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Kate's feet hit the wooden dock a step behind Jonas's. Over her shoulder, she saw headlights slanting through the trees, bobbing and weaving as the approaching vehicles navigated the almost nonexistent road. Two vehicles. One with a flashing blue and red bar atop it.
"Cops," she gasped at Jonas.
"I saw." He skidded to a halt at the end of the dock. Kate teetered beside him, searching the dark waters beyond for the boat they'd heard. The distant siren of the police craft wailed closer.
A lantern came on, moving gently with the waves fifty feet off shore. Behind Kate and Jonas, car doors slammed, and powerful flashlights beamed into the night, moving their way. Shouts reached them. Jonas's fingers tightened on Kate's arm.
"Christ!" he muttered. "Get the damned boat over here!"
The flashlights were just down the shore now, closing fast. The outboard motor thrummed to life again, but the boat didn't move.
"Can you swim?" Jonas demanded.
Kate hesitated. Her shoulder already throbbed from Jonas's many attempts to keep her upright on their hike here. Would it hold up to the St. Lawrence's current? She reached behind her to tuck the nine millimeter more snugly into her waistband.
"Let's go," she said.
The water closed around her with an icy force that knocked every atom of air from her lungs. Her fingers and toes burned with cold by the time she broke the surface, gasping for air. Frigid didn't even begin to describe the St. Lawrence in late autumn. She blinked the river water from her eyes and scanned the dark, finding the yellow lantern light again. It had moved further away from shore.
Shit.
Jonas surfaced beside her. "You okay?"
She forced a reply through jaws locked against the cold.
"My jeans weigh a thousand pounds, but I'm fine."
"Come on, then."
Matching his powerful strokes to hers, he paced her as they swam toward the bobbing light. As long as she focused on his rhythm, she was able to ignore the ache in her shoulder and the drag of water-logged runners and half-ton jeans. But the insidious, mind-numbing cold was another story altogether, and the current as strong as she'd feared. It took an eternity to reach the boat.
At last Kate's fingers brushed against fiberglass, and with a last, monumental effort, she lifted herself out of the water high enough to grab hold of the boat's side. The lantern doused, plunging them into dark. Then, from shore, a flashlight captured her in its brilliant beam. She held up a hand against its glare, her heart skipping a beat. They were freaking sitting ducks out here.
Hot on the heels of the thought, a shot cracked out over the water. Its sharp report reverberated through the still, liquid darkness. Beside Kate, Jonas spat out a curse and heaved himself aboard. The boat bucked in response, and Kate almost lost her grip. Almost slid under. Almost missed the glint of moonlight on steel.
But it was there. A dull, cold gleam in the hands of one of the men Lazarus had sent. A rifle. Kate lunged upward, catching hold of the gun barrel and dragging it down so it pointed into the water.
"No guns!" she croaked. "Those are cops out there!"
The dark eyes of a stranger looked down at her in the moonlight—flat, expressionless. Their owner shrugged. "They shot first."
He tried to lift the rifle, but Kate clung to it stubbornly.
"No guns," she repeated. "Just get us the hell out of here."
The man stared back at her. From the corner of her eye she saw Jonas seated on the floor of the boat, another man at his back—with, she had no doubt, another gun. The blood in her veins chilled. So did her lower body as it continued to dangle in the frigid water. She debated the wisdom of reaching for her own weapon, but didn't dare let go of either the boat or the rifle in her frozen grip. Hell, she didn't dare so much as blink.
Of all the tenuous positions she'd been in during her years on the force, this one rated right up there as the most bizarre. Cops on the shore ready to arrest her, her wanted-for-murder partner held at gunpoint, and herself half-in and half-out of an icy river, clinging to the side of a boat. A boat that, in all likelihood, belonged to someone she'd devoted her career to taking down. Kate's grip on the rifle shook as she fought off fatigue and a hysterical giggle-snort.
Now would be a hell of a time to discover that Jonas’s theories on humanity might have merit after all.
The man holding the rifle relaxed his grip and the rifle barrel dipped, dunking her under the water again. "I'll give you this, lady," he said as she came up gasping. "You've got balls."
He grasped her under her near-ruined shoulder, hauled her into the boat, and dumped her beside Jonas.
"Let's go," he ordered. The powerful outboard roared to life as someone opened it full throttle, and the boat leapt forward.
Violent shivers wracked Kate's frame. Hard fingers closed over her wrist and pulled, and then equally hard arms wrapped her close against a torso almost as chilled as her own. Jonas.
"You, Kate Dexter, take more goddamned chances than anyone I've ever met," he muttered in her ear. He rubbed his hands over her arms, but the friction did little to warm her. The weapon she'd tucked into her waistband dug into her spine.
She ignored the discomfort. There were more important things at hand, such as the fifteen minutes it would take them to go around St. Regis Island and across the river with a police boat still coming for them. Not to mention the news she had to share with Jonas. She pushed away from his hold.
"Wasn't a cop who fired," she mumbled through numb lips and teeth chattering with cold. "Not OPP. Wouldn't shoot at a boat headed for Mohawk territory. Not unprovoked. Too political."
But whoever it had been was sure as hell traveling in the company of cops, which left little doubt as to their identity. She pulled her arms inside her soaked sweatshirt and wrapped them around herself, looking over her shoulder at a silent Jonas. Moonlight slanted across the hard planes of his face.
"We'll have to move fast when we dock," he said at last, staring out over the water at the shore they'd left. "They'll already be on their way."
Kate thought it more likely the head of the local OPP detachment was currently reading Lewis and Ramirez the riot act for that ill-advised shot, but it was easier just to nod agreement. That way, she could focus on keeping her teeth from slamming together. The boat bounced over a wave, and she fell sideways against Jonas's hard, lean length. His arms came around her again, and she settled into them without objection, a dim part of her exhausted brain wishing she had enough feeling left in her body to enjoy the proximity—or at least feel his warmth.
The police boat screamed into view down the river, its lights flashing in the dark.
***
Outrunning the police boat turned out to be easier than Jonas thought it would be—maybe because their transportation providers had practice at it? For whatever reason, twenty minutes later, he and Kate stood in the woods on the opposite shore, staring at the vehicle Jimmy Lazarus had provided for them. Jonas slanted a look at Kate, finding his own incredulity mirrored in her expressive features—along with sheer horror.
"You're kidding me," she said at last, lifting her gaze to Lazarus himself, who sat on the hood of the orange and yellow, flame-painted Mustang. "This was the best you could get us?"
Lazarus shrugged in the glare of headlights from a pickup idling nearby. "You didn’t give me much notice."
"Freaking hell," Kate muttered.
Jonas rubbed the back of his neck. "Look at it this way," he said dourly. "No one will be expecting us to drive something like this."
"Probably because I wouldn't be caught dead driving something like this," she retorted. She returned her attention to Lazarus. "Are you sure it's not hot?"
"She's clean," Lazarus assured her, patting the bright hood. "And registered and insured. You have my word."
Jonas looked down as she expelled a breath on an unintelligible mutter. "Why, Kate Dexter, are you beginning to lose faith in your fellow man?" he murmured.
She fished a soggy wad of bills from her jeans pocket, ignoring him, and tossed the money to Lazarus.
"You'll have to trust that it's all there until it dries out enough to count it," she said. "But you have my word."
Lazarus turned the wad of bills over in his hand, staring down at the ground. Then he threw a set of car keys to Jonas. "You'd better get your lady out of those wet clothes and warm her up," he advised. "Agent Burke."
Jonas went ramrod stiff, his gaze seeking out Lazarus's friends in the shadow by the pickup truck. None of them showed the slightest sign of surprise. They'd all known. But if so, why had they helped out? Why not dump both him and Kate into the river?
"You knew?" Kate asked.
"A couple of his friends came looking for you guys in the bar about two hours after the OPP did. Gave me the impression you wouldn't be missed if there was an accident of some kind, if you get my drift."
Jonas got his drift, all right.
"The locals must have steered them toward the pick-up point," Lazarus continued. "It's no great secret in these parts."
"So when the OPP talked to you, you didn't—?" Kate's voice trailed off.
"Nah." Jimmy tossed the money up and down a couple of times, then launched it at Jonas, who caught it out of sheer reflex. "Like you said, Katie. I owed you. And now we’re even."
He slid off the Mustang's hood, and his booted feet hit the ground with a muffled thud. "There's a phone number in the driver's visor," he said. "Call it when you're done and let me know where to pick up the car. Registration and insurance are in the glove box."
Without waiting for a response, he and his friends climbed into the waiting pickup truck. A second later, they rumbled down the road. Jonas stared after them in silence for a long minute before he became aware of Kate’s convulsive shivering and remembered his own chill.
"Come on," he said, twining his fingers with hers. "Lazarus is right. We need to get you warmed up."
She let him lead her to the car and help her in, even letting him do up her seatbelt. Jonas's jaw tightened as he took in her pinched face in the glow from the dashboard lights. She'd been soaked and half frozen for the better part of an hour. They'd be lucky if she didn't catch pneumonia. He slammed her door shut, headed around to the driver's side, and slid in beside her.
The car sprang forward with a powerful, throaty grumble under his foot, fishtailing and spitting up gravel in its wake. Flashy or not, this baby might come in handy yet. Something Jimmy Lazarus had perhaps foreseen? He glanced sideways at Kate.
"Your friends are making me rethink my trust philosophy, you know," he remarked.
"I wouldn't be too quick with a change of heart, if I were you." Kate stared out the side window. Her reflection's gaze met his surprise, and she lifted one shoulder in a shrug that seemed oddly defeated. Vulnerable. "Jimmy might have been right about the locals knowing where to find us, but that doesn't explain how they knew when we'd be there."
The cold of Jonas's skin seeped into his gut. Shit. She was right. If Lazarus had told the truth about not informing on them—and after that little display back there, he found it hard to believe the man had lied—then there was only one other who'd known the time of their rendezvous with the boat and wouldn’t avoid talking to a cop.
Dave Jennings.