She was also pointing the gun at him. She knew how to hold it too, a two-handed shooter’s grip. But why was it pointed at him?
“Who are you?” Jace asked.
She ignored him, taking two slow steps back, into a position where she could see Hannah and Allison clearly.
“Allison,” she said, “do not tell him to run. That’s not good advice. What Jace needs to do is sit down.”
Jace looked back at Hannah. She was still standing at the bottom of the drainage, and she looked defeated. She didn’t take her eyes away from the woman with the gun as she said, “Jace, sit down. Please. Do what she says.”
He sat. The woman said, “Thank you. And if you ladies could join him, we’ll all be able to relax a little bit.” There was a pause, and then she said, “Understand that we don’t have to relax. You get to pick how it goes.”
Allison sat down. She was about ten feet away from Jace, and he could see now how badly hurt she was, with bandages all over and dark stitches around her lips. Behind her, the horse paced and watched them all. He seemed as confused as Jace felt, and he was facing the fire. Jace could see that he was afraid of it.
“Two out of three,” the strange woman said. “Let’s get everybody up here.”
She was talking to Hannah, who slowly climbed out of the drainage the way Jace had. When she sat, she sat very close to him. The woman said, “Don’t get in between us. That’s very brave, but I think you understand that I need to see everyone clearly.”
Hannah moved away, but not far. She said, “You’re going to die too if you keep us here. You realize this is not someplace we can just sit and wait?”
The woman ignored her. She was looking right at Jace. “Where are they?” she asked.
“Who?”
“The men who came to kill you. Have you seen them?”
She was partners with them, he realized. Not here to help him at all; here to help them. He looked at Hannah, then at Allison Serbin, searching for an explanation, for something, but the woman snapped at him again. “Jace, you need to tell the truth about this, and do it now. Where are they?”
“Behind us,” he said. “We lost them.”
“I doubt that. Are they with Ethan?”
“I don’t know.”
Jamie’s eyes shifted to Hannah, and she said, “What happened, lady? Who in the hell are you?”
Hannah didn’t answer. She had turned away from the woman as if the gun didn’t bother her at all. She was staring down at the fire when she said, “You don’t have time to find them. Don’t you realize that?”
Allison Serbin said, “They’re your brothers? You sent the boy up here to be killed?”
“It wasn’t anyone’s first choice, Mrs. Serbin. The boy’s parents are very distrustful. Even when they agreed with my plan, they wouldn’t turn him over to me. Insisted on sending him to Montana themselves, and I’ll give them credit, they did a fine job getting him out under cover. Could he have been taken at the airport in Billings? Certainly. But at such great risk. In the mountains, though? So much easier. Had your husband not decided to be such an overachiever, it would have ended for the boy with a bullet from a rifle no one ever saw. That was the idea. It might have been hard on you both, sure, but nobody else would have been harmed. What we have here, though, is a situation that got a little out of hand. Too many people tried too hard to help our friend Jace.”
Her brothers. Jace stared at her and realized he could see it. Tall and lean and blond and with the same calm. But she wasn’t shooting yet. They wouldn’t have waited, he was pretty sure. That was the difference.
“You sent him out here so they could find him?” Allison was asking, and Jace hadn’t heard that much anger in anyone’s voice in a long time-he thought she might disregard the gun entirely and try to kill this woman with her hands. “You asked Ethan to keep him safe but all you wanted was to know where he was? You evil bitch. You actually sent him to-”
“To be fair, Mrs. Serbin, a good deal of this was your husband’s fault. He tried too hard. It wasn’t supposed to take so much work. I feel bad for the rest of you, because all of this didn’t need to happen. Jace here was the only one who…who was required.” She shifted and blinked a few times-she was the only one facing the smoke, and it was blowing hard now, and the fire was louder than before-and said, “Jace, would you like me to let these women go?”
He nodded. The tears were threatening. He didn’t want to cry in front of this woman, though, in front of this evil bitch. Allison had called her exactly what she was. He didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of crying his way to the end. It was what she expected from him.
“Please,” he said. His voice was a whisper. “Yes, please, let them go.”
Hannah reached for him then, trying to take him in her arms, and the woman fired her gun and Jace ducked back and lifted an arm as if he might protect himself from the bullet. She’d shot high, though, and it was gone, into the smoke.
“Next one won’t be a warning,” she said. “Now, Jace, these women can go. If you tell me the truth, and you work with me, they can go. That’s your choice.”
“Yes,” he repeated.
“All right. How far away are they? Where was the last place you saw them? Or have you not seen them?”
“They’re behind us,” he said. “That’s all I know.” He waved a hand up the mountain, and that was when he saw the man in black coming down toward them. Jace’s face must have shown something, because the woman turned and saw him too and apparently recognized him, even at a distance. She seemed pleased.
“Well, would you look at that. We don’t need to go anywhere, Jace. We can all just sit here and wait.”
“You said they could go.” His voice rose to a shout. “You said they could go!”
“I’m going to leave that decision up to other people. For now, we’re all going to wait.”
Hannah’s voice was soft when she said, “Then we’re all going to die. Not just the ones you want. You will too.”
The woman turned and looked back down the slope to where the trees were burning and said, “I think we’ve got plenty of time.”
Jace didn’t even look at the fire. He was still staring at the man. It was a single man coming down off the mountain, on their trail. It was one of them, there was no doubt.
“I told you,” he said to Hannah. “They don’t quit.”
Allison had been considering a rush at Jamie Bennett, so infuriated by the betrayal that she was hardly afraid of the gun, thought she could take the bullets and still kill this bitch, but now there was another one, and she knew how it would go from here.
“I hadn’t expected to see you so soon,” the man in black called to them as he approached, and Allison wasn’t sure whom he was addressing until Jamie responded.
“I hadn’t expected to be needed. It looks like things got away from you.”
“It has not gone as planned.”
He was close enough now to be heard without shouting. His eyes took them in one at a time and lingered on Allison.
“Mrs. Serbin, I have traveled with you in my mind for a full day and night now. You see what you’ve done to me?” He waved his free hand toward his face, which was a blistered mess. “And, no, you don’t look well yourself, but at least you have received proper medical treatment. I’ve suffered. It has not put me in a good frame of mind.”
He turned then to the boy and spoke with a softness in his voice that sounded almost sweet, the awe of a new father addressing his child.
“Jace, Jace, you beautiful lad. My, how you’ve troubled me. You’ve run far enough, don’t you think? If it makes you feel any better, you’ve taken a toll on me, son. You have truly taken a toll.”