Page 66 of What Doesn't Kill Her

More blood. Such a mess.

One mercenary dead. One to go. The body count was climbing, but by God, the woman was still alive—and she had a child with her.A child.What an unnecessary and aggravating inconvenience.

The man looked up at the fog bank, shouldered the rifle and followed Kellen and Rae into the canyon. It was easy enough to track them; someone was bleeding. Not a lot, but in this narrowed passage, he found a drop here and there, shiny against the rocks, and that led him on. Then the fog opened, and he saw her—Kellen Adams, facedown, unmoving, on the ground.

How many men, how much money had it taken to get to this point? More than he had ever expected. Who would have thought Gregory’s terrified, broken wife would put up such a fight? Even now, he didn’t trust she was dead. He took the rifle off his shoulder and walked toward her.

She didn’t stir.

Using his foot, he turned her over.

Her head lolled loosely on her neck. Blood smeared her arm and hand. But her chest rose and fell, and she moaned softly.

“Time to finish this thing,” he told her. He released the rifle’s safety and lifted the butt to his shoulder—and paused. From down the path, he heard firm footsteps. Someone large, probably a man, moving fast.

Too many complications here. Too many bodies, too much attention.

He slid into the fog and waited until the footsteps had hurried past, then turned back to finish cleaning up the mess—and the bodies.

25

So many gunshots. Too many gunshots. Max had heard too many to count, drawing him onward, feeding the ugly taste of fear in his mouth.

Then the blast of one...final...rifle shot. A sharp, ugly percussion that spelled death for...who?

Driven by terror, Max ran, bounding up the slope. A bullet had already taken Kellen from him once. Now their baby girl was involved, too.

Four hours ago, he had met the bicycle club. They’d been cautious of him; apparently he had looked desperate, unshaven and disheveled. When he pulled out his wallet and showed them all the photos he kept of Rae during all the years of her life, and the meager few photos he had of Kellen, and begged for help, Wade had given him the message Kellen had directed to Verona. They’d sent him on with information, food and good wishes. He’d been tracking Kellen and Rae ever since.

As he ran, the trees thinned. The air thinned. Lack of oxygen made him slow—and he spotted a body sprawled by the root of an upended hemlock. A man, captured by death in the throes of agony.

But that guy, whoever he was, wasn’t Kellen. He wasn’t Rae.

Max picked up speed again and found the body of another man, chest shattered by a gunshot, one waxy hand pointed the way toward the marble head perched on a rock...

Max stopped. He stopped and stared at thatthing, thatheadthat had caused all the trouble.

It stared back.

Had Kellen abandoned it, given it up to the men who would kill to claim it?

Yes. That made sense. Kellen had used it to create a diversion.

Then why was it still here?

He looked around, spotted another body tucked downhill and in the woods.

Three bodies. Had Kellen killed them all? Had someone else killed them and now waited to claim the head...after eliminating Kellen and Rae?

Max snatched up the head, stuffed it in his backpack and sped up the path into the canyon, into the fog, into the damp silence. For a man who didn’t give a damn about priceless antiquities, he sure spent a lot of time dealing with them, and this one—he would ransom it for Kellen and Rae.

As the canyon narrowed, he slowed down. Out here, every little thing enveloped by the encroaching fog took on a menacing shape. Trees were men. Branches were rifles. Rocks were bombs. And there—there was something that glistened in the pale, eerie light. He knelt, touched it lightly. His fingers came away sticky and the liquid smelled like...blood. Droplets of blood on the rocks, fresh and wet.

Who had been hit?

Max wandered back and forth, from canyon wall to canyon wall, looking for signs of Kellen and Rae’s passage, finding it in the occasional spatter and smear. When he got them back...whenhe got them back, they were never leaving again. He wasn’t letting them out of his sight. He didn’t give a damn whether Kellen needed a fulfilling job. He didn’t care if Rae wanted to go to camp or to school. He was keeping them within the property line and—What was that?

A body, unmoving, prone on the ground. A woman’s body.

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