Nash was getting tired.
Blake, on the other hand, could run another half mile without slowing down, and ten miles after that before his legs grew spongy. He ran every day. Long distance. The time alone helped him think. It gave him a private place to plot Nash’s demise. Now, his dreams were coming true.
Images of Marissa’s bruised face challenged his concentration. The sound of her head against his tailgate. The fear in her eyes as Nash gripped her battered face in one palm and whispered into her ear. What had he said?
The overwhelming need to turn back and stand guard until the ambulance came nearly staunched his momentum. His mind and his gut were torn in two. The emotion. The confusion. These were unlike his drive to protect the public, this was like nothing he’d experienced before. It was ferocity. It was painful. And it was, he realized, a standoff between the need to stop Nash and the instinct to guard what was his.
For a moment, Blake had thought he’d won. He thought it was stupidity and brazen overconfidence that had brought Nash to him, but Blake was wrong. Nash came to show Blake that he could. He could get to Marissa anywhere and beat Blake anytime.
Blake slowed his pace, and his senses sharpened. Only two sets of footfalls remained. His and West’s behind him. No Nash. Based on his earlier panting, Nash must’ve stopped to catch his breath and hide.
Blake raised a hand to alert West, and soon his footfalls ground to a halt beside Blake. He motioned his brother to the east, then Blake turned in the opposite direction. Together, they could silently cover more ground.
The night was dark, despite the harvest moon. Gathering clouds and evergreens blocked the starry sky. Incessant winds and the rushing branch of a nearby river easily masked the huffing of Nash’s breath, but he was winded, and no doubt hiding, waiting for his chance to move.
Blake wouldn’t give him that chance.
A lifetime of hunting and tracking in Cade County had made Blake an apparition in the woods. Nash wouldn’t touch Marissa again. Right or wrong, Blake would kill that sonofabitch the moment he had a chance.
The snapping of a nearby limb reached his ears, and Blake spun to face the sound. A shadow sprinted toward the river, and Blake pounced after it, leaping easily over fallen logs and through piles of leaves. “Freeze!” he hollered.
The panting figure continued a bumbling path toward the rushing water just beyond the cliff’s edge.
Blake gained on him by the second, hope and victory rising in his chest. Maybe he wouldn’t have to kill him. Maybe he could haul Nash’s sorry ass back to Marissa and let her even the score. As soon as she wakes up. He ground his teeth at the thought. No. This time it was Nash who would die. “Stop!” he boomed. “Or I will shoot you.”
Nash skidded to a stop at the cliff’s edge. There was nowhere to go but down, and if Blake remembered correctly, there was a sizeable drop on this side of the water.
Blake’s eyes narrowed, moving in on Nash in small, silent strides, the way he had five years before. His trigger finger begged him to shoot and worry about the repercussions and paperwork later. Until West arrived, there were no witnesses.
Nash raised shadowy arms in surrender. “Please, don’t shoot.”
The plea stalled Blake’s homicidal thoughts, reminding him Nash was the cold-blooded killer. Blake was the lawman. “Get on the ground. Put your hands behind your back,” he barked. On his next step, Blake’s boot caught on something hidden in the leaves and his heart seized. A booby-trap. The taut string pulled against his laces, and Blake launched himself away on instinct, hoping it was far enough to survive whatever came next. A ground-shaking boom blasted through the night air, rattling his teeth and jarring his bones. He crashed against the forest floor, sending shock waves of pain through his head and back. A mass of dirt and fallen limbs thundered down on him.
He wrangled his gun into position in case the attack wasn’t over. The floating dust and debris complicated his newly blurred vision. The stench of tar burnt his nose.
Nash smiled. His lips moved, and he turned for the water.
Blake squeezed the trigger, getting off two shaky, half-blinded shots before the splash from Nash’s plummet reached his ringing ears.
West skidded into view, giving the blast zone a wide berth. His normally tanned face was whiter than the wedding gown on Marissa’s porch. “Blake!” Terror shredded his voice, raising it by octaves. “Are you hurt?” His words were garbled and hollow, but Blake raised his gun overhead and rolled back against the ground.
His brother appeared again, this time at his side peering down. “Don’t move. Medics are on the way.”
“Nah.” He lowered his gun and reached for West’s hand. “Help me up.”
West hesitated before obliging his big brother. “What the hell happened?”
“The bastard set a trap. I tripped over the wire.” He worked his aching joints to assess the damage. “I thought he was hiding, but he was leading me here. Now I can’t decide if the strung-up doll was a setup for abducting Marissa, or if the attempted abduction was a setup to get me out here.”
West dusted dirt and leaves from Blake’s back and shoulders. “Did you hit him?”
“I don’t know.”
They inched toward the place where Nash had last stood and peered over the cliff into the dark waters below.
Sirens cried and wailed in the distance, turning Blake back in the direction he’d come. The cavalry had arrived.
“Go,” West advised. “Get checked out. You’re not bleeding, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t hurt. I’ve got this. My
