by E. M. Moore
But the thing is, you can’t break from your ties that easily. I may not be a Wilder in blood, but I was brought up one in name, in legends and stories that go back hundreds of years. And if I don’t have that, what do I have? I need something to grasp onto. Whether it’s technically accurate or not, I’ll always be more Wilder than I am the sister of Cole’s friend.
Now I need to come to terms with that.
While the campfire licks toward the overcast sky, Ninja and Pete tell stories about being Dragons. It’s evident they both revere Cole, which only solidifies my feelings for him. He may be the leader of a ruthless gang, but he isn’t all barbs and prickers. Maybe at the end of all this, I can learn more about him. And, in a way, become closer to Charlie.
Wyatt will hate the idea, but the cowboy will have to get over it. Maybe we could have Cole out to his family’s ranch. Now that will be a sight. Cole on a horse? I might die laughing.
Lucas wraps his arms around me. “What are you smiling about?”
The flicker of the flames reflected in his brown eyes draw me toward him, but there’s no way I’m making him privy to my thoughts. “Nothing.” My lips turn up into a teasing smile.
“I love to see you happy,” he murmurs. Sometimes when Lucas looks at me, I see the loneliness in his childhood recede further and further away. The hardness melts, warmth takes over, and who Lucas is at his very core shines through like a beacon.
I lean closer. “You can want things for yourself,” I murmur as Ninja talks about putting a bullet in a drug dealer’s skull. “You were the only one earlier who said you only wanted me to be happy and didn’t want anything for yourself.”
“I thought you understood,” he breathes, gaze settling on me. “I have everything I’ve ever wanted right here.” He pulls me closer until we’re only a whisper of a breath away. “A family to share my life with. To be there when I wake up in the morning. To talk about my day with. To share dreams and memories. For the longest time, I never made any memories worth remembering.” He stares off into the distance. The dark night is eerily calm, shadows lurking everywhere, making shivers run up my arms. “When I met Stone, things changed. Then Wyatt came into the fold. But you clicked everything into place, Dakota. For all of us. It was as if this whole time, I was looking for you and I didn’t know it. I wouldn’t care if we stopped searching for the treasure right now; if we ran off and started a new life together, just the four of us. But I know how much it means to you...and Stone.”
He shakes his head and smirks. “Stone can say all he wants that he’s doing this for you, but he’s full of shit. He’s fallen for the whole idea of the treasure just as much as you have. And like you, it’s never been about the riches like it was for his dad. He wants to find it for the challenge, for rewriting the history books.” Lucas tilts his head to stare at his friend whose eyes are wide as saucers as he listens to Ninja finish his tale. “He wants it bad.”
“And Wyatt?” I move my stare to find that he seems to be enjoying Ninja’s story more than Stone. He’s chuckling at all the gory parts.
“He needed the distraction. Until he found you.” Lucas peeks back at me, and we lock onto each other. “You’re a way better distraction than the treasure ever was. Healthier. Sexier....”
“Keep going.” I smile.
He chuckles. “The best kind of distraction is the one that makes you grow. The one that proves that maybe it’s not needed anymore because you’ve risen above it. And that’s what he got with you. He hasn’t gone off the rails in weeks. He hasn’t slipped away to drink himself into oblivion outside his mom’s cell, and that’s about all we can ask for.”
Heat spreads in my belly. “Maybe you should be a psychologist, Lucas Govern. Can you read me, too?”
He grins. “No one needs to read you, Wild Girl. You wear your heart on your sleeve.”
I lean closer to Lucas and a raindrop splatters my nose. My mouth drops in surprise, and I move to stare up at the sky. I knew it was cloudy, but I didn’t realize they were rain clouds. “Did you feel that?”
“I felt it,” Wyatt says, staring up at the sky with his hat tilted back so the drops splatter his skin. He looks like an angel letting the rain trickle onto his face. A country angel, sure, but an angel nonetheless.
“We should head in,” Stone suggests, getting to his feet.
Lucas stands next and pulls me to a standing position. “You sure you don’t want help?” I ask Ninja.
He gives me the same incredulous look he’s been giving me. I just don’t know when the guy freaking sleeps. “You already know what I’m going to say.”
“That Cole will dissolve your balls in acid?”
Ninja’s eyes widen. “That’s a new one. Let’s not give him any ideas, okay?”
Wyatt smacks my ass, hauling me over his shoulder. “We’ll make sure she’s too preoccupied to think of any more ways for Cole to enact punishment on your balls.”
“Keep carrying me like an ape and it won’t be for Cole who I’m thinking up ways to torture. It’ll be for myself.”
Wyatt laughs, the rainstorm dampening the usual echo. It’s just his deep voice threading through my veins. He dumps me on my feet as soon as we get into the tent. The last thing I see is Ninja giving instructions to Pete as the rain increases before Stone zips us in.
“This wasn’t in the forecast,” I grumble. Tomorrow might be a complete wash out. If it is, we’ll have to pack it up and head home. It doesn’t shower a lot here, but when it does, it ruins everything.
Raindrops hit the tent in splatters. It’s not hard yet, more than a sprinkle but definitely less than a deluge. We won’t have to worry about flooding or anything like that.
Stone frets over his lip. “I’m going to tell Ninja to let us know if it gets worse. Just in case.”
I smile at him as he turns. We’re always on the same wavelength.
Wyatt moves around the tent checking for traps. He turns on his phone flashlight and does a once-over. Ninja and Pete have been insanely thorough, but we’re paranoid now.
“We’re good,” he proclaims, sitting on the air mattress we brought with us. It was a creature comfort we decided to indulge in since we had the extra manpower to help carry stuff. My dad would be mortified if he knew I was using an air mattress up here, but it’s so much nicer than the hard-packed ground that’s never even.
Maybe it’s the bed in Stone’s house that’s making me a big baby because I never noticed the difference between sleeping on the family couch and sleeping on the desert floor, but I feel it now. My bones thank Stone Jacobs, that’s for sure.
Now that we’re away from the fire, the cold seeps in. The rain’s made the temperature drop, too. I quickly change into my joggers and oversized sweatshirt that used to be Stone’s from his old college. We push the two queen sized air mattresses together and pretend they will stay that way even though we know they won’t. One or two of us will definitely end up sleeping on the ground. I just hope it’s not me this time.
Stone steps back inside. He sheds his outer layers and then gets in bed next to me. He holds me close, fitting me into his side. Wyatt throws a sleeping bag over us, and I’m so cozy, it takes me no time at all to drift to sleep.
I awake one time when the zipper opens. Lucas answers Ninja, and I can tell by the sporadic drops on the tent that whatever little rainstorm we had passed through already. Maybe we won’t have to pack everything tomorrow and head home. It would be nice to stay up here until we figure out what the squares and x’s mean. If we could just match them to the map—if that’s even how it works—that would be great.
I stay up for a little while, my mind working on the problem, but Stone kisses the back of my neck. “Go to sleep, babe. The problem will be there tomorrow.”
He’s right. I curl myself into a ball and heed his advice, drifting off once again.
The next time I wake, though, is not for anything good. It’s not at the soft caress of one of my guys. It’s not from the steady pi
tter-patter of rain hitting the tent. It’s not even with ideas to work out what the symbols might mean.
It’s because I’m soaking wet...and moving.
Water rushes into the tent, carrying us away in a driving current. I sit up, my hands splashing in chilled water. I gasp as the cold ices my skin. Our air mattresses butt against one another like rafts, and I grip the side in terror.
It’s like we’re on a dangerous, dark water slide, twisting and turning through the mountain valley. We slam into something rock solid, and the tent collapses around us. Stone and I are thrown into the air, only to land again in a deluge of water pinning us against the same hard surface. The rapids lift higher and higher until I’m choking.
In the chaos, I can’t find Wyatt or Lucas—and now Stone. Hell, I can barely breathe. The water forces the tent flat against me like cellophane, pinning me in place. I shove it away just to breathe, but without warning, a wave takes me under.
Objects in the tent are thrown against me: camping gear, clothes, limbs. I don’t know what’s what. I reach out blindly, searching for air because that’s all I’m begging for.
My lungs start to ache, and the impulse to take a breath overtakes everything until I drag water in and choke.
23
The burning intensifies. I scream internally, choking and spluttering on the roaring fire ripping through my chest and throat. I can’t take much more. I push off anything I can, but I don’t know which way is up. The sides of the tent stick to me like vacuumed plastic. I shove against the material, trying to feel my way through to something.
The rapids change course, and a swift current leads me away from the hard surface. Finally, the force of the water propels me upward, and I emerge on the surface, immediately breathing in welcome gasps of air. Another head pops up next to me as I’m thrown about, and Wyatt’s frantic eyes meet mine. “We’ve got to get the fuck out of this tent!” Its soggy weight is like a second-skin on our backs, but it billows out in front of us. The air mattresses must have popped but other gear is riding the white water just like us.
Somewhere in here, Lucas and Stone must still be underwater.
I spit murky liquid away from my mouth, and hiss when my leg snags on something that tears my skin. “Where’s the zipper?”
A hand wraps around my knee, and I plunge my arm under to haul whoever it is upward. Lucas breaks the surface, gulping in air. His eyes are bloodshot and wide. He coughs, choking on the rushing water that threatens to swallow us again.
“Where’s Stone?” I cry. He was holding me when this started. I met his eyes right before we upended.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Wyatt reiterates. He brings out a knife and flicks it open. Taking the tent into his fist, he drags the blade through the thick material.
Water pushes us faster and faster, hurtling us down the mountain. We freefall for a few seconds, our screams filling the tent until we come to a jarring stop and have to swim our way against the current to resurface.
“Fuck! I lost my knife!”
Stone’s head bobs into view.
My heart pinches, and I screech at seeing his limp body. Lucas and I flip him over, but he’s not breathing. “Wyatt! Please!”
Wyatt frantically searches the side of the tent. He disappears for a few moments as branches start to tear holes into the canvas, and the water turns murky with dirt and rocks. Lucas and I hold onto Stone like we can do something for him, but all we can do is hold him above the rapids so he doesn’t get lost again. Breathing raggedly himself, Lucas forces Stone’s mouth open with his finger and pounds on his friend’s chest.
Wyatt finally appears again, breaking through the crest with a huge breath. “Got it!”
All of a sudden, a massive rush of water sweeps through as if a drain has opened. I get sucked under, hauled over rocks and tangles of branches as I fight for air once more.
I lose them, all of them. The physical pain is nothing compared to the feeling of loneliness closing around me.
My body twists and turns from the rushing water taking me this way and that. My limbs ache and burn from fighting against the force of the current. Out of sheer luck, I emerge again and drag in a breath of much needed oxygen.
The tent rushes past me, and I scramble toward the creek bed I spot to my left. My fingers sink into the muddy bank and drag as I try to gain purchase. The current is too fast to stand up in even though the water isn’t deep. Branches and other natural objects tear at my clothes. Something sharp sticks into me, and I cry out.
Finally, my fingertips wrap around a bush lining the bank, and I force my hands together. I hold on with all my might as the rush batters me on all sides. The usually tame creek that runs through the mountains has somehow turned into a massive whitewater river complete with rapids and current and crests of white. I use everything I have left to put one fist over the other, tugging myself higher and higher until I’m able to throw one leg out of the creek and scramble onto the dry, rocky mountain floor. Dragging in breaths that feel like a hundred pointy objects stabbing me all at once, I attempt to get my bearings. My clothes are torn and soaked through; my usually wild hair is a mess of tangles and mud.
I pull myself to my knees. “Stone!”
Once my vision clears, my mouth drops. I’ve never seen anything like the sight before me. It’s literally as if I was discarded into a raging river. The rain we had couldn’t have done this. I don’t think. But it’s the only explanation I can come up with as my brain tries to make sense out of what’s happened.
It doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is that I don’t know where they are.
“Wyatt!”
My cries become desperate, ending on sobs that rip my heart open. Stone was underwater for a very long time. He wasn’t breathing....
“Lucas! Please!”
Trees, bushes, and rocks get swept downriver, thrown against boulders and over drop-offs that end in waterfall-like turmoil before moving on again. I can only imagine the hard surface we were thrown against was one of those huge, gray rocks that can weigh up to a ton. I start to shiver as I search for the tent. I don’t know if they’re still inside it or if they got sucked out like me.
“Ninja! Pete!”
With the way the river is moving, we could be a long way from camp.
My knees dig into rocks as the rush of water fills my ears, drowning out everything but the icy feeling that I don’t know if I’ll see my guys again.
“Someone! Anyone!” My throat catches, and I cough. Pain explodes in my chest cavity. “Please,” I croak.
I drag myself up and stumble down the mountain in bare feet. I slice the bottoms raw on rocks and pebbles, searching for any sign of the tent or Wyatt, Stone, and Lucas.
The river keeps raging, almost like the Hoover Dam burst open. I cry out for them every few seconds until my throat is as tender as my feet.
My body was numb after I pulled myself out, but as feeling starts to return, I realize how battered I really am. There’s an excruciating pain in my side I’m afraid to inspect, and the blender-like rapids left me with considerable bruising.
Through the shadows, I spot a piece of cloth that’s stuck on a tree that barely peeks out from the rapids. I run to the edge of the river, poke my foot into the water, and nearly get swept away again. I force myself back, screaming the guys’ names as loud as I can. Another whitewater rush comes through and takes the scrap with it, along with the branch it was on. It tumbles over itself, and I lose sight of it in a few seconds, taking with it any hope I’d had that it could’ve been a piece of clothing or the tent or something.
“Turn around,” a voice demands.
I still. My breath catches in my dry throat. My heart leaps, hoping it’s Ninja or Pete, but as I turn, those hopes get dashed when I find a man dressed in tan fatigues. He has a bandana wrapped around his forehead, and an automatic rifle pointed at my chest.
I don’t think. I run. I take off toward the river, scrambling along its side. The int
ruder curses behind me. He shouts something, then a mechanical voice responds, “Roger that.” It dawns on me that this is probably Lance’s military crew, and they have walkie-talkies or another comms system.
Ninja was carrying our satellite phone last I knew. I can only hope he still has it and is calling someone for help.
I don’t get very far before a hard body slams into me from behind. I fall to my stomach, the wind getting knocked out of me. “Don’t run,” he demands.
“Who are you?”
He shoves my head into the dirt and rocks, sand sticking to my lips as I suck in staccato breaths. He places his knee between my shoulder blades and leans his weight on me. “Don’t. Move.”
I groan at the extra load shifting on my already sore body. “Did you do this?” I ask. I strain my ears toward the river, listening—hoping someone will come.
“We had to flush you out somehow.” He chuckles darkly like he’s said something truly funny.
“Stone!” I yell, using every last ounce of strength I have.
He chuckles again. “We didn’t hear anyone else but you, so keep trying, little girl. Not that it will matter. You were our only objective.”
Pain rips through my chest as the sound of boots crunching alert me to other people, but they’re not mine. The voices are the same dull, professional tone my captor uses. They talk about “recovering the objective” as if finding twenty-year old, treasure-hunting females is their job.
“Told you it would work,” one of the fatigue-wearing men hollers from above. “Just like we did in Iraq.”
“Congratulations,” I spit. “You’re pinning a girl to the desert floor. I can see the cause for celebration.”
The pressure on my shoulder blades increases. “We don’t care what we do as long as we get paid, sweetheart,” my kidnapper informs me.