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ramifications of her hitchhiker and his fervent pursuers.
    “They want what’s in this computer that bad.”
    “The only way off the mountain from here is the way we came in. Either that or hiking the Lost River trail down to Route Fifteen in Goose Creek.”
    “So we’re stuck.”
    “We are if you can’t walk.”
    Wait here—wherever the hell here was—to die, or walk out? Damned right he could walk. 
    “Not a problem,” he told her, hoping he wasn’t lying.
    “Right, then that’s the plan.” She looked over at him. “Guess we’re stuck together for a while, Mr. Secret Agent man. You know my name. Wanna tell me yours?”
    “Cavanaugh, Ed Cavanaugh. My friends call me Lucky.”
    She shook her head when she heard his nickname. “I’m guessing your friends are into irony. All right, Agent Cavanaugh, how’s about you let me do something for that wound? Hate to have you pass out and fall off the side of the mountain or something.”
    He set the computer on the dashboard and allowed her to help him out of his jacket. He was surprised by the amount of blood that had pooled inside the leather coat. His stomach clenched as a wave of nausea swept over him.
    “Don’t you pass out on me, Cavanaugh,” she ordered.
    Lucky grit his teeth, no way he was going to faint, not in front of her at any rate.
    “How long before The Preacher’s men figure out where we are?” he asked.
    She pulled back, and he immediately missed the warm comfort of her touch. “The Preacher? He’s the one after you?”
    Lucky sighed. “Yeah. Trust me, Ryan, I don’t like it any better than you do.”
    “That guy is nuts—and so are his followers. There’s a lot of them around here, so they’ll have locals helping in the search. Folks that know the mountain.” She gently pried loose his blood-soaked fleece pullover and the long-sleeved T-shirt he wore beneath it. “This you were wearing to a wedding?”
    “I left my tux in DC.” His voice broke when she hit a sensitive spot on his collarbone.
    “They’ll have dogs, and they’ll know as soon as the weather clears which road we took,” she went on, flushing the wound with a stream of water.
    “Won’t our tracks be hidden by the snow?” he asked, his teeth chattering from the cold water pouring over his naked flesh. The pain, that he could pretty much block out—with help from Ryan and her distracting presence.
    “The car won’t be. And there are only a few roads this side of the gorge we could have taken. By morning they’ll find the car.”
    Damn, that was sooner than Lucky expected. What was the good of being out in the middle of nowhere if the bad guys could find you so easily? Eric Rudolph hid out for years, why couldn’t they? Then he remembered the contents of the computer files he’d skimmed. 
    “We’ll be near a phone before then, right? I have to get this information to Washington.”
    She leaned back and looked at him as if he were a slow learner. “I told you, no cell phones here. The nearest phone is down the mountain at Faye’s Diner.”
    “Don’t you have a phone at your place?”
    “No. I do have a shortwave radio, though. That would get you through to the real world.”
    “Which one is faster to get to?”
    “My place. But either way, we can’t make it there tonight.”
    “We can’t wait here for them to find us.”
    “I know a place we can go. Let me get you patched up first.” 
    She squirmed past him, between the seats, into the back of the car. Nice ass, he couldn’t help but notice. Not skinny—instead, firm, round with something to hold on to.
    Stop it, she’s married . How could he forget with hubby’s picture gazing down at him? While she had her back turned, he reached up with his good hand and swiped at the photo. It skittered down behind the dash and out of sight.
    Ryan turned, perched on the back seat with a red nylon first aid kit open on her lap. She shrugged out of her parka and pushed up the sleeves of her wool