Several choice replies sprang to mind, but she managed to keep her temper and not let them free. She was getting so tired of this, though. Why couldn’t something go their way for a change?
“I want that location, Creed!” Michaels shouted.
“So come and get it!” she shouted back.
Beside her, she felt Garin stiffen. “What are you doing, Annja?” he asked.
“If the bastard wants the treasure, he can come out here and get the location. If he’s dumb enough to do so, we’ll use him as a hostage to force them to let us go.”
It was a crazy plan, but she was all out of ideas. They couldn’t go forward, they couldn’t go back, and she had little hope that the bridge would support them indefinitely. Something was going to have to change if they were going to get out of this alive.
“How about I just shoot you instead?” Michaels threatened, raising his arm and pointing the pistol he held in his hand directly at them.
Annja tapped her head with one finger. “Go ahead and shoot! Be awfully damn hard to get the coordinates at that point, since they’re all up here!”
Michaels frowned, then lowered his weapon. He seemed undecided about his next course of action.
In the space of a few seconds the game had turned and she now held the upper hand. Annja was as surprised as Michaels that it had turned out this way, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
If Michaels shot the two of them where they stood, he’d lose out on the coordinates and, in turn, the treasure. If he sent a group of his men across the bridge after them, from this side or from the other, the decaying structure was likely to come apart and plunge the whole lot of them into the rapids below, with the end result being the same. He couldn’t even wait them out; the fact that they were on the bridge in the first place was sure to bring the park rangers running sooner or later. Someone had to have heard the gunshots and maybe have seen them by now, and even hikers carried cell phones these days.
If he wanted the treasure, he really didn’t have much choice, she thought.
Michaels turned his back on her and began issuing instructions to the men with him. Since he was no longer shouting, the distance was too great for Annja to hear any of what he said, but she had little doubt it couldn’t be good.
The bridge swayed as Garin tried to find some relief for his tiring limbs.
“You all right?” she asked, not daring to take her gaze off Michaels.
“For now,” he replied. He was quiet for a moment and then asked, “Do you really know where it is?”
She answered without thinking. “It’s right here in the gorge somewhere. Inside the old Genoa Mine.”
Garin laughed. “I told him you’d find it.”
Before she could ask what he meant, she was distracted by the sight of Michaels walking to the bridge and then striding out onto it, heading in their direction. She watched him approach until there was only about ten feet between them.
Rather than addressing her, however, Michaels looked past her to Garin instead.
“Time to live up to your side of the bargain,” Michaels said, gesturing at Annja.
“What’s he talking about, Garin?” she asked, without taking her gaze off Michaels. He still had a gun in his right hand and it would only take a moment’s distraction for him to shoot.
“I don’t have any idea,” Garin replied.
Even as he said it, though, she felt the bridge sway slightly beneath his weight and heard the sound of a gun’s slide being worked.
Her blood ran cold at the sound. Garin hadn’t dropped the gun somewhere, after all, he’d just hidden it in his coat. Why would he do that? Could he have really cut a deal with Michaels? It wouldn’t be the first time he’d disappointed her, but then again, why go through the charade of trying to escape if he only intended to double-cross her in the end? That was just too low, even for Garin. It didn’t make sense.
Michaels, however, was more than happy to explain it to her. “Your friend Mr. Braden has a decided interest in the treasure, Miss Creed,” he said, over his shark-tooth smile. “And I’m afraid it doesn’t involve giving a share to you.”
Annja felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention as she heard the truth in Michaels’s voice. Behind her, Garin shifted positions, causing the bridge to rock a bit more wildly than before.
What the hell was he doing?
Still, she didn’t dare turn around.
“The treasure’s in the old Genoa Mine,” Garin said. “She told me herself not two minutes ago.”
Annja couldn’t believe her ears. Garin had just given up their one bargaining chip, the one piece of information she’d been risking her life to protect!
Her dismay must have shown on her face for Michaels suddenly threw back his head and laughed. “Did you think I was just going to let you walk away?” he asked.
As Annja groped for an answer, Michaels looked at Garin over her shoulder. “Get rid of her,” he said.
There was no way she could summon her sword, turn and deal with Garin before he shot her. She knew him, knew how fast he was with a handgun. He’d be watching for the sword and wouldn’t hesitate to fire the second she moved.
He had her dead to rights.
She was trapped.
She wasn’t the type to go down without a fight, however, and even though she thought it was futile she was still going to do her best to survive to fight another day.
With a shout she called her sword from the otherwhere, the cold steel blade flashing into existence in the space of a heartbeat. Time seemed to slow as she felt her fingers close tightly around the well-worn hilt, felt the bridge reacting to her sudden motion, shifting and rolling beneath her feet, watched as Michaels’s eyes went wide at the sudden appearance of the weapon.
She had barely started her turn when she felt, and then heard, the gun going off behind her.
The bullet, the one she thought was destined to put an end to her time as the bearer of Joan’s mystical sword, shot past her shoulder so closely that she felt the heat of its passage.
She watched in amazement as a bright red flower blossomed on the front of Michaels’s shirt. She realized at the same moment that Michaels’s expression of surprise didn’t have anything to do with the appearance of her sword at all, but was rather a reaction to the sight of the muzzle of the gun held in Garin’s hand being pointed in his direction.
Garin hadn’t betrayed her at all!
The shot knocked Michaels backward a few feet into the rope railing and for a moment Annja thought he was going to tip right over it. But he managed to grab hold of the rope with his free hand and arrest his fall.
The gun in his other hand began to come up.
Behind her, she heard Garin give a wordless grunt of victory as he pulled the trigger a second time, intending to end this once and for all.
The hammer gave a dry click as it fell on an empty chamber.
In the space of a heartbeat Annja realized that she was too far away to reach Michaels, even with her sword, and they had only a split second in which to react before he fired his own weapon.
This close, the bullet was sure to hit one or the other of them.
Annja didn’t stop to think, she just reacted, stepping backward into Garin and covering him with her body.
The muzzle of Michaels’s gun loomed large before her.
A shot rang out, echoing through the gorge, and it took Annja a moment to realize she wasn’t injured.
She hadn’t, in fact, been shot as she’d fully expected to be.
Her gaze flicked to Michaels and she was just in time to see him drop to his knees on the bridge, his hands covering the eruption of blood that was now spilling from the hole in his throat.
He turned to face her, perhaps to plead for help, perhaps to curse her name with his dying breath, but never got the chance for either.