He felt her nod against his shoulder and he wished it weren't so damn dark. "We're safe enough for now." She shivered and he ran his hand up and down her arm, pulling her closer.

"He'll find us in the morning."

"Haley-"

She jerked back from him. "You're still mad at me, I suppose. I'm sorry, Cam. I know I deserve this, but you don't."

"You don't deserve- Come back here." His stretching fingers couldn't find her. "Where are you, dammit?" He crawled forward, found her huddled against the back wall. On his knees before her, he cursed the dark that made it impossible to see her expression clearly. "What the hell did you mean you deserve this? No one deserves to be chased with a gun through the wilderness, hunted down like an animal."

"I brought this on you," she said softly. "When all I ever wanted was to protect you. And the others. Where're Nellie and Jason? And Zach, Cam. Where are they?"

"They're safe. We heard your phone conversation. Jason took Nellie into town. And Zach was supposed to get help and be at the airport-"

"To arrest me."

"To protect you."

"You were going to turn me in."

"I wanted you safe, dammit."

"It doesn't matter. I would have turned myself in long ago, if it was that simple. I'm afraid for you. I wanted to draw him away from Colorado." Her voice sounded bitter. "But now we won't know if Zach, Jason and Nellie are safe, really safe, until we get back there. God, if something happened to them, any of them, it'll be all my fault."

"No." He believed, had to believe, that Zach had gotten out. "Zach will be all right. He knows how to take care of himself."

"You have every right to hate me."

He touched her, found her sitting cross-legged, her head in her hands. "Hate you?" He slid his fingers into her hair and held her face, trying to blink away the darkness, struggling to see more than just her outline. "For someone so smart, Haley, you can be incredibly slow-witted. I told you how I felt about you."

She shoved his hands away. "You can't still mean it."

Flowing adrenaline had his usually nonexistent temper kicking in. "Stop it." Again he reached for her, but she'd started to scramble away. "Come back here."

"Too bad we don't have the cell phone. You could call the cops on me from here." He lunged after her but she evaded him. "I should leave, Cam. Now. It would keep the others safe if I did."

"No." One last tug and her heel clipped him hard on the chin. "Dammit, Haley." She rose. He yanked, pulling her down to the hard, gritty floor, ignoring the fight she put up-until she managed to knee him.

He sucked in a sharp breath of air and lost his grip on her.

Haley surged up to her knees, preparing to worm away from him, but he let out a pained breath and flattened her down with his hands. By the time he flipped her onto her back, they were both panting and furious. The dark prevented him from seeing her face clearly, but he had no trouble tasting her frustration.

"Let me go," she choked out.

"You're not going anywhere without me tonight, Haley. Not until this thing is over." Crawling up the length of her, he held her prisoner, but she renewed the fight. A flailing hand hit his chin, the chin she'd already bruised. Swearing, he gathered her hands together, then yanked her wrists over her head, anchoring them there. She squirmed and struggled beneath him, to no avail.

"Hold still a minute, would you?" he panted, resting his forehead on the ground beside her. "Please, don't scream." Who would have thought such a tiny thing could fight so nasty?

"I'm not a complete idiot," she retorted, giving up bitterly.

Beneath him, her chest rose and fell harshly, her breathing uneven and raspy. Warmed from their wrestling, she no longer shivered. But now that she'd stopped fighting him, her body became soft and pliant under his, and he had to quell the urge to turn their position into something sexual.

He must not have been entirely successful.

"Dammit." Her hands flexed in his as their hips slid together. "Let me go."

He lifted his head, but could still see nothing of her expression. "Not until you stop this. I told you, I would have used the police's help, yes, I'd do anything-anything-to keep you safe."

"Why?"

He sighed. "Because I love you, Haley. Someday you're going to believe that."

She fell silent, though he could almost hear the wheels of her brain spinning. Finally she said, "It's just… new for me. All these feelings. I… I still have things to tell you."

"Well, at the moment," he said, irony heavy in his voice, "I have nothing but time to listen."

She made a noise that might have been a laugh. "The man chasing us is Lloyd Branson. My ex-boss. I thought he was dead, but he's not. He's the one killing my team."

"Why does he need you?"

She wiggled her wrists entrapped in his hands. "You're hurting me, Cameron."

He loosened his grip, but didn't let go, still afraid she'd take off to surrender herself to save him. Beneath him, he could feel her every line, her every torturous curve.

"Branson needs me to go back because he can't re-create the system, only I can. He doesn't know how. I've studied earth movement, both above and below sea level, for years now. He was just a businessman, though a damn shrewd one."

"What, exactly, was this system?"

"It predicts earth movements."

"Earthquakes?"

"And volcanic eruptions."

He let that soak in. A cold breeze brushed over his skin, but he barely felt it. "I thought your system monitored earth movement."

"I never said that."

She hadn't, he realized. He'd just assumed, because in his wildest dreams, he hadn't imagined this. "A system like that would save a lot of lives."

The sound that escaped her was more like a choked laugh than an agreement. He let go of her, then eased up to cup her face. Concentrating hard, he found that he could just barely make out the outline of her features. He didn't know if it was because he could actually see, or if he was just incredibly in tune with her, but her pain and suffering became his own. "What happened to you down there, Haley?"

"My dream came true."

But it was bitterness and defeat he heard, not joy. "The system worked? You can predict?"

His fingers holding her face became wet. With her tears, he realized with great dismay, and his stomach tightened.

"Could. Before it was destroyed in the bomb blast."

"Oh, darlin', I'm sorry." He pushed up on his arms and knelt over her, awed by what she had accomplished. "Branson got greedy."

"We weren't allowed to go public and make the announcement. I didn't understand then." She sat up and covered her face with her hands. "I can't believe I didn't see it. But we were so high on our discovery…"

"Didn't see what?" he asked gently, holding her shoulders. More wind blew in and this time, he felt it. The chill seeped deep. "Haley, what didn't you see?"

She drew a shaky breath. "He killed them, my whole team. Alda must have suffered so-the others certainly did. I'd gone home to warn them, but was too late." Her voice came muffled in the dark and he knew she'd covered her face again. "There was blood everywhere-smeared on the walls, coating the floors… I was so scared, Cam."

He let out a violent oath, rage boiling so quick and strong he shook with it. He held her close, despite her brief struggle to move away. "Haley, I'm so sorry." Now he understood the mindless terror in which he'd found her that first night.

"Finding uranium was coincidental, but it made it better for him. Now he has the money once he sells the stuff, to stay hidden forever. He can just wait me out."

"Why did he bomb EVS?"

"So there wouldn't be any evidence. He didn't know my notes were there, or that I wasn't in our substation on the water as he'd planned for me to be. He'd flown me there earlier-he's a pilot, you see. But I'd left by boat. He must have thought he'd make me work with him after he'd killed everyone that had knowledge of it. But I saw our apartment-" She took a deep breath. "I had nowhere to go. I panicked. I hardly remembering getting to the airport, but I got on an airplane, the first one I could, and it took me to L.A. But I knew he could trace me there because I'd used my own name and passport, so I hopped on again, and came to Colorado Springs."

Thank God, he thought, squeezing her closer.

"Nellie was so kind to me. Cam, if anything has happened to her-"

"Nothing did," he promised, praying with all his heart that he was right. "She's safe. So's Jason." He couldn't think about Zach or he'd lose it. He could only hope that his brother had gotten out of the house. "Haley, darlin'… Branson thinks you can reproduce the system?"

"Yes, it would take months, maybe more. My notes were all destroyed. The U.S. government would probably pay him for it, but he won't give them the chance. Not now that he's discovered that by finding the weakest points and placing a certain type and amount of explosive there, he can create earthquakes as well as predict them."

Cam leaned closer, unable to believe what he'd just heard. "What?"

"He can cause earthquakes. He can, in fact, hold the entire world for ransom. Blackmail whole governments. Or if he chose, destroy as much or as little land as pleased him."

He sat back, stunned. "My God."

"He had a grand time in South America creating that 7.0. So many died. An entire village was wiped from the face of this earth." She stood abruptly, facing away from him. "I won't make that system again, Cam. I won't. He'll have to kill me. But I wanted to get him away from you and the others first."