Ryan knew it would be enough to fool most folks.
Ryan fell in behind the pincer movement again, pulling on the dead man’s coat as he ran. The garment was snug across the shoulders, too small to be properly closed. But the stains from his bloody hands blended right in with the accumulated dirt that soiled the coat.
The sounds of his footsteps were lost among the shushing and tramping the brushwooders made. Marked by muddied snow, their trail was easy to track. The next two men in line were together, their heads close as they talked.
Ryan closed the distances then. He held his pace, gazing ahead of the two and spotting the man in front of them. He couldn’t act yet, but a dip in the terrain was coming up. If he could move fast enough, he could take them both out before anyone saw. He tightened his grip on the panga.
The dip arrived, and Ryan lunged between his two targets and knocked them off balance. He thrust the panga through the first brushwooder’s throat, the point skidding along the vertebrae for an instant, then plunging through the other side.
The brushwooder dropped to his knees, hands seizing the panga impaling his throat. Strained gurgling bubbled from his mutilated throat.
The second one turned, leveling a blaster at Ryan’s chest. The brushwooder’s face was pale, unravaged by time or circumstance as yetand feminine.
Ryan swung an arm out, chopping at the wrist behind the blaster. There was enough time for him to draw his 9 mm P-226 pistol and shoot, but the noise would have alerted her companions.
His arm connected with the wrist solidly, and the blaster went spinning away.
Her mouth opened for a scream, and she tried to step away and rake his face with a handful of jagged nails at the same time.
Ryan slapped the arm away, then stepped in and punched her in the stomach. Only a wheeze of pain escaped her lips. Moving into her again, he used his greater weight and size to tackle her and send them both crashing to the ground.
Grabbing the woman’s shoulder and maneuvering his weight, Ryan landed on top, keeping his face and eye just out of her reach as he put a hand over her mouth.
Her lips smeared wetly against his palm as she tried to sink her teeth into him. Angry tears brimmed in her pale eyes, then slid down her face.
Ryan had no real mercy in him for hostile strangers, and none at all for people intent on making sure he caught the last train West. But for a moment, looking down into her face and feeling her struggle for life, he paused. He didn’t feel anything for her. She was just a predator who’d taken on a bigger and more efficient predator. Her death was a natural progression.
Something in her face reminded him of Dean. Not a resemblance, because he’d marked his son with his own features most, despite Sharona’s contribution to the gene pool. Though this was a young woman, clearly no more a child, she possessed that same spark of vitality, the same brash disbelief that anything could ever harm her.
Dean was the reason the companions had come to the Western Islands. Over the past few weeks, the nightmares about the boy had wakened Krysty from sleep a handful of times and left her shaking with dread. Thinking of his son, Ryan let out a slow breath that became a gray cloud, mixing with the air escaping through the girl’s nose.
The girl moved quickly, taking advantage of her respite. She shook her arm, and a long-bladed throwing knife popped into her hand from a spring-loaded sleeve sheath.
Only Ryan’s quick reflexes, honed by a lifetime in the courtship of sudden death, saved his life. He shifted to one side and felt the stinging kiss of the blade as it slithered along his ribs, unable to find real purchase. The folds of the heavy coat prevented the girl from drawing the knife back and using it again immediately.
Closing his hand more tightly over her mouth and lower jaw, Ryan grabbed a fistful of hair at the back of her head. She kicked under him, trying to dislodge his weight. He rode out her efforts, then twisted her head in his hands just as she managed to work the knife free again.