Silence of the Wolf(51)

She was certain they were wolves. They wouldn’t have any other need to use hunter’s spray in a nonhunting environment. Her heart thundered in her ears.

If these were the guys who’d stolen her stuff back at Silver Town, they had to know exactly who she was. She was the one they wanted for whatever sinister purpose. She was certain it all had to do with her uncle.

The gunman tried to force her into the vehicle again. He jerked her from the car frame and shoved her inside the car. She fell forward, landing on her stomach on the backseat. Before she could turn and defend herself, he jabbed her in the buttock with a long needle, pissing her off. She lashed out with a kick of her boot to his right shin. He yelped in pain, shoved her legs aside, climbed in, and slammed the door shut.

“Drive,” he growled to the blond man.

Her vision blurred. The driver and the other man, a redhead, looked back at him with smug smiles. “He warned us she’d be a wolf,” the driver said, amusement coating his words.

Her heartbeat was slowing from the drug, but it did a little kick at his mention of “wolf.”

“Uncle Quinton,” she slurred.

“You sure you have enough hours under your belt to serve as copilot?” the redhead said to the driver.

Copilot?

“Hell, yeah,” the driver said. “How do you think we managed to fly into Mexico so frequently? This will be a piece of cake.”

Mexico?

“Hell,” the redhead said, “you should have asked her where the deed was before you drugged her.”

Elizabeth felt a stab of panic through the haze of the drug. Did they know she had been planning to trade the deed to her parents’ property to North for the evidence he had against her uncle?

She had meant to return the deed to the safe in her home, but she hadn’t gotten around to taking it out of the breast pocket of her ski jacket… that she was still wearing. She knew she shouldn’t have procrastinated about it, but she had wanted to send her editor the stories first thing after getting home, and then the threat of the snowstorm and the necessity of buying groceries had distracted her.

The gunman pulled Elizabeth around onto her back and searched her unceremoniously. She tried to muster a look of extreme disgust and indignation as he unzipped her jacket and patted her down a little too friskily. “We’ll search her place if…” The gunman slapped the deed in his hand. “Not necessary. Got it right here.”

***

The small plane soared high above snow-covered mountains, the flakes swirling around the windows and wings in such profusion that the sky and ground were no longer visible in the whiteout. God only knew where Elizabeth was as she shook off the effect of the drug her captor had given her. How could the pilot see where he was going? Or the copilot figure out where to take them?

“Damn it, Canton,” the pilot growled. “You said there was a gap between the storm cells. You said we’d clear them before they hit us.”

“If the damn cells hadn’t moved as fast as they did, we would have,” the dark-haired man said.

Where were they? Flying over Palo Duro Canyon? She didn’t know how long she’d been out of it, but she couldn’t see anything in the blanket of white.

She shifted in her seat and realized she sat in the tail of the plane, seat belted and handcuffed.

She had gotten into plenty of scrapes over the years as a wolf-coyote mix without a pack, and she’d always managed to get herself out of them. But this time…

Maybe she should have made more of a fuss in the butcher shop. Maybe she wouldn’t be here now, but she had been afraid the men would kill the butcher—and her—and she hadn’t wanted that.

The blond man, the one with the cold eyes, was half dozing in a seat across from her. When he realized she was watching him, he narrowed his gaze at her. What? Did he think she’d let the inner wolf loose again? That was when she noticed something… an unfamiliar scent. The scent of male red wolves. Their hunter’s spray must have worn off by now.

She settled back against the seat of the small aircraft, glowering at the gunman wearing a blue-gray parka and a crooked smile—the one named Canton. She tried to appear more at ease than she felt.

His greasy dark hair swept his shoulders as he shook his head at her, that stupid smile firmly plastered on his face. His sharp eyes remained fixed on her gaze while he slid his gun into his holster like he’d probably done a thousand times before—smoothly, like a gunman in an old Western. Same jeans, only the cowboy boots were grimy sneakers, and the dirty parka replaced the vest and old-time Western shirt.

She glanced out the window. She didn’t like to fly, and given the choice, she’d never set foot in a plane, ever. Certainly not in the middle of a snowstorm. She briefly wondered what they had done with her deed.