A quiet knock on the door in the wee hours of the morning swung Dutch out of bed and into a defensive crouch, gun in hand. Julia quickly rolled out of bed on the other side and onto the floor. A voice outside said low in Spanish, “I brought your car.”

“Anyone see you?” Dutch asked through the door.

“No. The INS guys, they left a couple hours ago.”

The Immigration and Naturalization Service? And then Dutch remembered their cover story about Immigration agents chasing Julia. He didn’t hear any stress vibrations in the guy’s voice to indicate someone had put him up to knocking on the door or was watching him from afar.

Dutch left the chain on—not that the flimsy thing would do a damn bit of good, but it might buy him a couple of seconds in a pinch—and opened the door a crack. A young Hispanic man nodded and smiled at him.

The kid held the SUV keys to the crack. “Sweet set of wheels. It’s parked around back.”

“Thanks,” Dutch replied. “What do I owe you for your trouble?”

“Nada. My brother’s share of the money you paid will feed his kids for a month. You be careful, dude. Those men, they were really hot to find your lady.”

“Thanks.” Dutch watched the young man through the window as he disappeared into the night. All was still outside. The kid wasn’t followed, as far as Dutch could see. He eased the curtain back into place and slid into bed beside Julia, who also crawled back under the covers.

Her breathing was shallow and rapid. As much as he’d like to think it was because he turned her on, he knew it to be nothing more than abject terror.

He rolled on his side and opened his arms. “Come here,” he murmured.

He gathered her cold, board-stiff body close, sharing his heat with her until she began to thaw out and relax. God, she felt good in his arms. Like she belonged there.

This was bad. Very, very bad. He’d watched other guys on his team go down this road before. It was always a nightmare to get involved with a woman on an op. Maybe they got their girl when it was all said and done, but they paid in blood in the meantime.

And here he was, rolling around in the sack with Julia Ferrare. Worse, she made no secret of the fact that she wanted him. They were headed for some seriously hot and sweaty sex in the near future if he didn’t put on the brakes. And the situation couldn’t get much messier than that.

All he had to do was unwrap his arms, roll over and go to sleep. Go ahead. Do it. His arms didn’t budge. Sever the link, you coward! Put this op back on track where it belongs. Nothing. His body flatly refused to cooperate.

God damn it.

Distance. Emotional distance. Think detached. She was just an informant. He should work her over for information and then bring her in. He should do it now and walk away from this. Walk away from her. But there he lay, berating himself up one side and down the other. And he didn’t move a single damned muscle.

Julia drifted off to sleep and turned to soft silk in his arms, but he lay there, ramrod stiff for hours, watching the clock tick away the minutes until he had to get up. Until he had to unwrap his arms and let her go. One minute before the alarm was set to go off, he kissed Julia awake. She stretched like a sleek kitten in his arms, and his heart clenched.

“Time to go, sleepyhead,” he murmured.

“Ugh,” she groaned. He tickled her neck and she laughed up at him. “No fair. I’m still half-asleep. Do we have to go so early?”

He sighed. “Yup. Roads are deserted at this hour. Nobody’ll follow us without me seeing them.”

With nothing to pack but the laptop and some cold pizza, they were out the door in a matter of minutes.

Julia headed for the passenger door of his SUV, but he murmured, “Change of plans. Help me get our bags.”

She frowned, but came around back and picked up her suitcases.

He looked around the parking lot, scoping out a decent target. Over there. A heavy-duty Jeep. It would handle the mountain roads and the snow that was in today’s forecast.

“This way,” he murmured.

Julia followed him, a perplexed look on her face. He dug out a pouch of tools, lay down underneath the front end of the Jeep and disabled the vehicle’s alarm system. It was a bit of a trick to reach, but he managed to snip the necessary wires.

He shimmied out from under the car. Using a Slim Jim, a flat metal tool that unlocked car doors from the outside, and a pocket reference book on how to jimmy different models of cars, he popped the Jeep’s locks.

He tossed their bags in the back and held the passenger door for Julia. Her eyebrows hovered in the vicinity of her hairline as she slid into the vehicle silently.

Hot-wiring the Jeep was kid stuff, and he had it running in about thirty seconds. He pulled out of the parking lot and headed for the highway, keeping a close eye on the rearview mirror for tails.

“And we just stole a car why?” she finally asked, nearly a half hour later.

“Keeping our tail clean,” he replied.

She looked over at him in dismay. “Don’t you feel any twinge of conscience over stealing somebody’s car?”

He glanced over at her, surprised. “I’m doing my job. The owner of this vehicle will get compensated by Uncle Sam when this is all over.”

She didn’t look convinced. And for some reason, he actually gave a damn about what she thought of him. He sighed and explained, “If it comes down to a choice between you and me staying alive or taking some guy’s car temporarily, which would you choose?”

Her gaze wavered and slid away.

Fine. He pulled out his cell phone and called Blackjack Ops. The duty controller, an army sergeant and long-time team member, answered immediately.

“It’s Dutch. I just stole a last year’s model Jeep. “He rattled off the license plate number. “I need you to run interference with the owner. The vehicle will be returned undamaged and the owner will be compensated for the hassles. Get the owner a rental vehicle and make sure he or she doesn’t call the cops, will you?”

“Umm, sir, are you on a sanctioned mission I haven’t heard about?” the controller asked.

He sighed. “Have Doc call me if he has any questions. This is absolutely official business.”

“I show you being on vacation—“

“Just call Doc. And keep the cops off my tail, will you? It’s a matter of national security.”

“Roger, sir. I’m running the plates now.”

“Thanks.” He hung up, relieved for support staffers who understood the occasional need to bend or break the rules, no questions asked. None of the Blackjacks abused their positions, so when they asked for something off the wall like he just had, odds were excellent he had a damned good reason for doing it.

He shrugged across the Jeep at Julia. “Stealing a car isn’t pretty or clean, but that’s how it goes in my line of work.”

Her worried gaze softened. “That’s why I’m glad I found you. I could never do what it takes to stay alive on my own.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. You were doing okay when I found you.”

She laughed shortly. “I was at my wit’s end and would’ve been caught and perhaps killed within a few hours if you hadn’t come along when you did.”

He tensed when she reached over, put her hand on his arm and squeezed it gratefully. Sparks leaped between them, and the temperature in the Jeep went up noticeably. Good thing there wasn’t a rest area just ahead, or he’d pull off and make love to her right this very minute. By main force, he dragged his attention back to his driving.

Sometime later, Julia asked around a yawn, “Where are we going?”

“Montana.”

“As in where you’re from?”

“Yup. To my home turf. Let’s see if those bastards can move around unseen in a place where every single person knows everyone else, and a rancher would rather shoot you himself than bother calling the cops.”

“Sounds like the Wild Wild West.”

He nodded, “It’s isolated country. Folks up there look out for each other. I can’t think of a safer place to take you.”

Dutch kept one eye peeled on the rearview mirror as he put New Mexico behind them. Nobody followed them. He breathed a sigh of relief.

They drove through the day and stayed at a truck stop with clean, but spare, rooms that night. He gave her the bed and he slept in front of the door on the floor. It was the only way he was keeping his hands off her, tonight.

Rising early again, they hit the road, winding along narrow roads and gradually making their way north and west through the Rockies.

He drove until the sun rose, and now and then he saw a frown flicker across Julia’s face. Finally, he asked, “What’s got you looking so worried?”

“Are you taking me to your family’s house?” she asked hesitantly.

“No!” he answered in sharp alarm. He would never insult his parents by introducing them to the girl who’d set up Simon.

Julia replied fervently, “Thank goodness. I couldn’t live with myself if they were endangered on my account.” She paused and then added miserably, “I’ve hurt your family enough already.”

His gaze snapped to her. She sounded genuinely remorseful. Was that all part of her act? He wanted to believe her. Wanted to think she wasn’t an unfeeling monster.

He said quietly, “My dad has a hunting cabin in the mountains above our ranch, and I’m heading for it. I know the area around it like the back of my hand. It’s rough, but we’ll be safe there.”

Silence fell between them. The morning was gray. Low, heavy clouds scudded along the mountain peaks as they made their way higher into the Rockies. He eyed the sky warily. Those were snow clouds packing in. The kind that dropped truckloads of white stuff hard and fast.

He stopped for gas at midmorning and loaded up on emergency provisions: food, candles, matches, blankets, batteries and a portable radio.

They started out again and the wind began to pick up. By noon, it howled around the Jeep and he was forced to slow down lest they be blown clean off the narrow, winding mountain road. If they could’ve hopped onto an interstate highway without being spotted, they would be crossing into Montana by now. But by traveling these anonymous back roads and taking a circuitous route, they were still hours away from their destination in the high Rockies near the Canadian border.

The snow started around two o’clock. At first a few sparse crystals fell and then they thickened rapidly into big fat flakes. The snow, driven against the windshield by the developing blizzard, all but blinded him. He was forced to slow down even more.

Because of the rotten visibility, the dark blue, full-size sedan was almost in his back seat by the time he finally caught sight of it. His internal alarm system went wild. Almost as fast as the car had run up on their rear fender, it slowed down and disappeared from sight. Oh yeah. Definitely Ferrare’s men. The bastards got close enough to make his license plate, but the second they knew it was him and Julia, they backed off to wait for reinforcements.

He swore under his breath. How did those jerks find them way out here in the middle of blessed nowhere? The stolen vehicle must have been reported before the Blackjacks support guys had been able to move in and squelch the report. Which meant Eduardo had definite police contacts, then. Dammit. He pressed down on the accelerator on the assumption that this Jeep had more guts than that sedan.

He drove in grim silence for nearly half an hour. He didn’t see the blue car again, but he had no doubt it was back there somewhere. He jolted when a cell phone rang shrilly. That wasn’t his…

He frowned as Julia lurched and dug her cell phone out of a coat pocket hastily. She put it to her ear and said a nervous hello. She listened in silence for several seconds, then mumbled a couple yeses and noes. As the call progressed, the color drained out of her face, leaving it a sickly beige shade. She disconnected the phone silently. He watched without comment as, with shaking hands, she stowed the instrument in her pocket.

“Who was that?” he asked.

“Nobody,” she answered quickly. Too quickly.

He swore under his breath. He would lay odds that had been her father. What had they been talking about? Had the guy been threatening her? Demanding that she come home? Or perhaps, were they working out the details of an ambush to finish off what they’d started ten years ago?

Why in the hell couldn’t she just be straight with him and not put him in this blasted position of not knowing?

He braked hard just beyond a big curve and crawled along until the blue car careened around the hairpin turn, skidding behind them and barely missing rear-ending the Jeep.

He said tersely, “Don’t turn around. Use the mirror in your sun visor to look back at the car behind us. Can you get a look at the people inside it?”

She peered into the mirror for a moment and then visibly jumped. “It’s them!” she gasped. “Two of the guys from the ski resort! How did they find us out here? Oh God. What are we going to do?”

How did they find her, indeed? Hell of a good question. Especially in light of that phone call. How much to believe? Had that call actually scared the hell out of her, or had her reaction been more of her fine acting skills?

He cut across her building panic, real or otherwise, by stating mildly, “The first thing we’re going to do is stay calm.”

She sat back in her seat.

“The next thing we’re going to do is use the power of this Jeep to put some distance between us and them.” To that end, he leaned on the accelerator and picked up the vehicle’s speed significantly, even though the roads were starting to get slick. The blue car was already dropping back. He’d bet the driver had to clean out his pants after that near miss back there.

Over the next few minutes, he gradually sped up until the Jeep was going near the speed limit once more. Fortunately, its four-wheel drive and snow tires held the road. He pushed the speed some more.

“Don’t you think we should slow down a little?” Julia suggested nervously.

He glanced over at her grimly. “Nope. I’ve got to get far enough ahead of these guys so I can lay a trap for them.”

“A trap?” she asked in surprise. “What kind?”

“I’ll know it when I see it.” He didn’t say more because the Jeep was really becoming a handful. The wind buffeted them, and the road was a strip of featureless white. Worse, dark was falling prematurely, and these roads weren’t anywhere near adequately enough marked to be safe at night in a snowstorm. The good news was they’d climbed up into the high elevations where the Jeep’s robust engine could really show its superiority to that of the car following them.

On the downhill slopes, he punched the accelerator, putting on extra bursts of speed to keep their pursuers from making up lost ground. They were flying down one such hill at a suicidal pace when Dutch nearly lost control of the Jeep. It began to slide toward the empty space of a drop-off, and there was no guardrail to stop them. Praying hard, he yanked his foot off the accelerator and stopped his impulse to go for the brakes. That would’ve done them in for sure. Thankfully, the antiskid system kicked in and the tires caught traction once more. He straightened out the car carefully and steered back onto his own side of the road.

Surely he’d bought them a few minutes’ lead by now. He began to keep his eye out for a good spot to ambush the blue car, and in the meantime, kept the pedal to the metal. He’d need every second he could buy to pull off the plan taking shape in his mind.

It took about five minutes and two more hair-raising rises and falls of the road before he found what he was looking for. A switchback turn on a steep downhill part of the road in a heavily forested area. Hell, he’d barely made the turn himself. He stopped carefully and backed up the couple hundred feet to the curve.

“Stay in the car,” he ordered Julia.

He grabbed his coat and shrugged into it as he stepped out into the storm. He guessed it would be dark in another ten minutes. Perfect. In the deep dusk, he searched the sides of the road until he found what he’d glimpsed on the way around the bend. A medium-size, freshly fallen tree with most of its branches intact.

He grabbed the top of it and dragged it around until it lay perpendicular to the road. Then he put his back into it and heaved, pulling it up toward the road. It moved about twelve inches. Again. Inch by inch, he worked it out into the road. But it was taking too long. And the left lane was still open. A person could swerve around the tree. The blue car would be here any second.

And then a movement beside him. Julia put her hands on one of the branches and leaned into the tree with him. Together, they were able to move the thing a few feet. Two more big heaves and they had it all the way across the road just beyond the curve. The blue car would come around blind and have no chance to stop.

He was sick of these jerks picking up his and Julia’s trail over and over as if he were some rank amateur who couldn’t shake a tail. A few hours sitting out here in a blizzard should cool their jets. The sound of an engine coming down the mountain caught his attention.

“Run!” he shouted at Julia. They took off down the hill, slipping and sliding toward the Jeep. They weren’t going to make it. At the last second, he yanked her down behind a bush at the side of the road.

The blue car careened around the corner the way he had, barely holding the road. It didn’t stand a chance. The tree popped up in front of it completely without warning. The driver swerved and slammed on the brakes, but he plowed into the tree, driving it and the car toward the ditch on the side of the road. The tree’s round trunk rolled under the car’s front wheels and sent its front end flying into the air. The vehicle did a half revolution and came to a sickening halt on its roof, half buried in snow.

“Julia, get in the driver’s side of the Jeep. If I don’t come back to it alone, leave. You hear me?”

She nodded, but hesitated. He gave her a little push toward the vehicle, then turned and ran back up the hill. Now was his chance to find out exactly who these guys were. He pulled out his pistol and approached the flipped-over car cautiously. In the failing light, he made out two men hanging upside down in their seat belts. Deflated air bags draped around them both.

They looked unconscious. He ordered them to show their hands, and neither moved. The driver’s-side shattered but intact while the passenger’s door was completely buried in snow. He eased closer slowly. And nudged the driver’s shoulder with his foot. No response. He crouched down and looked across the car. A big bruise was starting to form on the passenger’s forehead. But he was breathing.

Holding his gun to the driver’s temple with his left hand, he searched the guy’s coat with his right hand. He pocketed the Glock pistol he found. He reached between the guy’s rear end and the seat and pulled out the dude’s wallet. He wanted a name. He came up with a cell phone instead. On a sickening hunch, he punched the menu and brought up its most recent outgoing call.

And stared in shock at the name and number displayed.

Julia Ferrare.

This guy had made that phone call to Julia a little while ago! She was in direct contact with Ferrare’s men? This chase was all a ruse! To dupe him into another trap. Son of a bitch!

It sure explained how these guys kept popping up over and over when any normal thug would have been way out of the picture by now. No wonder he couldn’t shake the bastards. Great. Just freaking great.

He stabbed his hand behind the guy’s back and grabbed his wallet this time. He slipped the warm leather into his own pocket and backed away from the car.

He stormed toward the Jeep and the oh-so-innocent-seeming woman inside it. The second they got out of this damn blizzard, he and Julia were going to have a little talk. And this time she was damned well going to tell him exactly what was going on—if he had to wring it out of her with his bare hands.

He opened the driver’s-side door. She took one look at his face and all but leaped over the center console to her seat.

He growled, “When we get to the top of the next mountain and have clear cell-phone reception, call nine-one-one and report the accident. Be vague about the exact location.”

He started to drive. She must have picked up on his tightly controlled fury because she did as he ordered without any questions in a frightened voice.

The snow continued to fall, and he pressed on in stony silence. Drifts began to form across the road. Even the sturdy Jeep struggled to punch through the deepening snow. Like it or not, they had to get off the road soon and find someplace to wait out the storm.

He kept an eye out for a driveway or a mailbox, anything to indicate that a house might be nearby. He drove at a bare crawl, peering into the blackness. The snow was falling so thickly in the headlights that he could hardly see the road, let alone the side of it.

He thought he glimpsed a break in the trees. He stopped and backed up carefully to the spot. It looked like a driveway sloping down away from the road. But it was buried in snow. He’d probably be able to make it down the lane, but they would never make it back up. If he was wrong and it led nowhere they would be stranded.

What the hell. He was too mad to feel anything but reckless, and the roads were beyond impassable. He pointed the Jeep at the gap in the trees.

“Hang on,” he bit out.

He punched the engine and blasted through the first snowdrift. The narrow lane must have gone on for several hundred yards, but it was hard to tell, given that he could only see a few feet of the thing at any one time. And then, without warning, it came to an end. Just like that. A wall of trees surrounded them on all sides.

He pushed the car door open, moving aside a hefty pile of snow in the process. He got out of the vehicle and waded out into a good three feet of snow to take a look around. There. Tucked back into a stand of towering pines. A dark, low shape. Rectangular like a cabin.

He busted a path to the front door of the log structure. Holding his flashlight in his teeth, he stripped off his gloves and picked the door lock. His fingers were clumsy with cold, but he managed to force the thing open. He felt around on the wall inside the door and found a light switch. He flipped it on. Nothing. Damn. The power was either out from the storm or cut off for the winter. No help for it at the moment, though.

He trudged back to the Jeep to collect Julia and their gear. His footsteps were already half-full of snow. What a blizzard. The way snow was accumulating on the roof and hood of the vehicle, he wasn’t going to have to worry about hiding the Jeep from view. It would be buried before long.

Julia followed on his heels as he slogged to the cabin. He dropped their supplies inside the front door and thrust his flashlight into her hands. “Have a look around while I try to find some firewood,” he ordered.

Any self-respecting cabin in this part of the world had a good-size woodpile that was kept stocked at all times. It was a matter of survival. Sure enough, around back he found another door and a big stack of split wood buried in snow beside it. He brushed off enough snow to grab a huge armload of the stuff. Right about then, the door opened. Julia poked her head out.

“Good timing,” he grunted under the pile of wood.

She helped him maneuver it inside, and he dumped it in the little mudroom attached to the cabin’s main room. Julia had found and lit a lantern. A soft, golden glow filled the space. He had a quick look around. The one-room cabin was well equipped, snug and neat, albeit freezing cold at the moment. But it would keep them dry and out of the wind, and after he built a big fire in the stone fireplace, they’d be warm enough.

While he laid the fire, Julia poked around in the cupboards and supplemented their food stores with some canned baked beans and fruit cocktail. Not exactly gourmet fare, but a far sight better than going hungry. The tinderbox beside the fireplace was fully stocked with dry twigs and resin-soaked fatwood, and in no time, he had a thriving fire crackling.

It took about an hour for some canned stew to get hot and ready to eat. The air was still bitingly cold. It would probably take all night for the stones in the fireplace to heat up enough to take the chill off the room. Again, not ideal, but a hell of a lot better than freezing to death in the car. They ate, wearing their coats, seated in a pair of bentwood chairs near the fire.

Dutch bided his time until Julia set aside her empty plate. He did the same. But then the infuriated soldier within him could be patient no more.

He leaned forward, skewering her with a saber-sharp stare. He spoke with cold precision. “We need to talk. Or rather you need to talk. Why don’t you start with why your father’s men were calling you. You can finish with telling me what in the hell is going on. All of it.”