Operation: Midnight Tango. Linda Castillo
at seemed even more dangerous, so he leaned forward and put the pedal to the metal.
There were no towns to the west. Just the vast wilderness of the Salmon National Forest. If they were lucky, they might be able to find a ranch and get to a phone. But even if they did, Zack wasn’t sure whom to call. Clearly someone at the agency had sold him out. He didn’t have a clue who or why. But he was going to find out. And then he was going to take great pleasure in breaking every bone in their body.
Of course, before he could do that he had to stay alive. That meant losing the chopper.
He ducked instinctively when the powerful spotlight swept over them. He twisted the throttle, trying to squeeze more power from the snowmobile, but the engine was running at its peak. Damn it!
The spotlight swept over them again, only this time it held.
“They’ve spotted us!” Emily cried.
“Not for long,” Zack fired back. “Hold tight.”
He swerved right and for an instant they were hidden beneath the canopy of pines that grew along the road. But the spotlight latched onto them again when they burst from the cover of the trees.
Snow being kicked up from the chopper’s rotors blinded him, but Zack held the handlebars steady and managed to keep the snowmobile on the road using the treetops as his point of reference. The chopper was flying low and bearing down on them, getting closer and closer….
Suddenly a bullet blew a hole through the Plexiglas windshield. Fear notched up into cold, hard terror at the realization there was at least one sharpshooter on board the chopper. And that he and Emily were in his crosshairs. He didn’t know if there were enough trees up ahead to provide ample cover. If he didn’t do something quickly, they would be shot….
Then the windshield exploded. Plexiglas blew back, pelting his face shield and chest. Through the driving wind and snow Zack spotted an opening in the trees off to his right. “Hang on!” he shouted and drove off the road.
The snowmobile bumped over some fallen logs and snow-covered rocks the size of basketballs. He felt Emily tighten her grip. Even through the pandemonium of the out-of-control ride and the knowledge that certain death was only a tiny miscalculation away, Zack vowed to keep her safe. She might be employed by Lockdown, Inc., but he didn’t think she was involved with the RZ-902. She sure as hell hadn’t asked for this.
A rock the size of a Volkswagen came at them seemingly out of nowhere. Zack turned hard to the left. The snowmobile tilted at a precarious angle, but he leaned into the turn and managed to keep it upright. He glanced behind him, looking for the chopper, and saw with some surprise that it was nowhere in sight.
“Do you see the chopper?” he shouted.
“I think it went straight when we went into the trees,” Emily answered.
That wouldn’t last long. Chances were, the Lockdown people were equipped with night-vision equipment. They probably had infrared technology, as well, which worked much the same way only using body heat instead of light. In the snow, he and Emily would stand out like neon beacons.
Zack glanced down at the gas gauge, which had been on E since leaving the prison maintenance building. The best he could hope for would be that they had enough to get them out of the immediate area.
The trees had opened up and Zack drove the snowmobile like a madman. Even though the headlights were off, he could see that they’d entered what looked like an old ski slope. The terrain was sloped severely, but it was clear of trees for the most part. He took the snowmobile up the mountain at an angle.
The snow was coming down in earnest now. If the bad weather continued, there was a good possibility the chopper would be grounded. If they could reach a house or flag down a passing motorist, they might just get out of this alive.
The hope evaporated like a snowflake in the sun when the snowmobile jerked violently. Too late Zack saw the looming cliff. He applied the brake and yanked the handlebars hard to the right. Snow spewed high into the air as the big machine pivoted. To his left he saw the black vastness of space, but they were still on solid ground. For a moment he thought they were going to make it. Then the snow crumbled beneath them.
“Jump!” he shouted to Emily.
The warning came too late. The snowmobile plummeted downward. The engine whined as the machine went into a free fall.
Emily screamed. The terror in her voice pierced him like a dagger. He wanted to turn to her, tell her he hadn’t meant for this to happen. He hadn’t meant for her to get hurt….
Then the snowmobile tumbled into a nosedive, and Zack couldn’t do anything but pray.
EMILY WASN’T SURE how or when she’d lost her grip on Devlin; she’d been holding on tightly just a moment before. Now she was flying through the air, barreling toward an inevitable impact that would surely kill them both. Damn convict. If she’d had a gun, she would have pulled it out and shot him.
She slammed into the ground hard and lost her breath. She heard a crash nearby, then the world went silent and still. For several seconds she lay there, trying to get oxygen into her lungs. When she opened her eyes, she saw heavy snow swirling down. The tops of the pines were swaying. She could hear the wind whistling through the branches.
She’d fallen into deep snow, which had cushioned her fall. Shifting slightly, she took a quick physical inventory and ascertained she was relatively injury-free. Groaning, she rolled onto her side, sat up and looked around.
She was sitting on a steeply sloped incline in two feet of snow next to a broken sapling pine and a big chunk of the snowmobile’s fairing that had been ripped off in the fall. Twenty feet away the snowmobile lay on its side, the engine sizzling and smoking like an overcooked steak.
Slowly Emily got to her feet. Her arms and legs shook as she brushed the snow from her clothes. She glanced up and saw they’d gone off the cliff and down about twenty feet. A long way to fall. She was fortunate to have survived unscathed and wondered if Devlin had been so lucky.
“Devlin?” she called out.
She stood motionless and listened for a response, but none came. Even though Devlin was an escaped convict who had taken her hostage and nearly gotten her killed, the thought of being out here in the middle of nowhere all alone was unnerving. Especially since she was becoming more and more certain there was something sinister and deadly going on at Lockdown, Inc.
She was going to have to climb down to where the snowmobile lay to check on Devlin. Emily started toward the ledge. “Devlin, you had better be alive,” she muttered beneath her breath as she plowed through deep snow. “Because I’m going to wring your neck with my bare—”
The sound of a breaking twig cut her words short. Gasping, Emily spun—and found herself staring into Zack Devlin’s eyes. For the first time since he’d taken her hostage, he looked shaken. His face was pale against his dark hair. Blood was trickling down from a cut at his temple. How badly had he been injured?
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
The question took her aback. She didn’t expect him to be worried about her well-being one way or another. “Considering you just tried to kill me by driving off a cliff, I’d say I’m doing better than expected. What the hell were you trying to pull?”
“Maybe you’d rather take a bullet in the back.”
She didn’t have a comeback for that. Whomever had been in that chopper had been shooting at them. And they hadn’t seemed too concerned about which of them they hit. A deeply disturbing fact.
“If it hadn’t been for me, your pals back at the prison would have turned you into Swiss cheese,” he said.
“They were shooting at you,” she said. “In case you’re wondering, that’s standard operating procedure when an inmate takes an officer hostage and escapes.”
He glanced away from her and looked up at the sky as if gauging the