When Lightning Strikes

"You can't know these things," he said softly, not taking his eyes off her. She blinked up at him. Her mouth trembled and she bit down on her lower lip, but she didn't look away. It was the most honest face he'd ever seen. He frowned. "But you do."

She squeezed her eyes shut for a heartbeat and sighed. "Yeah, I do."

He couldn't reject her information. It was too damned reasonable.

Joe had always hated him. The lawman held Killian responsible for killing an elderly couple on their way

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home from the Silver Springs bank. It didn't matter to Joe that Killian had been in Texas that month, or that Killian wasn't a murderer. At least, not an intentional one.

To Joe, all that mattered was revenge. Killian had been one step ahead of Martin for years. If the ranger was in Arizona, he was after Killian.

"Will you leave me here?" she asked quietly.

He saw the desperation in her eyes, and he refused to be moved by it. If there was even a possibility that Joe was behind him?and God help him, he believed her? Killian needed every advantage to stay alive. "No."

Moisture brightened her eyes, gave them a sad luminescence

that made his chest ache. She looked away, as if ashamed of her own emotion. "Why?"

"You might be my ace in the hole if things go bad. Joe'd let me go to save your life."

He untied her hands and feet and drew the ragged rope away, cramming it in his big duster pocket. Then he started to stand.

She reached out and grabbed his arm, her fingers curling tightly around the dusty canvas of his coat sleeve. "Please," she whispered, looking up at him through frightened, glassy eyes. "Please let me go. I need to wake up now."

He looked down at her, feeling sorrier than he wanted to. But that fleeting emotion didn't change anything; he wouldn't allow it to. He'd spent years surviving on gut instinct, and right now, crazy or not, he believed her. Joe Martin was shadowing him. He could almost feel the threat of death, hovering, waiting. He'd lived with that feeling a long time now, almost embraced it. It kept him from thinking about anything except staying alive. And there were a lot of things in his life he didn't want to think about.

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"I'm sorry, lady," he said again, and this time he put a steely coldness in his voice. "But that really isn't my problem."

Lainie clung to the saddle horn with aching hands. The leather was sticky and damp, and the overpowering odors of horse and sweat and dust were killing her. She almost wished she had the gag back. She'd give anything to keep the dirt and grit out of her mouth and nose.

She squeezed her eyes shut, feeling a moment's relief at the soothing darkness. If only she could curl up somewhere, in some forgotten corner of her own mind, and go to sleep. Maybe then she could finally wake up. ...

Only it wasn't that easy. The dream was so ... strange.

Why couldn't she wake up?

Maybe there was something different about this sleep. Maybe it was ... unnatural.

A cold finger of fear moved through her. It was horrifyingly possible. Maybe she'd drunk too much booze and popped too many pills. Maybe she wasn't merely asleep?maybe she was in a coma.

"Oh, Jesus." The words slipped from her mouth, through her chattering teeth. Was it possible? Was this what life was like for the thousands of coma victims who seemed to lie in deathlike sleep? Had poor Karen Ann Quinlan been trapped like this in the terrifying landscape of her own subconscious mind, chained to an endless, unstoppable dream from which there was no relief?

It made such terrifying sense. Maybe she was still at her computer, slumped in unnatural slumber atop her keyboard....

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Her fear accelerated. She took a deep breath and forced herself to calm down. She refused to let it beat her, refused to let herself become a victim of her own emotions.

If it was true, this dream would run its course. She would wake up when?and only when?the pills and booze had worked their toxic way from her system. Not one moment before. Like so many other frightening times in her life, she wasn't in control. She couldn't make herself wake up, or force the dream to stop. She could only hang on and be strong.

Be strong.

The words calmed her immensely, gave her a goal, something to hang on to when she found fear creeping up from the darkness. She'd survived worse things in her life; she'd survived drugs, violence, poverty, parental abandonment ... even life on the cold, hard streets of Seattle.