The question took her aback. She didn’t expect him to be worried about her well-being one way or another. “Considering you just tried to kill me by driving off a cliff, I’d say I’m doing better than expected. What the hell were you trying to pull?”
“Maybe you’d rather take a bullet in the back.”
She didn’t have a comeback for that. Whomever had been in that chopper had been shooting at them. And they hadn’t seemed too concerned about which of them they hit. A deeply disturbing fact.
“If it hadn’t been for me, your pals back at the prison would have turned you into Swiss cheese,” he said.
“They were shooting at you,” she said. “In case you’re wondering, that’s standard operating procedure when an inmate takes an officer hostage and escapes.”
He glanced away from her and looked up at the sky as if gauging the storm. He had a strong profile with a straight nose and chiseled mouth. Emily wasn’t sure why, but the sight of his lips made her think of the kiss in the prison locker room. Remembering it right now was ridiculously inappropriate considering the situation. But neither of those things changed what the kiss had done to her….
Tearing her gaze away from him, Emily brushed the last of the snow from her coat and slacks and looked around. Under different circumstances she might have enjoyed the beauty of the night. The heavy snowfall was lovely against the backdrop of the mountain forest and night sky. But standing out in the middle of nowhere with an escaped convict who’d nearly gotten her killed removed any discernible pleasure.
“We lucked out,” he said. “The chopper must have been grounded because of the storm.”
“Oh, yes, I’m feeling luckier by the second,” she said dryly. “If we’re really lucky, we’ll be buried alive with snow by morning.”
The look he gave her caused the hairs on her arms to prickle. A different kind of uneasiness rose inside her. Emily wasn’t familiar with his background or what he’d done. It had to be brutal, savage, for him to end up in the Bitterroot Super Max. She didn’t want to think about what he was capable of. Or what he might do to her…
Refusing to let the thought spook her, she stuck out her chin and gave him a hard look. “So what do you propose we do now, Einstein?”
“First and foremost, we stay alive.”
That might be very difficult under the circumstances. Emily refused to go there.
He sighed, motioned toward the tear in the sleeve of her coat. “At some point I’ll need to take a look at that bullet wound.”
Between dodging bullets and crashing the snowmobile, she’d pushed the pain in her arm to the back of her mind. But now that he’d mentioned it, she could feel the stinging and burning of the bullet wound, the wet stickiness of the blood.
“Why don’t you just make a run for it while you can?” she said.
Her heart sped up when he stepped close to her. “Because I didn’t risk my life breaking out of that hellhole to run.”
“You don’t need me,” she said. “Just go and leave me here.”
“If they find you here or anywhere else, you’re as good as dead.”
“They wouldn’t—”
“They would,” he said sharply. “Do you think that bullet wound in your arm was an accident?”
“I think the SORT team marksman was trying to stop you. I got in the way.”
“In case you’ve forgotten what happened in the locker room, let me refresh your memory. Three men. One of them had a syringe with your name on it. He was going to shoot you up with some kind of truth serum, for God’s sake. Then who knows what was next on the agenda.”
Emily wanted to deny it but couldn’t. She’d seen the syringe. She’d seen the looks on the men’s faces. And she’d known what they’d been about to do. But why?
“They think I helped you escape,” she said dully.
“They think you know something you shouldn’t.”
“Like what?” she asked.
“Like why inmates at the Bitterroot Super Max have been dying under mysterious circumstances for the last six months.”
Something was going on at the prison. In the last six months, she’d personally known of at least two inmates dying unexpectedly. That was why she’d been asking questions. That was why she’d been in the infirmary that morning to begin with.
But to believe the people she’d worked with for the last three years were capable of murder was unthinkable. How did Devlin know about it? There appeared to be a lot more to Zack Devlin than met the eye.
“How do you know inmates have been dying?” she asked.
“I know because for the last four months I’ve watched men systematically disappear. Healthy men who are sent to the infirmary. Most come back to their cells deathly ill. Some of them don’t come back at all.”
Was Devlin just a smooth-talking liar whose very freedom hinged on manipulating her into helping him?
But in her heart Emily knew something was going on at the prison. She just didn’t know what.
Things aren’t always what they appear….