He bounded up from the road, sprinting to his brother's side.
Snips' mangled, bloody body lay in the snow.
The Vegas loan shark blinked up at the two men. “Help…me.”
A rage unlike anything he'd ever known overtook Sam. “You killed her, you bastard!”
He wrapped his hands around Snips' throat, channeling all of his fury into the act of squeezing the life out of the man who'd stolen the woman he loved. His fingers dug into the muscles of Snips' neck, pushing against the bones of his trachea.
Snips gasped and squirmed under the pressure, but Sam held on. If he couldn't save Josie, he sure as hell would avenge her.
“Stop!” Hank bellowed into his ear and pried him away from his prey.
Sam landed with a thump on his ass in the snow and bounded up immediately. Hank stood, palms facing outward, blocking his return. Enraged, Sam fought to get close enough to strangle the life out of Snips, but Hank ran interference, knocking him on his ass three times.
But he refused to give up; he'd failed her too many times already to mess up this one final thing.
The brothers grappled, elbows and fists flying. Sam hooked Hank into a headlock, holding firm, and leaned down to his ear. “She's burning up in that car because of him, Hank! I'm going to kill him. Just walk away.”
“Not…dead,” Snips croaked out from the ground. “She ran…to the bluff.”
“I'm not buying it, you lying sack of shit.”
Hank wriggled out of the headlock. “If she did, she had to have left tracks. Let's go look, you and me. This asshole isn't going anywhere.”
Calling a temporary truce, the brothers made their way across the road, searching for footprints, starting near where the cruiser had come to rest. Sam almost walked right on top of a size-ten boot print. He held his breath and closed his eyes, praying to God when he opened them that the indentation in the snow would still be there.
It was.
“I found it.”
“Let me call it in, we'll organize a search party.” Hank reached inside the cruiser for the police radio. “The snow has slowed so we have time.”
Sam glanced over at the cruiser's open door. He could see Josie's new winter coat sitting on the seat and fear flattened his chest. “No time. I'm going now.”
“Sam, wait!”
There wasn't any time to wait. Josie was out there.
Chapter Eighteen
Sam trailed Josie's tracks to the base of McPherson's Bluff. The snow had tapered off, leaving only the wind whacking at his body like an icy hand. He raised the zipper on his heavy coat to ward off Mother Nature's attack.
Scanning the bluff, he searched for her platinum hair and the all-black outfit she'd worn to break into his house, grateful her sense of drama would make her stand out in the all-white environment. Seeing nothing, he followed her footprints, noting how they grew closer together and in some spots they were broken where she must have fallen. A perfect handprint broke through the snow near a bolder. An image of her bare hand, red with cold, flashed in his mind.
It had to be five degrees out and she didn't have a coat or gloves. How long had she been wandering around the bluff and how much longer could she take the freezing temperatures? The question pierced him like a bull's horns, guilt-filled pain spreading outward. He pushed back the anxiety curling around his heart. Later, after he had her warm and in his arms, he'd deal with that. For now, he just had to find her.
Josie's tracks circled around in an aimless pattern the farther up the bluff he went. A large dent in the snowpack was evidence that she'd fallen at least one more time. Sirens blared in the distance. The sheriff's deputies, fire department and ambulance, no doubt. The cavalry had arrived too late.
Halfway up to the top of the bluff's eight-hundred-feet summit, the tracks disappeared near a steep drop-off. Blood rushed in his ears, drowning out the sirens, and he ran to the edge and looked into the abyss. Evergreen trees broke through the undisturbed white blanket like polka dots between the bluff and the badlands' deep ravines beyond, but no black clothing to give away Josie.
He whipped around, looking for more tracks. Nothing but a haphazard scattering of large rocks near a two-foot crack in the limestone wall broke up the perfect
blanket of white. Rockslide. Those were usually a problem in the spring, not the dead of winter. An animal must have—
Adrenaline electrified his body and he rushed to the opening. He couldn't see anything in the inky blackness, but part of him knew, just knew, she was in there.
“Josie, I'm coming for you.” His voice echoed back at him.