Her gaze went down to the group of men far below them on the mountain. “Poison’s the only other thing I can think of that causes that kind of bleeding.”
“Poison! Fuck that. I’d have to have eaten a cup of lye or something to do this. I think I’d notice if I ate something like that.”
Brynn shrugged. She didn’t know much about poisoning. She automatically associated it with bloody vomiting just like ulcers but didn’t know the hows or whys. “Anybody give you something to eat?”
“Oh, Jesus Christ! No one’s trying to kill me!” His eyes wavered between disgust and amusement. “You’re the one who gave me the Benadryl. You must be trying to off me. Or Jim’s wife. She made the cookies he gave me. Maybe Anna’s trying to get rid of Jim because she’s banging someone else.”
Brynn had to grin. Ryan was right.
“I think you’ve got the flu and a bad ulcer. That’s my diagnosis,” she stated firmly.
“So now what?” Ryan screwed up his forehead.
“Rest and fluids.”
Ryan picked up a handful of snow, squeezing it into a small hard ball. “Plenty of fluids available out here. Don’t know about getting any rest. Oh, I got a hold of Collins. Well, kind of got a hold of him after Jim radioed me about the deaths.” He grimaced. “The connection royally sucked, and I haven’t been able to get him back.”
“Did you tell him we’d found the plane?”
“Yeah, but telling him where we found it was a problem. I gave him all the coordinates to check from each GPS. One’s got to be right. Someone would have to fly them to check them out. Maybe he can get a bird in the air today.”
Brynn scanned the sky. Clouds were whizzing by at different levels. It wasn’t too windy on the ground, but apparently, higher up the wind was blasting away. And the snow was getting heavier.
She wasn’t holding her breath for the sound of a chopper.
“I hope he got all the coordinates. I was only getting about every fourth word from him so I probably sounded just as bad.” Ryan paused and gazed at the group below with a frown. “What do you think of Alex?”
“Uh…” Brynn tried to arrange her thoughts at the quick change of topic. “He’s OK. Quiet. He’s kept up even though I think he’d rather get a root canal.” She closed her mouth, not wanting to say she thought Alex kept a lot below his smooth surface. Still waters and all that. Several times she’d seen things start to boil in his expression like he had a lot to say or felt strongly about something, but Alex had kept his opinions under wraps. From the moment Jim had verbally ripped the marshal to shreds at the base camp, she’d wondered what made him tick. Alex had kept his temper and responded with a gut load of self-assurance. Not an easy task in front of Jim.
Ryan snorted. “My thoughts exactly. He hates every minute of it out here. Something is driving him to put up with this.”
“It’s his job. Besand’s a murderer. He wants to make sure Besand’s either dead or put back in prison.” Brynn shuddered as she glanced at their surroundings. “Alex thinks Besand is trying to hike out of the woods. Armed. I guess a gun is missing from the dead marshal.”
“Jesus! And they let you hike back up that hill alone?” Ryan’s gaze swirled in all directions, and he threw an arm around her shoulder to press her down. “We shouldn’t be sitting out here in the open.”
“Stop it!” She shoved off his arm. “He’s not here. Don’t you think he would have waited with the plane if he wanted to be rescued? I think he started walking out. Alex says this guy hated prison, and he believes Besand’s taking this chance to get away. Besand knows if a rescue crew found him, he’d be back in prison within hours. So he’s gonna do everything to avoid us. I already had this argument with the other guys below. We don’t need to go through it again.”
Ryan sat still. “What did Alex want to do?”
“He wants us to get out of here. But I knew you weren’t up to hiking out right now and vetoed that. Alex wants to go after Besand after we leave. Like we would even consider leaving him alone out here.” She frowned. “He seems to think Besand has some big plan for getting out of the country. How could he have a plan? He didn’t know his plane was going down or that he’d live through it.”
“Maybe he’s always had a backup plan. Just in case the opportunity arose to escape from prison. I know I would.”
She smiled. “You’d be a lousy criminal. You’re too damned honest.”
Ryan rubbed at his nose. “Collins said something that I didn’t understand. Something about Alex.”
Brynn’s stomach tightened. “What’d he say?”
“It sounded like ‘Kinton’s not a marshal.’”
They both were silent for five full seconds.
Brynn slowly shook her head back and forth. “That’s not right. I’ve worked around you law enforcement types for years. Alex has ‘cop’ tattooed on his forehead.”
“I’m with you. There’s law enforcement in there somewhere.”
“Maybe you misunderstood. Maybe Collins was saying…” She scrambled for words. “Kinton isn’t…I don’t know.” Her hands went up in exasperation. “You said the connection sucked. Maybe he didn’t say ‘Kinton’ maybe he said ‘kitchen’ or…or ‘kitten.’”
Ryan laughed, but sobered rapidly. “You’re right. But it’s bugging me. Collins said it twice, but neither time was clear.
I want to talk to Jim about it, see what he thinks.” He grimaced. “But I guess it doesn’t make much difference. Let’s say Alex isn’t a marshal. That’s fine. He’s pulled his weight on this mission, and we’ve done our job. He seems to be a decent person, and I kinda like him. After this we can all go home and laugh about the guy who was dumb enough to fake being a marshal to go along on the rescue from hell.”
“But Alex isn’t going home. He’s going to hunt down and kill Besand. I saw it in his eyes.” Brynn’s voice broke as she shuddered, remembering Alex’s cold gaze and wondering what had knocked him down to such a low point.