Colorado Abduction - By Cassie Miles & Marie Ferrarella Page 0,54
to talk about last night. About us.”
“Not now.” His gaze rested on her for a moment, then slid away. He was scanning the hillsides.
“What are you looking for?”
“Trouble,” he said.
“Search no more. I’m sitting right here beside you. And I have a truckload of trouble to unload on your head.” She paused for breath. “In the first place, I don’t want you to think that I’m the kind of woman who tumbles into bed at a moment’s notice.”
“Why would I think that?”
She didn’t stop to explain that she’d known him for only a day before they were making love on the floor in her brother’s office. “Secondly, I don’t expect any sort of commitment. I’m not looking to get married or anything.”
“Carolyn, I don’t—”
“Furthermore,” she said, “last night was amazing. We have some kind of connection. I can’t explain it.”
“Then don’t.” He maneuvered his horse beside her and held out his hand. “Lean over here and kiss me.”
“As if that will make everything all right?”
“You know it will.”
She reached toward his hand. Before she could grasp it, he turned his head sharply. “Carolyn, get down.”
She heard the gunfire. Then a thud.
She was hit.
Her breath was gone. It felt like all the air had been squeezed out of her lungs. Breathe, damn it. She gulped frantically but couldn’t get air. She was losing consciousness. She slumped. Her feet came out of the stirrups. Falling, falling…
Burke was there. He caught her before she hit the ground. Ducking behind Elvis, he cradled her against him.
A throbbing pain spread from her chest to every part of her body. She’d been shot. If she hadn’t been wearing the bulletproof vest, she’d be dead.
She sucked down a gasp of air, then another. Her arms and legs regained strength, but she wasn’t able to stand on her own.
Burke yelled to the deputies. “Sniper. In the trees. Straight ahead.”
Dazed, she leaned against him as he used his cell phone to summon the chopper. Using Elvis as a shield, he dragged her to the edge of the trail. Behind a boulder, they found shelter.
Her pain began to subside. Pressed against the rock, she looked up at him.
He had saved her life.
Chapter Eighteen
Burke held Carolyn close, protecting her with his body in case there was another shooter behind them. He pulled off his Cubs cap and rose up to look over the flat boulder where they were hiding. In his right hand, he held his gun, ready to return fire. He couldn’t attack. There was no effective way to aim at the sniper perched on the hillside and keep Carolyn safe at the same time.
He knew where the shooter was. At the moment he’d been leaning toward Carolyn for a kiss, he’d caught a glimpse in his peripheral vision: the sharp reflection of sunlight on a rifle scope. But he’d been too late to do anything more than shout a warning.
Farther up the trail, the deputies returned fire. He hoped they could keep the sniper pinned down until the chopper arrived.
Carolyn moved in his arms. “Where’s Elvis? And your horse?”
Burke looked over his shoulder. Both horses were gone. He didn’t see the mounts the deputies had been riding. “They took off. They’re safe.”
“Let me up, Burke. I’m okay. I just had the wind knocked out of me.”
He held her even tighter. Their Kevlar vests bumped against each other. “The chopper’s going to be here in a minute.”
“I can handle this. I’m okay.”
He looked down into her anxious face. “Lie still and let me keep you safe. You don’t have to prove anything to me.”
Her green eyes flashed. “You’re right. The only person I have to prove anything to…is me. I never thought of it that way before, but it’s true.”
He wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but he was glad to hear her speaking. When she toppled from her horse and he thought she’d been seriously wounded, his world stopped. She’d almost gotten killed, and it was his fault. “I never should have put you in danger.”
“You saved my life,” she said. “If I hadn’t been wearing this vest, I’d be dead.”
“I shouldn’t have brought you here.”
After last night, when she’d been so effective in rescuing Sunny, he’d made the mistake of thinking that she was as experienced as Smith or Silverman. Using her as a guide through the mountains broke FBI protocol. She was a civilian, someone who shouldn’t be placed in the line of fire.
She wriggled her arm free and touched the place on the vest where