. "Don't panic? I'm on the edge of the frigging world and you're telling me not to panic?"

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  "Calm down. Here's what you do. Very gently, press your right foot against the roan's side, then gently pull back on the reins."

  Lainie let out a trembling breath. She wanted to do as he asked, even tried to, but she couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. "I ... can't."

  "Yes, you can. Try."

  She bit down on her lower lip and looked at him. She felt foolish and stupid, but she couldn't move, couldn't do as he asked. Some heroine, she thought with disgust.

  He looked at her, and the gentle understanding in his eyes surprised her. There was no censure in his gaze, no disgust or impatience; there was only concern and something else, something that made her heartbeat speed up and her throat go dry. He knew what it meant to be afraid, really truly afraid. And he knew how hard it was to conquer that fear, how impossible it was sometimes to find the strength to go on.

  "You can do it," he said softly.

  Amazingly, he made her feel as if maybe she could.

  She started to look to her right.

  "Don't look."

  She snapped her head back around. "That's good advice," she said, wetting her dry lips. "Good advice." Slowly, afraid even to breathe, she curled her aching fingers around the reins. Her eyes sought his. Their gazes locked, and somewhere deep inside him, she found the strength she needed.

  "Use your foot first."

  She nodded and swallowed hard. Then, with infinite care, she pressed her heel into the roan's heaving side. The horse sidled away from the drop-off.

  Lainie's breath exhaled in a trilling little laugh. She pressed her foot against him again, and the horse re-

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  sponded by moving closer to the safety of the sandstone wall.

  "Good job," Killian murmured. "Now, draw back on your reins again."

  Lainie nodded and followed his direction. The roan dropped his head and backed up. Lainie's left foot scraped along the rock wall, wrenching sideways at the motion, but she didn't care. They finally came to a small, oval clearing where the trail zagged in the other direction.

  "Stop there," Killian said sharply.

  Lainie reined her horse tight against the wall.

  Killian backed up and pivoted fast, coming to a stop beside her. He looked down, and she saw in his eyes the same cold terror that sat in the pit of her stomach. "You okay?"

  The quietness of his voice surprised her, made her feel strangely afraid all over again. She brushed the damp hair from her eyes with a trembling hand. "Yeah, sure."

  He smiled. "You did good."

  She gazed up at him, unable to look away. For a heart-stopping moment, she thought he was going to reach over and touch her. Her skin tingled in anticipation, her pulse raced. All she could manage was a breathy little, "Thanks."

  But he didn't touch her, he just stared down at her. All at once he frowned, and the look in his eyes changed completely. Gone was the compassion, the understanding of fear, the caring. Suddenly his gaze was intense and assessing. Once again, they were strangers.

  She felt the loss of that moment, that connection between them, as keenly as a slap. She told herself it was stupid to feel hurt; she'd imagined the moment anyway. But she couldn't make herself believe it. For a sec-

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  ond?no more than a heartbeat?she'd seen something in him, something real and important. Something she'd sought all her li
fe inside herself and never found. And she had no idea what it was, and no idea if he'd felt it, too.

  Finally he looked away from her and whistled. It was a low, commanding sound that echoed off the sheer rock walls. The horses started moving again, picking their way one by one through the twisting, zigzagging path.

  Once again, Lainie was bringing up the rear.

  It took them the better part of two hours to make it back to the trailhead. They emerged onto the flat mesa top just as the sun was beginning its slow downward arc. Sunlight and shadows intertwined across the level copper-hued earth, writhing and dancing amid the sagebrush.

  Killian reined the black to a halt and sat back in his saddle. Tilting his hat, he sopped the sweat from his brow with his sleeve. Jesus, it was hot. He reached back and untied his canteen, taking a long, satisfying gulp.

  The woman brought her horse up alongside his. He glanced at her and was just about to say something? when he realized what she was wearing . . . and what she wasn't. She was slumped in her saddle, her shoulders rounded, her chest caved in on itself. That ridiculous sweater was gone now, its sleeves tied around her waist. She was wearing only those old, faded jeans and that skintight black thing around her breasts. The skin above and below the black fabric was an angry red.

  "You're in deep shit, lady."

  She snorted and reached for her own canteen. "No kidding. I've been saying that since this stupid dream started."

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  "That burn's gonna hurt like hell in the morning."

  She glanced down at her arms and wrinkled her nose, then shrugged. "Cancer alert, cancer alert."

  He stared at her, unable to think of a response. She was always doing that to him, throwing him off guard with her outrageous responses. "You should cover yourself back up."

  "I was sweating like a pig."

  He shook his head. "Jesus, lady, you talk like a cowboy."

  She grinned and ran a hand through her sweaty hair. "You should have heard my mom. She could curse a blue streak."

  "I'm sure she was a lovely woman. Now, put that sweater back on."

  "There's been a mistake, obviously."

  What the hell was she talking about now? "What mistake?"

  "Two, actually. First, you apparently believe I give a crap what you think, and secondly, you are under the delusion that my skin can actually burn." She gave him a condescending smile. "Trust me, I can't burn ... not drunk as a skunk and passed out in my house on Bain-bridge."

  His eyes narrowed. He reached for his gun and let his fingers curl lightly around its cold steel grip. He was just about to say something when a memory flashed through his mind. Unbidden, he saw her as she'd been this afternoon, terrified and vulnerable. As they'd stood on that ledge, facing each other, with the world dropped off away from them, he'd looked in her eyes and seen something that scared the hell out of him.