the rain had finally stopped, leaving the ground wet enough for footprints to show up in the softened soil underfoot.
“There.” Three miles out, Ava spotted the faint tracks of their human prey. “Aren’t those footprints?”
He studied the tracks. “Good eye,” he murmured with approval.
“You’re not the only tracker around here,” she answered bluntly. But she sounded pleased. He spared her a quick look, struck by how pretty she was, even rain-drenched and weary. What makeup she’d been wearing back at the motel had washed away completely, leaving her looking more like the dewy-faced girl from Kentucky he’d found so fascinating when they’d met on the beach in Mariposa eight years earlier.
But looks could be deceiving. No matter how much he might wish those intervening eight years had never happened, he couldn’t deny they had. He’d changed. She’d surely changed as well.
And she was right. They weren’t friends. They couldn’t be.
“We need to be careful. Now that they’re covering tracks, we risk running right up on them. We have to watch for an ambush.”
She nodded, her expression grave. “It’s not too late to go back. We can come back in daylight. Track them when the light is better.”
His instincts rebelled against the idea, but he didn’t trust his decision-making skills at the moment. Right now his gut was too full of fear for his sister to provide any objectivity. Tracking two well-armed men in the dark woods was clearly risky.
But was the risk worth taking?
He looked at her. “What do you think?”
She nibbled her lip again. “We keep going. By now they may realize they’re missing three of their men. When those guys get back to camp, they could decide to bug out to somewhere else. If we wait until morning, we could follow this trail straight to a dead end.”
He loosed a sigh of relief. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
They followed the trail another hour, moving with extreme caution as the trail rose upward into the mist-veiled mountains. The climb became steeper and more treacherous, and as they neared a particularly vertical rise, Sin stopped and offered Ava a drink from a water bottle in his backpack.
She drank the water gratefully. “Don’t suppose there’s any way to go around that hill?”
“Not without losing at least a half hour.”
She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “Then up we go.”
“You go in front,” he suggested. “You’ve got the bum hip. I’ll be able to catch you if you lose traction.”
She eyed him with caution, clearly weighing her options. No snap judgments from the Kentucky belle, he thought with a hidden smile. He’d always rather liked that about her, if he was remembering correctly.
“Okay.” Turning, she reached for a handhold in the steep incline, closing her fingers around a rocky outcropping.
Sinclair stayed close behind her, distracting himself from the gnawing anxiety eating a hole in his gut by enjoying the sway of her curvy backside as she climbed the trail in front of him. She’d filled out a bit in the eight years since he’d last seen her, her once lithe, girlish body developing delightful curves in all the right places. She had the kind of hips that made a man want to sink into her and stay there forever. His hands, gripping a rough-edged rock jutting out of the hillside, itched to close around her round, firm breasts instead....
Don’t get too distracted, he warned himself sternly.
The hillside started to level out, the climb less of a strain. Ava stumbled as they reached flatter ground, going down on her hands and knees. She stayed there for a moment, breathing hard.
Sinclair knelt beside her, laying his hand on her back. Her back rose and fell quickly as she caught her breath. “Sorry,” she rasped.
He rubbed her back lightly. “We can take a break. How’s your hip?”
She pushed herself up to a kneeling position and slid down the waistband of her pants to check the bandage. “I think it’s okay.”
“May I look?”
Her eyes met his, wide and wary in a shaft of pale moonlight peeking through the clouds. But she shifted, giving him better access to her injury.
Gently easing the trousers away from the bandage, he checked more thoroughly. There was a little blood seeping through the gauze, but not enough to worry. She wasn’t in danger of bleeding to death.
Infection was still a major risk, however, and the longer she stayed out here in these woods without professional medical treatment, the greater the likelihood of sepsis.
He should have insisted they go back to the motel instead of chasing these men, he realized with a sinking heart. He’d been selfish and, if he was honest with himself, a little bit afraid of facing justice after so long on the run. “We should go back to the motel.”
She looked at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Go back down that hill after we just climbed it? Are you kidding me?”
“The longer you and that bullet wound stay out here in these woods, the more likely you’ll get an infection. That’s nothing to play around with.”
“I think I’m good for a few more hours.” She pushed to her feet. “Let’s go. We’re wasting moonlight.”
His heart still stuck in his throat, he rose and followed her lead.
Ten minutes later, Sin heard voices. He grabbed Ava’s wrist as she continued forward, dragging her back against his chest.
She started to struggle, but he tightened his hold and whispered in her ear, “Voices.”
She froze, her head coming up as if to listen.
The voices seemed to be floating toward them on the wind, coming from somewhere dead ahead. But all Sin could see in front of them were trees, trees and more trees.
Where were the voices coming from?
“Rest a second,” he whispered, letting Ava go. “I’ll scout ahead. If I run into trouble, you can go for help.”
Her lips pressed to a thin line. “I told you I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
“Damn it, Ava—”
“I’m not letting you out of my sight,” she repeated firmly. “Besides, I’m not sure I could make it back to the motel alone at this point,” she added, her voice softening. “So for better or worse, we stick together.”
“Stay as quiet as you can,” he warned, leading the way forward. He took care with each step, moving heel to toe with deliberation, eyeing the ground ahead of them for any potential pitfalls. The voices ahead grew steadily louder, and he could make out the high, excited pitch of the conversation. Spanish, of course, but he was fluent, so he had no trouble making out the words flying about in agitation.
“How’s your Spanish?” he whispered to Ava, who crept up beside him when he paused to listen.
“A little rusty,” she admitted. “Haven’t had a lot of chances to use it working in the Johnson City resident agency.”
“It’ll come back to you,” he assured her. But he interpreted anyway. “Someone’s taking hell for running from a bear.”
“Do you recognize who’s speaking?”
“Might be Cabrera,” he said, uncertain. “There’s a little echo. Can’t be sure yet.”
Suddenly, a woman’s voice rang in the night, her Spanish rapid-fire but American-accented. Sin’s heart clenched into a hot, hard fist.
Alicia.
“¿Dónde está mi esposo?” Fear battled with