Noah, however, was frowning in concentration, studying Marcus closely. “It could work. Put you and the girls down Denver’s Wild West Gate, with me as guard, send Jenna and Ianira through to London.”
“But—“ Jenna opened her mouth to protest, terrified at the prospect of Noah abandoning her.
A dark glance from steel-cold grey eyes shut her up. “There are two of us. And two groups of them.” The detective nodded at Marcus and Ianira, who still lay unmoving except to breathe. Fright tightened down another notch, leaving Jenna to wonder if she’d ever be hungry again, her gut hurt so much. Noah said more gently, “We have to split up, kid. If we send Marcus and the girls through without a guard . . . hell, kid, we might as well shoot them through the head ourselves. No, we know they’re going to follow whoever goes through the Wild West Gate. So I’ll go with them, pose as somebody they’re likely to think is you, use a name they’ll think is something you’d come up with, something you’d think is clever—“
The teenager interrupted. “You don’t look like her. Not anything like her. Nobody would believe you were her. You are too tall.”
For the first time, Jenna Nicole Caddrick saw Noah Armstrong completely flummoxed. The detective’s mouth opened onto shocked silence. But the kid who spoke Latin—which probably meant he was a down-timer, too, same as Marcus—wasn’t finished. “I look more like her than any of us. I’ll go in her place. If I dress up like a rich tourist, wear a wig the color of her hair, pretend to be rude and obnoxious, wear a bonnet low over my eyes and swear a lot, the people hunting her,” the kid nodded toward Jenna, “will think she’s me. Or I’m her. It will work,” he insisted. “There is a tour leaving tomorrow that plans to shoot in a special competition, men and women both. I have watched every John Wayne movie ever made, twice, and I have seen thousands of tourists. I can pretend to be a woman cowboy shooter with no trouble at all.”