“You almost killed him.” Cord’s voice was either without emotion or so laden that he could barely get the words out; she didn’t know which. “Damn it, you could have killed my son.”

“Look.” Shifting the rifle slightly but not lowering it, Chuck leaned closer to Cord. “There’s elk all over here. I’ve been following their signs for days. How the hell was I supposed to know there was a kid out here?”

If Chuck expected an answer from Cord, he didn’t get it. Cord just continued to stare at the hunter-poacher-whatever he was. As had happened so many times during their days and nights together, his surroundings seemed to lap at him, take over until she wasn’t sure there was anything civilized left in him.

“Look,” Chuck repeated. “It wasn’t me who shot at him anyway. You want to blame someone, blame Owen.”

The man Cord had taken the rifle from spun toward Chuck. “Wait a minute,” he spluttered. “You’re the one who got us here. You planned this whole damn thing. I’m not-”

Shannon couldn’t concentrate on the balding man’s words. What did it matter who was responsible for the poachers’-that’s what they were, all right-being here? The bottom line was, their greed had nearly cost her son his life. With a start, she realized that all four men were talking at once. Cord’s silence stood in sharp contrast to the babble of words. Someone, the oldest of the group she guessed, was offering Cord an obscene amount of money in exchange for a promise not to say anything to the authorities. Owen started toward her and Matt, but Cord stopped him with a cold stare. Neither Cord nor Chuck had altered their defensive stances. Nor had Chuck lowered his weapon.

“Shut up, Elliott!” Chuck ordered. “You don’t get it, do you? I know him.” He jabbed the rifle at Cord. “Know his reputation, anyway. He’s the next thing to the law, works with them all the time. There’s no way he’ll take your money and keep his mouth shut.”

She’d once seen a massive dog that had been cornered by several men after it had killed a couple of lambs. The dog had been backed into a corner, but she hadn’t for a second believed it was giving up. When one of the men made the mistake of getting too close, the dog had lunged at him. If the others hadn’t pulled the dog off its victim, the man would have had his throat torn out.

Chuck reminded her of that dog.

“Cord,” she warned, realizing too late that she shouldn’t try to distract him from the poacher.

Chuck acknowledged her with a look, the contact lasting less than a second but leaving her with the impression that no sense of humanity, of compassion, of regret, even of relief, existed in the man. She waited for him to say something, but when he didn’t, his silence was as telling as the dog’s growls had been.

“Mom?” Matt whispered. She stopped him by pressing him against her side.

No matter how much she wanted to become part of the confrontation, this was between Cord and the man he’d called Chuck. Although the others were nearby, they, like her, were simply bit players in the drama.

“Put it down,” Cord ordered, his voice as deep and low as the wind finding its way through a canyon. “Now.”

“You know who I am? How did-”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“No,” Chuck admitted. “It doesn’t. Nothing does except…”

She wanted to scream at him to finish because right now nothing mattered more than getting inside Chuck Markham’s head. He had to at least care about an innocent boy’s life, didn’t he? He couldn’t possibly be thinking of taking the father’s life. As if in answer to her question, Chuck curled himself around his weapon, became part of it.

“No!”

Everything became a blur of movement, Cord striking out and throwing himself to the ground at the same time, a shattering blast of sound, cursing, Matt screaming and clutching her, a woman’s wailing cry. She fought to escape her son’s grasp, but he held on with fierce and desperate fingers, and she was afraid of hurting him.

Cord went down hard, his body bouncing off the earth. For a horrible instant, he lay limp as a fallen leaf. Then, although she wasn’t sure he was capable of rational thought or action, he reached out and grabbed Chuck around the ankles. Grunting, Chuck fell on top of him, the rifle trapped between them. She was terrified that in one, no more than two seconds, strength and maybe life itself would pour out of Cord and she would see her ex-husband die before her eyes.

“No. No. No.” She had to stop sounding like a wounded animal, but how? Dragging Matt with her, she stumbled over rocks and uneven ground until she’d covered about half of the distance. The two men were still locked together as they fought for control of the weapon. Cord wasn’t a killer, but if it came to his own life-

She couldn’t help him this way.

“Matt! Please,” she begged. “Let me go.”

“No! He’ll kill – they’ll kill you.”

“No, they won’t,” she said, although she might be lying to both herself and her son. The other men were staring fixedly at Cord and Chuck, briefly drawing her attention from her still-forming plan. Chuck, although shorter, outweighed Cord by maybe thirty pounds. That would slow him and make him clumsy, but he could also use his heft to advantage, especially if Cord was injured.

At the moment, it looked as if her awful prediction had come true. Chuck had straddled Cord and was using the rifle like a wedge to drive him into the ground. She saw-no!-saw that blood soaked the side of Cord’s head.

“Matt! Hide! Don’t move until I tell you to.”

“But-”

“Now!”

Her scream captured her son’s attention, but he was still staring at her when she whirled and ran back the way she’d come. For a desperate moment she couldn’t find Cord’s pack, then spotted it on a litter of grass and dead leaves. Dropping to her knees, she rummaged through it until she found the two-way radio.

“Dad!” she screamed into it. “Dad! Where are you?”

“Here, honey. What -”

“We need help! Now!”

“Matt?”

“Matt’s alive,” she told him as she hurried back toward the men, determined to let them hear and see. “But there are poachers-they have guns. They tried-I think one of them shot Cord.” Cord? Please, Cord!

Fortunately her father didn’t ask any more questions.

Instead, he informed her that Sheriff Vollrath was with him and immediately turned the radio over to him. Unable to keep herself from babbling, she gave the sheriff a brief sketch of what was happening. The three other men watched her intently, but if either Clint or Cord heard, they gave no indication. Now Chuck was trying to get free while Cord struggled to keep him with him.

She was vaguely aware that Dale didn’t sound surprised by the presence of poachers, but that didn’t matter. The only thing that did was giving him as accurate a description of where they were as possible. To her overwhelming relief, Dale said he could get a forest service helicopter in the air in a matter of minutes.

Still clutching the now-silent radio, she looked around for Matt. She couldn’t see him and prayed he’d obeyed her command to hide.

“I’ve called the police!” she yelled at the men. “They’re on their way.” Please let that be the truth. “They know who you are.” Do they? “Stop it!” She indicated the fighters. “Make them stop!”

For what seemed forever but couldn’t be, no one moved. She heard furious breathing and a grunt of pain that tore into her. It was all she could do not to jump into the middle of the battle, but what if something happened to her? Matt could be left with nothing-no one.

Finally, cursing, first one man and then the other two reached, not for Cord as she feared, but for Chuck.

“Leave me alone!” Chuck bellowed. “This ain’t none of your business!”

“The hell it isn’t,” the man called Elliott retorted. “It’s over, damn it. Over.” He wrapped his arm around Chuck’s neck and hauled him back. At the same time, Owen grabbed the rifle and wrenched it out of Chuck’s grip. It clattered to the ground near Cord; to her immense relief, it didn’t fire.

“The cops are on their way,” Owen rasped, his attention riveted on the rifle. “I can’t-Oh, God, I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Then I’m out of here,” Chuck insisted as he struggled to free himself from Elliott. “You guys will get your hands slapped. Me, I’m looking at jail time.”

Cord forced himself to his feet and stood with his legs wide apart, swaying slightly. “Where do you think you could go?” He took a deep, hard-won breath. “The sheriff knows about your plane. He’ll be looking for you. Everyone will be.”

“Not if I-”

“Didn’t you hear me?” she insisted. “There’s a helicopter on its way. You’ll never get away. You can’t-”

“Owen! Think, damn it!” Chuck snarled. “You want to be charged with attempted murder? If we get out of here, no one will ever -”

“You’re crazy. Insane,” Elliott interrupted. “Do you really think we’re going to let you dump this on us? Even if you somehow managed to disappear, the rest of us can’t. We’ve got businesses. Families.”

“Owen!” Chuck tried to jerk free. “Attempted murder? Do you want that?”

Owen’s rifle lay on the ground where Cord had thrown it, but he could reach it before anyone stopped him. In a strangely detached way, she wondered if she could place herself between Owen and Cord before he finished what Chuck had begun.

“I’m no killer. Never so much as hunted anything before this. I thought…thought it would…” Owen’s face contorted. “I almost shot a boy,” he whimpered, and kicked at his weapon. “I don’t ever-don’t ever want to touch that thing again.”

“You’re going to go to jail,” Chuck insisted. “And take me with you. Damn you, I-”

“Enough.”

Cord’s voice was like a cold wind on a hot day and instantly commanded her attention. How she couldn’t have noticed that he’d picked up Chuck’s rifle, she didn’t know. He held it with the barrel aimed at Chuck’s chest; despite what was wrong with the side of his head, he’d found the strength to keep it level. Something terrible and wild and dangerous came to life in his ebony eyes, and for the first time in her life she understood how fine the line could be between civilization and the law of the wild. By the other men’s reactions, she knew she wasn’t the only one aware of how close Cord was to crossing that line.

“You don’t want to do this, man,” Elliott said. At the same time, he released Chuck and stepped away from him, leaving the poacher to face the rifle alone. “You don’t want to kill him.”

Cord didn’t answer, but then she already knew he wouldn’t. He was aware of nothing and no one except Chuck. Although Owen had been the one who’d nearly hit their son, Chuck had shot at Cord and her ex-husband obviously held him responsible for everything that had happened. The same need for revenge that pulsed inside Cord lapped at her, and for a moment she wanted to be the one to put an end to Chuck.

But if she did-if Cord did-their son would know.

“No, Cord, no!”

His attention flickered toward her. When he blinked, she knew she’d reached him. “You can’t,” she said, speaking more softly now. “It doesn’t matter what he’s done, you can’t lower yourself to his level.”

“He’s been killing wild animals for years.”

“Let the courts deal with him. They might not be perfect, but they’re all we have.”

“I have this.” Cord indicated the rifle.

“If you use it, you’ll lose your son. You might spend your life behind bars.”

“My son,” Cord whispered as if the possibility of prison meant nothing to him. Then, while the others waited without breathing, he handed the weapon to her. She still had to fight her own desire for revenge, but the words she’d thrown at Cord were for her, too. After unloading the rifle, she tossed the bullets into the brush, grabbed the weapon by the barrel and swung it as hard as she could against the nearest boulder.

“What the -” Chuck began.

“Shut up.” Cord spoke without emotion. “Just shut up.”

Although he continued to glare, the fight went out of Chuck. Still, she was glad the men had grabbed his arms; that way she could dismiss him and concentrate on what really mattered.

Cord wasn’t staring at the men or her. He still looked as angry and untamed as she’d ever seen him, but after a few minutes, a little of the tension, or maybe it was his strength, seeped out of him. He no longer reminded her of an elk ready for battle. He was more like the man she might spend the rest of her life trying to understand.

“You need help.” She whispered because she could barely get her voice to work. “A doctor.”

“I’m fine. I hit my head on a rock, that’s all.”

“You’re not fine.” Ignoring the others, she gently pushed aside Cord’s hair so she could look at his injury. A ragged gash bled freely from his scalp; she could only pray he hadn’t sustained a concussion. With sudden, sickening clarity she understood that if the bullet had hit him, it would have killed him since it had been designed to bring down an animal weighing several times what he did.