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It was lucky the guy stayed on his feet because Jack was so off balance himself that he would have gone down too.
    Instead, he was able to follow the shoulder slam with a fist to the man’s jaw.
    Danforth struck back, and Jack took a blow to his already-injured cheek.
    The counterattack only made him madder. He ducked low and gave Danforth a one-two punch to the gut. As the militiaman went down, Jack noted in some part of his mind how good it felt to smash the guy.
    It was only a temporary victory. Danforth bent over and flailed out, grabbing Jack’s foot and pulling it out from under him. He struggled to keep his balance but lost the battle and ended up sprawled on the floor, where Danforth leaped on him.
    It had all happened in a few short seconds. As he grappled with Danforth, Jack saw that Ryder was still on the loose. He whipped around, his weapon pointed at Jack.
    But in focusing on the escapee, the fake federal agent took his attention off Morgan. The gun was still in her hand, and Jack wondered if she could fire.
    Instead, she brought the butt of her pistol down on his skull with a resounding crack, and he dropped, sprawling unmoving on the pine floorboards.
    As Jack struggled with Danforth, he felt his strength failing. He was an expert at hand-to-hand combat, but he wasn’t in good enough shape to finish off this bastard.
    Still, he understood that failure meant Morgan’s death. Calling on every ounce of reserve he possessed, he kept grappling with the attacker, each of them scrabbling to get the advantage as they rolled across the floor, punching and kicking, the fight as inelegant as it was desperate. Trainer’s man was trying to get off a killing shot with the gun that was still in his hand. Jack was trying to keep himself or Morgan from getting hit.
    And he was losing the fight.
    In desperation, Danforth grabbed Jack’s hair and tried to slam his head against the floor. Jack wrenched away, feeling hair come out by the roots. Hoping to end the struggle quickly, he raised a hand and stiffened his fingers, going for the man’s eyes. Danforth screamed and jerked his head back.
    Again, it was Morgan who made the difference.
    â€œStop or I’ll shoot,” she shouted.
    When neither combatant paid any attention to her, she fired a round into the floor inches from Danforth’s head.
    The man flinched away, and Jack used the opportunity to slam an elbow into his face. To Jack’s relief, the militiaman made a gurgling sound and went slack.
    Jack pushed the guy to the side and sat up. His vision went murky, and he spent a few moments struggling to keep from blacking out.
    â€œJack!” Morgan stared at him wide-eyed.
    â€œI’m okay. Do you have some rope?”
    Morgan didn’t move, obviously suffering from the shock of what had happened.
    â€œRope,” he repeated, his voice going hard as granite. “Before these guys wake up.”
    She blinked. “Right.”
    Shaking herself into motion, she hurried to the kitchen while Jack stayed on the floor, breathing heavily and struggling to stay conscious. His plan had been to clear out of the house before Morgan woke up. That was impossible now, and he saw with new clarity that it would have been a fatally wrong move, because he could easily imagine what would have happened in his absence.
    These two bozos would have broken in, seen the ground cloth and the blanket on the floor, and assumed that their quarry had been here. Then they would have dragged Morgan back to Trainer’s compound, where the boss man would have started throwing questions at her. Questions Morgan couldn’t answer, because she didn’t know anything beyond the basics of finding a naked man stumbling around in the woods. But Colonel Trainer wouldn’t have believed her story, and he would have ended up using the same methods he’d used on Jack. He shuddered, trying not to think about it. Unfortunately, vivid pictures kept