I rolled Alex off of me and onto the edge of the bed, then pulled his handcuffs from his pocket and secured his arms behind his back. The cuff key went into my front pocket, as I glanced around the room for something with which to tie his ankles. The dresser, chest of drawers, and the closet were all empty, except for a few bent metal hangers on the floor of the closet. The only thing even remotely ropelike was the telephone wire.

Kneeling between the twin beds, I pulled the nightstand away from the wall and disconnected the wire from the jack, then from the phone, and used it to tie Alex’s ankles together.

With no duct tape and nothing to use as a gag, I tore the sleeve off his black winter T-shirt, then cursed myself for already having cuffed him. Marc made ripping material look easy, and I’d popped the shoulder stitches just fine, but it took me two tries to get the sleeve torn open along the length of his arm.

I wadded up the loose material and shoved it into his mouth, in lieu of a better gag, then pushed him beneath the bed. If someone looked for more than a second they’d find him—especially if he woke up and struggled—but at a glance, the room would look empty, once I was gone.

The plan had been for Marc and Jace to take care of the guard outside my window, but they obviously weren’t free yet, which was the biggest inconvenience in my impromptu prison break. Well, that, and the fact that I wasn’t wearing a coat, which meant I was gonna freeze my ass off outside.

I knelt at the head of the left-hand bed to peer out the window, but saw no sign of my guard, or of anyone else. My room faced the side yard—on the first floor, thankfully—and it was cold enough that everyone with an ounce of sense had gone inside. In fact, I could hear the muted crackle-roar of a fire from the main room down the hall, along with the buzz of conversation that would hopefully disguise the few sounds of my escape.

The view from the second bed was the same, which meant my guard had either left his post or was standing right beside one of the windows where I couldn’t see him, waiting to bash me over the head and turn me in.

To test the theory, I took a deep, calming breath and unlocked the window, then pulled it open a couple of inches and gasped at the stinging cold. If the guard showed up, I’d say I wanted some fresh air.

But no one came, so I opened it a little more and stuck my head out. The yard was empty.

It was probably a trap. What were the chances that I happened to make my escape during the guard’s only bathroom break?

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

I turned toward the unfamiliar voice and smacked the back of my head on the bottom of the windowsill. “Shit!” Rubbing my scalp, I watched the guard jog toward me, carrying a travel mug steaming through the vent hole. One of Malone’s men. I knew him by sight—he’d been there when we were “arrested”—but his name wouldn’t come. Terry? Tommy? Something with a T…

My pulse raced, and I struggled to control it. Not that he could hear very well with that thick hood on, surely.

Teddy! It came to me suddenly as he stomped closer, unzipping his jacket to show me the gun tucked into the front of his waistband. The idiot should have kept it ready.

“Ted, right?” I conjured up a smile, wondering how much he knew about me. How dangerous I was considered by toms I’d had no personal contact with.

His brows rose, then his dark eyes narrowed in the light spilling from the window over my head. He seemed both surprised and suspicious that I knew his name. “This ain’t a drive-through window. Get back in there.”

“Is that coffee?” My brain whirred, scrambling for the right words, a plausible explanation. “Could I possibly convince you to get me a cup? Alex is pretty stuck on this bread-and-water routine.”

“I’m not your fucking gopher.” He craned his neck, trying to look around me through the window. “Where is Alex, anyway?”

“Bathroom. They stuck some bull neck right outside the door.” I leaned farther out the window and eyed his mug. “Can I just have a sip of yours, then?”

Teddy hesitated, glancing from me to his insulated cup, then back. I rolled my eyes. “You must be the only tom in this complex who’s afraid of my germs. Everyone else seems pretty damned eager to catch anything I’m giving out. Which means you’re either a big scaredy-cat, or you’re really stingy with your coffee.” Or he wasn’t into girls. I shrugged and started to duck back into the room. “Fine. Keep your damn coffee.”

“Here.” He shoved the cup toward me, like most toms, eager to defend his manhood. “I hope you like it black.”

I grinned. “So long as it’s hot.” I swear, calling them “scared” works just as well as playing the boob card. Almost. So just for good measure, I gave him a nice, long look as I leaned halfway out the window again.

While he stared down my shirt, I reached for the coffee—and grabbed his wrist instead.

I pulled, hard. He grunted and flew toward me. Coffee sloshed. His face smooshed into the window over my head. I tugged his gun from his waistband.

“Whoa…” Ted dropped the coffee and started to back away.

“Don’t move,” I ordered.

He froze. “You don’t even know how to use that.”

“My dad learned to shoot in college, and he taught us all the basics.” A little truth with every lie is like salt on potatoes—it just goes down better that way. I raised one brow when he frowned in disbelief. “What? You thought you guys were the only ones shooting up paper deer? Think again.”

“You’re lying…”

I smiled. “What if I’m not?”

“They’ll bust in the minute they hear gunfire.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, but you’ll still be shot. As will the next fifteen people who come through that door. You want that on your head?”

“You’re not gonna kill ’em.”

“No, but I will shoot them. What’s Malone going to say when he finds out where I got the gun?”

Teddy hesitated, evidently trying to shoot fireballs from his eyes. “You’re a bitch.”

“Yeah, I’m thinking of having that put on some business cards. Now turn around and take a step back. You shout, and I’ll put a bullet through your shoulder.”

He didn’t move until I flicked off the safety, glad I’d seen both Dean and Alex do that earlier. And even more glad that they were evidently all carrying the same model gun. “Shit.” Teddy turned slowly, arms out at his sides.

“Put your hands behind your back.”

Teddy huffed. “You can’t tie my hands and hold that gun at the same time.” The tension in his hands and neck said he was about to try something stupid.

“You’re right about that.” I flicked the safety back on and leaned farther out the window, then swung the gun as hard as I could. The butt slammed into the back of his head. Ted crumpled to the ground like a marionette with its strings cut.

I climbed out the window, already shivering violently, and when I was sure Ted was still breathing—thanks to the white puffs of air floating in front of his face—I rolled him onto his stomach and dug his handcuffs from his pocket. Then I took perverse pleasure in restraining him with his own cuffs. That’s like being shot with your own gun or stabbed with your own knife. Insult to injury.

I liked the irony.

Teddy’s eyes fluttered, and he moaned, already waking up. It was hard to get in a good swing when you’re hanging out a window.

Since I didn’t have any other way to keep him quiet, I kicked him in the back of the skull, and his head rolled to the left. He was out cold that time. And only once my adrenaline rush began to fade did I realize I’d cuffed him before taking off his coat. Again. And a quick search revealed that he didn’t have the keys on him. I was getting too cuff-happy for my own good. Fortunately, I was also free, armed with two guns I didn’t know how to use, and filled with the satisfaction of having single-handedly disarmed and disabled two members of Malone’s “elite” task force.

And I was freezing my ass off.

I double-checked the safety on the new pistol, then slid the barrel into the front waistband of my jeans—uncomfortably aware that I was now the meat in a two-handgun sandwich—then glanced around to get my bearings. My room was on the side of the lodge; the front was to my left and the back was to my right.

I edged along slowly with my back to the wall, while a clock ticked softly in my head. It wouldn’t take long for them to realize I was gone, and I had to free Marc and Jace before that happened. But when I rounded the back corner of the lodge, I discovered via the light and noise pouring from an uncovered kitchen window that I would be in plain sight during my dash across the yard toward the shed where they were being held.

Fortunately, the shed entrance was on the left-hand wall, so the guard hadn’t yet seen me. But a straightforward approach would never work. Even in the dark, when I refused to identify myself, he’d either shoot or shout for backup.

Frustrated and half-frozen, I backtracked quickly, then dashed across the side yard, heading for the woods as quietly as possible. Under the cover of trees, I stopped to Shift my eyes. Light from the cabin didn’t reach the tree line, and in my clumsy two-legged form, with inadequate human vision, I’d never make it to the shed without stumbling and giving myself away.

Now better prepared, I picked my way through the underbrush, aiming for piles of pine needles rather than crunchy fallen leaves, until I saw the shed directly ahead. And the tom on duty, too dark to identify from such a distance.

I could tell from his carriage and bearing that I didn’t know him. However, the chances of him not knowing me were slim to none, so the “Hey, I got lost in the woods” routine probably wouldn’t work.

But then again… He couldn’t see as well as I could in the dark, and our sense of smell is nowhere near as good in human form as in cat form. And he wouldn’t be expecting Malone’s most infamous prisoner—whom he didn’t know had escaped—to come tripping out of the woods.

Maybe if I go for the Oscar…

In the absence of a good plan, any plan will work. I moved Teddy’s gun from the front of my waistband to the back, next to Alex’s. My heart was racing, but that was good—a natural physiological response from a damsel in true distress. After a single moment’s hesitation, I took a deep breath and stumbled out of the woods.

I tripped on purpose, breathing hard, and glanced over my shoulder at the trees I could see much better than could the guard. Half sobbing I pushed myself to my feet and stumbled a few steps farther.

“Hey!” the guard called, and I flinched over his volume. “What are you…?”

“Oh, thank goodness!” I gasped, obviously winded from my race through the woods. Hopefully he wouldn’t stop to wonder why he hadn’t heard me coming. “There’s something out there. Chasing me…” I jogged toward him, half twisted to point at the woods—and to keep my face averted. I panted and heaved, like I could hardly breathe. “Something big. I heard it. Huffing. Growling.”

He glanced over my shoulder, his hand going to his waistband in an automatic, natural gesture, and I had a moment to wonder if I’d found the one tom who was truly good with his gun.

“Run!” I gasped. “It’s right behind me.”

“I don’t hear any…”

When he didn’t move, I let myself collide with him, collapsing into his arms like beauty running from the beast. That way he was too busy holding me up to go for his gun. But I wasn’t. When he stood me up, I grabbed the 9 mm from his waistband—my third capture in half an hour. Not bad for a girl, huh?

“What the…”

“Shut up and face the shed.” I shoved him around by one shoulder. “You even look like you’re gonna move, and I’ll shoot you through the thigh.”

“Look, I don’t have any cash, and you have no idea what you’ve stumbled into.”

I laughed softly. He still didn’t recognize me. “Oh, I have a pretty good idea. I also have a pretty good idea what Malone’s going to do to you when he finds out what happened to your gun.”

“Faythe?” The guard started to turn, but stopped when I shoved the barrel of the gun into his back.

“One more word, and you’ll be fighting blood loss and hypothermia. Got it?” He nodded silently, and I had to work to keep my teeth from chattering. “Good. Take off your coat. Slowly.”

The guard slid first one arm, then the other, from his sleeves.

“Drop it, then kick it backward. And keep in mind that if you can take it off one arm at a time, I can put it on the same way. The gun’s still aimed at your back.”

“You’re not gonna shoot me.” He let the jacket fall, then slid it backward with his right foot.

“Haven’t you heard what a crazy bitch I am?”

After that, he had nothing else to say while I bent for the coat and put it on one arm at a time, doing my best to keep the gun aimed, just as I’d promised. “Now, open the door.”

“It’s locked,” he said, and a glance at the shed confirmed that.

“Unlock it. And drop your handcuffs.”

He dug his cuffs from one pocket and dropped them on the ground at his feet, then pulled a key from the other. “Malone’s going to have your head for this,” he said as he twisted the key in the lock, his fingers already red and stiff from the cold.

“Yeah, what’s he going to do, kill me twice?” Of course, death wasn’t what I really had to fear from Malone and his men, but nothing I did or didn’t do was going to change what they wanted from me.

A second later, he pulled the padlock from the shed door.

“Okay, open it and step inside. And don’t touch a motherfucking thing.”

The guard opened the door and stepped in. I followed, only pausing long enough to pull the door closed behind me. The dim light bulb dangling from the ceiling was a shock after the dark of the woods, and I stood for a moment to let my cat eyes adjust. But before they could, I heard shuffling from directly ahead.

“Faythe?”

Marc. And Jace was in the cage beside him.

I forced my eyes open wider and smiled. “Surprise.”