McCullough spoke to her in a voice like windblown sand. “Your father is a very foolish man, Lauren.” She sucked in a breath but managed to hold back her retort. He regarded her for a moment while a smile tugged fruitlessly at the corners of his mouth. “At least I hope he is. I’d hate to think he cares so little for you that he’d throw your life away to save his political career.”

Still Lauren didn’t reply. Smoldering with anger and fear, she stared hard into McCullough’s eyes. Seared his image onto her retinas, into her brain.

Then suddenly his eyes narrowed and his face seemed to crumple with an anguish so naked she uttered a sharp gasp and jerked backward, an instinctive protective distancing.

“Do you know what they’ve done?” he rasped. “Your father’s people-his storm troopers, his Gestapo? They shot my wife.”

“No.” Lauren shook her head, and heard herself saying it over and over. “No, no…”

“My Katie. That little woman never harmed a soul in her life, and they gunned her down in her own front yard!”

“It’s not true,” Lauren stated flatly. “My father would never do such a thing. Never.”

“He authorized it.” McCullough’s voice was hard now, and cold as his eyes. “And I’m sorry, but it is true. Two sheriff’s deputies were right there and saw it happen. I got worried when I couldn’t get through to my wife, so I sent some of my men to see if they could find out what was going on. Ron, there, was one of ’em-he can confirm it. The fact is, Miss Brown, government storm troopers have occupied my ranch and shot down my wife in cold blood. This after I warned them what would happen to you if they took any such action against me. I’m afraid they’ve left me no choice.”

“No,” Lauren whispered, beginning to struggle against Ron Masters’s merciless grip. He jerked her so hard she nearly fell.

And suddenly, as if that small brutality had been a slap in the face, she felt the panic fade, felt herself calm. I won’t grovel, she thought. I won’t plead. If she was going to die, by God, she would do it bravely.

But you’re not going to die. You’re going to stay alive. No matter what it takes.

“You don’t have to kill me.” Her voice was quiet, breathless. “If you just let my father think you have-” she paused, encouraged by the thoughtful narrowing of Gil McCullough’s eyes “-then if it comes to that, I can testify to how well I was treated. I could even say I wasn’t kidnapped at all, that I just…that I went off with Bronco.”

A snicker close by her ear made her shudder as if something cold and slimy had crawled down her back. “Nice try,” Masters crooned against the side of her face, like a lover. But it’s killing he loves, Lauren thought. And she could smell his blood lust, a dark feral odor.

A new wave of terror swept over her. Defying it, she held herself straight and tall and tried desperately not to tremble. “Speaking of Bronco, where is my jailer?” she asked brashly, hoping it would sound merely curious, even a little contemptuous. “What, does he just always split when things get ugly?”

Masters gave a short cackle of laughter-was there a note of jealousy in it?-while McCullough’s face took on the affronted expression of a man whose child has just been maligned. “Bronco doesn’t ‘split,”’ he said stiffly. “He was…needed elsewhere. I sent him-” He broke off. For a second, maybe two, he stood frozen, listening, like a buck at a water hole catching the predator’s scent.

Then, in the sudden eerie quiet, Lauren heard it too, strange sounds far off in the distance. Like someone making popcorn, she thought, in another room in the house.

McCullough uttered a single sharp obscenity. And after that it seemed to Lauren that everything happened at once.

The compound, which had been so quiet and still, was suddenly, instantly, a hive of sound and motion. A muttering of sound that grew, like a wave rolling onto shore, then broke all at once into voices yelling instructions, shouts of alarm and of warning. A confusion of shapes and shadows, a moving picture that seemed to whirl around her as she was spun about and jerked roughly to and fro. Gil’s voice shouting orders she couldn’t quite make out. Pain in her arms and shoulders as she fought to stay upright in Ron Masters’s careless grip.

Then gradually, out of the noise and confusion, a new sound, a rhythmic thumping that was familiar to her. A horse’s galloping hoofbeats. And almost seeming to grow out of that, another driving pulsing beat that grew steadily louder, like crescendoing tympany-the chop-chop-chop of helicopter rotors.

Men dove out of the way as a horse and rider burst through the crowd. Lauren could feel a wave of heat from the animal’s body, smell his sweat and hear grunting sounds as he came to a bone-jarring stiff-legged halt, so close to the man who held her prisoner that he was jostled and had to jerk himself out of the way to keep from being trampled. She heard Masters swear.

Lauren’s heart gave a tremendous leap of hope and joy as horse and rider separated and became two individual shapes. Tears burned her eyes when Cochise Red lowered his head to bump her shoulder and whickered an affectionate greeting.

Johnny Bronco spoke to Gil McCullough. “They’re coming,” was all he said.

It was then that Lauren realized she wasn’t in Ron Masters’s hands any longer. That the fingers that held her now did so, not with bruising force, but with a firm and gentle touch. She turned her head to stare at the fierce warrior’s profile, and her breath caught. Bronco’s glittering black eyes were locked in silent struggle with the angry blue ones belonging to the man who stood facing him at the foot of the cabin steps-a struggle, Lauren sensed, that likely meant life or death. For her.

Then just like that, it was over. McCullough surrendered with a jerk of his head and a violent wave of his arm. “Go on-get her out of here!” he yelled as he stormed up the steps, making for the cabin door.

Bronco wasted no more time-he knew he didn’t have much left. He half threw Lauren into the saddle and clucked to the stallion, and he could feel ol’ Red already gathering himself for the takeoff as he vaulted up behind her. “Get down-get down,” he growled in Lauren’s ear, then leaned hard against her, pressing her down and covering her body with his as the stallion launched himself, as only a quarter horse can, from standstill into full gallop in one tremendous leap.

The noise of the choppers was deafening now, right overhead, all but drowning out the gunfire. Light streaked across the compound and danced among the pine trees, illuminating the smoke that had begun to collect there so that it resembled a blanket of ground fog. The acrid smell of powder drifted on winds driven by the choppers’ blades.

In the chaos and confusion of battle, Bronco knew, anything could happen. That was why his first thought had been to get the hell out of there, get Lauren as far away from the danger as he possibly could. And after that? After that, maybe he could think about how he was going to get her back to her father without giving himself up in the bargain.

“Come on, Red, get us out of here,” he murmured. Crouched low over the woman’s body, he gave the stallion his head.

To Lauren it didn’t seem real, that twilight gallop through a tranquil meadow while behind her the world was exploding in a nightmare of sound and fury, fire and destruction and death. There was something surreal about it-like an amusement park thrill ride gone berserk.

She’d been riding horses since she was a child, but as many times as she’d ridden, she’d never ridden like this, racing a quarter horse-the fastest horse alive at short distances-flat out at full gallop. Oh, and it was terrifying. Exhilarating. Like riding a lightning bolt.

The sheer brute power of the animal beneath her filled her with awe. With her face against the stallion’s neck, she could hear his labored breaths and grunts of effort, feel his surging muscles and thundering heartbeats. And there was another heartbeat hammering against her back, and her own intermingled with it until she could no longer separate one from the other. Another body, strong as steel and supple as wire, as formidable as the stallion’s but in a different way, pressed hard against her and holding her firmly in the saddle…and his embrace.

Sandwiched like that, between the awesome power of man and horse, Lauren had never felt safer, more secure. Or more frightened. Not that she would fall. Bronco would never let her fall, she knew that. Yet…she felt as though the earth had slipped out from under her feet. She felt off balance, scared.

What’s happened? she kept thinking. What’s happened to me?

And for the first time in days the kidnapping was far from her mind.

At the far end of the meadow where the ground rose sharply and the trees began, Bronco straightened, with one arm still holding Lauren securely in the saddle, and spoke to Cochise Red with a touch and a murmured, “Ho, boy…” Excited as he was, the stallion fought the bit, tossing his head and dancing sideways as Bronco eased him to a walk.

Though Lauren hadn’t spoken, he could feel her body shivering. Her hair felt damp against his cheek. He didn’t know whether she was in shock or just plain cold, but either way he knew he had to get her into shelter and wrapped up in something warm pretty quick. But they couldn’t stop yet. Not here. Although he knew Red was pretty well winded and he was asking a lot of him, especially now that it was getting dark, he didn’t see how he had much choice. He had to get through the perimeter fence, put a ridge or two between them and the SOL camp.

Calming the big bay horse-and the woman, too-with soothing wordless sounds, Bronco signaled with a slight pressure from his knees, and they slipped into the shadows between the trees.

The sounds of gunfire had faded to a distant grumbling before they finally halted in the cover of timber. Bronco’s feet had barely touched the ground before Lauren came tumbling out of the saddle behind him. He turned, and she fell into his arms.

It never occurred to him not to hold her. She was wet, cold, trembling…probably in shock. He muttered something-he didn’t know what-as he reached one-handed to untie the blanket roll behind the saddle, somehow got it shaken out and wrapped around her. It was when he folded her back against him that she began to cry. Not quietly, either, but with sobs and wails, like a little child.

Bronco hadn’t had much experience with weeping women, but for some reason he wasn’t surprised or even all that upset to find one in his arms. He thought he should have been-especially this woman. What did surprise him was how altogether natural it felt to hold her, to stroke her hair, weave his fingers through it and cradle her head against his shoulder. To exhale soothing wordless whispers into its silky dampness and inhale its sweet green-apple scent.

The storm was only a squall and it passed quickly. To Bronco it seemed all too short a time before she quieted, then began to stir in the restless way that let him know she was already sorry she’d let herself cut loose like that. Regret was a heaviness in his muscles as he eased her away from him.

She quickly bowed her head and he could see her brush at her eyes and nose with jerky embarrassed movements, then give up and begin to yank on her T-shirt, trying to haul it out of the waistband of her jeans.

“Here,” he scolded, “don’t do that.” He untied his bandanna, pulled it off his neck and passed it to her. She croaked something he took for a thank-you and turned away self-consciously to blow her nose, though as dark as it was he couldn’t have seen much, anyway. He stood and waited while she mopped up, uncomfortable himself now, and the damp place she’d left on the front of his shirt a cold reminder of her warmth.

“You okay?” he asked when it sounded as though she was about done.

She nodded, and he could see her shift about, looking for someplace to put the bandanna. Before he could take it from her, she shoved it in her pocket and cleared her throat. “Sorry. Reaction, I guess.”

“Natural.” His voice was diffident, remote. “Don’t worry about it.”

Suddenly bereft, Lauren fought an urge to reach out and touch him, to feel again the strong hard body and warm arms that had so recently sheltered her. Her eyes strained against the darkness, but she could make out only a faceless shape topped by the pale blur of a white Stetson.

His voice came quietly from the shadows. “Think you can go on a ways?”

“Sure,” said Lauren. It didn’t occur to her then what an odd thing it was for a terrorist to ask his hostage.