Her throat was so parched she could barely swallow, yet she dared not stop to drink from her canteen or rest her horse. If she did, Steele might get too far ahead of her and then she would be hopelessly lost out here in the pine-scented ridges and gullies along the Mogollon Rim. She had never felt so alone, so small and utterly vulnerable. Admit it, she told herself with a gulp as she ducked beneath the low-hanging branch of a pine. So frightened. This had been a harebrained idea right from the start. Following Steele. It was madness. If she lost him, she would be as good as dead. And if she ventured too close and he realized that she was following him ... Annabel didn’t want to think about what he would do to her then. What had Lily said? Don’t shoot her in my bedroom. Well, out here in the Mogollons he might have no compunctions. No one would be obliged to scrub up the blood. She decided she’d rather take her chances getting lost in the wilderness than risking the wrath of Roy Steele, so she hung back as far as she dared.
