The thought made Mari’s stomach turn.

She pulled Clyde up and looked around for anything that was even vaguely familiar. Trees. One looked pretty much like the next. City girl. The mule shifted restlessly beneath her. Thunder grumbled in the sky like an empty belly. Swell. The storm would bring an early end to what daylight there had been. And she was lost on the side of a mountain where millionaires killed endangered species for sport.

“You’ll be the endangered species if they catch you up here, Marilee.”

She could just see the horrified look on her mother’s face when the cops came to tell her her rebel daughter had been gunned down while riding a mule in the wilds of Montana.

Somewhere far off to her right she thought she heard dogs barking and she tensed in the saddle. Clyde shook his head angrily in an attempt to snatch the reins from her control and danced from foot to foot. Lightning cracked like a whip above the canopy of trees, and the mule sat back on his haunches.

Mari’s heart sprinted into overdrive. Her hands tightened on the reins. Dogs. Scenes from the videotape flashed through her memory. The rough-looking guide with his shark eyes. The dirty dog-boys. The muscular hounds, straining at their leashes, with their teeth bared and lips curled in feral snarls.

Thunder boomed and the mule leapt forward, his muscles bunching and quivering with nervous energy. Defying the pressure exerted on the bars of his mouth, he leaned against the bit and lunged forward, skidding down the grade with his hind legs tucked beneath him. Gritting her teeth, bracing herself back in the saddle, Mari wrestled for control, trying to turn him to the right. His big ugly mule head came around until she could nearly look him in the eye and still he pushed his stout body forward and down the hill.

Lightning lashed across the sky, flashing surreal white light into the gloom of the woods. Thunder shook the air. The world was tilted at a crazy angle and Clyde was hell-bent on hurling them down it headlong. Then the thicket of growth to their right ripped open, and a woman burst through, naked and bleeding, her eyes huge and her mouth open in terror. Her scream was swallowed up by another crack of lightning. Hands outstretched in desperation, she flung herself at the mule.

As in a dream, everything seemed to go to slow motion. The woman lunging at them. Clyde bolting sideways with such power that Mari felt herself coming out of the saddle. She pulled back on the reins, realizing a split second too late that she had hold of only the right one and that in hauling it back she sealed her own fate.

Jerked off balance, Clyde went down heavily, flipping ass over teakettle down the grade. Already half out of the saddle, Mari was flung clear of the tangle of hooves and thrashing legs. She hit the ground hard and tumbled like a rag doll, end over end. The dead stump of a broken pine tree brought her to an abrupt halt. Dazed, she lay there among the dead leaves and pine needles, her ears ringing, her eyes crossed, pain telegraphing along her entire network of nerve endings.

The woman ran toward her, a trio of ragged, bloody images.

“Help me! God, please help me! Please!” Hysterical, she flung herself down on her knees and began pulling at Mari’s arms.

Mari shoved herself up into a sitting position, thrusting an arm out to fend off the woman’s frantic pawing. “Stop it!” she ordered, scrambling to get her feet under her despite the dizziness. Terror gripped her by the throat and shook her hard. She couldn’t think beyond the moment, couldn’t see beyond the woman with her ragged black hair and wild dark eyes and slashed face, and her hands, grotesquely swollen and purple, grabbing at her clothes. She wanted to push her away and run. Then recognition hit as the lightning snapped across the sky.

“Jesus,” she muttered, stunned. “Samantha? Oh, my God! Samantha?” She managed to get hold of the girl by the upper arms and she shook her hard, as if she might shake the panic out of her. “What happened? Who did this to you?”

A wild keening sound strained up out of her throat and tears came scalding out of her eyes and down her cheeks. “Run! We have to run! She’ll kill us!”

“Who!”

“Sharon! She’ll kill us!” She doubled over from the pain and the fear, sobbing. “She killed that other woman. She’ll kill us too!”

Sharon.

“Oh, shit,” Mari mumbled as a chill poured down her back and arms and legs, raising goose bumps in its wake. She stared at Samantha in shock and disbelief. The beautiful long hair had been chopped off savagely. Her face was filthy and tear-streaked, the cut that bisected it open and raw. She was naked except for the dirty rag that had once been a T-shirt, and her arms and legs were lashed with tiny cuts and dirt and bits of bark and dead leaf.

“Sharon did this to you?” she said, shrugging out of her denim jacket. She tried to give it to the girl, but Samantha either couldn’t grasp it with her purple hands or was too consumed by her terror to think of what to do with it. Mari took hold of one of her arms and awkwardly worked it into the sleeve.

“She’s crazy!” Samantha cried. “We have to run!”

She tried to grab Mari by the arm to drag her down the trail where the mule had disappeared. Her fingers fumbled on the ends of her hands like sausage links, numb and useless. The baying of the hounds in the distance triggered a need to scream, but she stifled it to a pitiful mewing that seeped out between her teeth with bubbles of spittle.

“Hurry!” she begged.

Mari looked around them, not able to see anything but the dark trunks of the trees. She thought the sound of the dogs had come from down the hill. She had no clue as to where they were on the mountain. A good long way from home, she was willing to bet. The only thing she knew for certain was that up the mountain Del Rafferty had a cabin and an arsenal of weapons large enough to fend off an army.

“This way,” she ordered. She grabbed Samantha by a coat sleeve and started up the way she had come down.

“Up the mountain! Are you crazy! She’ll be on us in no time!”

“We go up, she has to go up too,” Mari said as she climbed.

“She’s on a horse!”

“Christ.” She cast a hopeless look down the hill. Clyde was long gone. All they had was themselves. And snarling dogs on their tails. And a murderous psychotic after them.

She turned to Samantha. “Look, Sam, we don’t have any options here. Del Rafferty’s cabin is this way. If we can get to Del, we’ll be safe.” She started up the trail again, adding under her breath, “Provided he doesn’t shoot us.”

They climbed the steady grade as fat raindrops plummeted down through the cover of the trees. Mari prayed for a downpour. No one listened. The clouds hung over the mountain, snarling and snapping, but holding their water. Between thunderclaps the baying of the dogs grew steadily closer.

This was what it had been like for Lucy. Tracked down by dogs, run down like a rabbit and shot for sport. Mari could feel Sharon Russell behind them, could sense her presence as ominous as the storm clouds above, and terror clogged her throat and shot through her mind in bright, hot arcs. She had to fight to keep her thoughts focused. She had to think. Their brains were the only weapons they had.

Sharon was on a horse. She had dogs. She could have been on them by now if she wanted. This was some kind of sick game to her. In a corner of her brain Mari wondered if insanity had pushed Sharon to this or if the decadence of her life-style had lured her further and further out into the waters of depravity until the depths were bottomless-the way it had pulled Lucy deeper and deeper, until blackmail seemed like an acceptable profession. At least Lucy had posed a threat. Samantha was just a kid who knew nothing of Bryce’s world. What could she possibly have done to deserve this?