by Janie Crouch
Noah would be back with the assistance they needed. Tanner just had to buy him more time.
A quiet cry fell from Bree’s lips as she stumbled on the uneven ground and crashed hard onto her knees, barely catching herself before her face hit the ground. Tanner couldn’t even move fast enough to stop her.
He let out a low curse. “We’ve got to stop. This is game over if one of us breaks a leg,” he whispered.
“Where are they? They are still following us, right?”
“Yes, but it’s harder for me to tell exactly where they are. The sun isn’t shining so brightly, so I’m not catching any reflections off their scopes like I was yesterday. But then again, they’re not exactly trying to hide, so I catch a glimpse of one of them every once in a while. Last time was over an hour ago.”
He kept his voice low because over an hour ago was an eternity when you were talking about hunting someone in the forest. They could be much closer now.
“So we need to keep going.” Exhaustion skirted across her face. She struggled to push herself back up into a standing position, but her movements were jerky and uncoordinated.
Damn it, she was more tired than she’d let on.
He sat down beside her and pulled her down next to him.
“I thought we needed to go? That they are gaining on us.” But she didn’t try to get back up.
He scooted down next to her and tucked them both up against the tree.
“No, rest for a while. At some point we need to turn back toward civilization.”
She closed her eyes. “Have we given them enough time?”
The fact that she was asking that rather than demanding they continue to push forward told Tanner what he needed to know. Bree was getting awful darn close to her breaking point.
Mentally and emotionally she could keep pushing herself. She’d proved that over and over since he’d met her. But the body could go only as far as it could go.
“Quit looking at me like that,” she said without opening her eyes.
“Looking at you like what? And how can you tell anything anyway if your eyes are closed?”
“I can tell just by the way you’re breathing.”
His eyebrow rose. “All right, smarty, exactly how am I looking at you, then?”
“Like you know I want to go on, but my body isn’t going to make it.”
Damned if that wasn’t exactly what he was thinking.
“We can’t keep going at this pace.” He reached over and kissed her temple.
Now those green eyes opened. “But we can for another few hours. Give them the time they need to make sure they’re out safely. My body will do whatever I tell it to. And if I tell it it’s going hard for another few hours, that’s what it’s going to do.”
Tanner sighed. “I’m sure that’s true right up to the point where your body completely collapses. We don’t want to let it get to that point.”
But he knew they needed to get moving again.
And then it began to rain.
Storms in the Colorado wilderness weren’t to be messed with at any time, and this one was a doozy. Rain was pelting them by the time he helped her to her feet a minute later.
“Hopefully this will work in our favor,” he told her.
It would certainly make them less visible and might make the hunters stop altogether. They didn’t know Tanner knew who they were. He may not have enough to arrest them—what he’d seen and heard had been minimal, and circumstantial—but he damn well wouldn’t be taking his eyes off Jared Ellis or any of his posse for as long as needed. They would slip up, and Tanner would be there to take them down when they did.
But right now, they needed to survive this damn wilderness.
They began moving forward again at a slower pace this time, because no matter what Bree said, there was only so much her smaller body could handle.
They tried to keep out of the cold rain as much as possible, dashing from point to point under anything that would offer them shelter. But it still didn’t take long before they were completely soaked.
The only good news was that the farther they went, the less Tanner saw any sign of the hunters.
As lightning lit up the late-afternoon sky, he prayed it was because they’d done the smart thing and chosen to wait out the storm. Of course, the storm was probably going to last another ten hours, but he doubted the men knew that. By the time they did, Noah would definitely have made it back to Risk Peak.
As the wind picked up and began whipping through the trees, Tanner knew they were going to have to find shelter themselves.
A quick look at Bree confirmed it. Her teeth were chattering, lips starting to turn a little blue, despite their exertion. He needed to get her someplace where they could stop, allow themselves time to dry off and raise their body temperatures. He knew just the place and would bet anything the hunters weren’t aware of it.
They were almost back to the river. His original plan had been to cut back up the river, leading away from town. But not anymore. He and Bree had bought Noah and Marilyn and the kids plenty of time. If he knew his brother, he’d already gotten Marilyn and the kids to old man Henrikson’s house. That old goat was the only person Tanner knew who disliked people more than Noah did. But he had a damn impressive collection of shotguns. And his place would be the first they’d come across on their way into town. Noah would be borrowing a couple of those shotguns his way back out here. The rest of the cavalry would be right behind him.
“Is the storm getting louder?” Bree asked as they stopped to catch their breath by a clump of trees. Right now, Tanner was playing a game of choose your enemy. Hanging out under the trees was a bad idea because of the storm, but they provided them cover from the hunters. Getting away from the trees would be better to avoid the lightning but might make them visible to the people with guns.
“No, that’s the river. It’s about twenty yards ahead of us, then about ten or fifteen feet straight down over the ledge.”
“The same river you told me to run toward this morning with the kids if you didn’t make it back?”
“Yep, although you would’ve hit it about three miles downstream and that’s much closer to town.”
Her mouth tightened at the thought of having extra miles to walk, he was sure, but she didn’t say anything.
“Don’t worry, we’re not walking the whole way right now. It’s time to get out of the storm.”
Walking down by the riverbank would be easier but would put them in a weakened tactical position. If one of the hunters came up on the ridge, they’d have a clear shot at them even though the ridge wasn’t very high here. They’d have to be doubly careful.
“Okay, let’s—”
Tanner felt the burn in his upper arm at the same time the shot rang out. He and Bree were diving to the ground as a second shot exploded in the tree next to them. Those weren’t rifle shots or Tanner would be dead right now. They were from a handgun. That explained why Tanner was still alive—rifles were a hell of a lot more accurate—but it also meant somebody was much closer than he’d expected.
And it also just changed all the rules of the game. Anything Tanner did now would be considered self-defense.
But that fact wouldn’t help them if they were dead.
“Are you okay? Are you shot?” Bree began patting him all over his torso.
“Just a graze on my arm. I’m okay. But we’ve got to move right now.”
“Okay.”
He grabbed her hand with his, keeping his eye out for the shooter. “We’re going to have to split up. Stay down and crawl toward the river. I think it’s only one of them, or we’d already be in a lot more trouble.”
Bree nodded and began crawling in the direction she needed to go.
Tanner doubled back toward where the gunfire had come from, ignoring the pain in his arm. He could mo
ve it, and it wasn’t bleeding too much, so treating it would have to wait. Hopefully the rain had muffled the gunshot enough that it wouldn’t bring the shooter’s buddies into the area.
Tanner kept low and moved in a zigzagging motion, trying to make himself as hard a target to hit as possible.
But he was also moving blind, since he didn’t know exactly where the shooter was.
Tanner let out a curse when another shot rang out. Near the water. Near Bree. The bastard had somehow circled back behind him.
He gave up all pretense of hiding or weaving and bolted toward where he’d sent Bree.
“Bree, stay down!” He yelled the words, hoping to redirect the danger back to himself. At least then it wouldn’t be pointed at her.
He spotted the shooter at the very edge of the riverbank’s cliff. The shooter was facing to the side, away from Tanner, gun pointed at something ahead of him on the ground. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it was Bree in front of him, staying low the way Tanner had told her.
The guy was going to shoot her.
Tanner forced every ounce of energy into his legs and rushed as fast as he could toward the man with the gun, praying he’d reach the shooter in time.
Chapter Seventeen
A shot rang out over her head and Bree realized she was going to die.
It wasn’t the first time she’d felt that way today. There’d been half a dozen times as they’d run like fiends through the wilderness that she was pretty sure she would either fall over and crack her spine, have a massive coronary from the exertion or step on some creature who decided it didn’t like being stepped on and would make its displeasure known by poisoning her.
But this guy staring down the gun at her definitely left little doubt in her mind that she was, in fact, going to die.
“And here I thought I wasn’t going to get to do anything interesting,” the man said with a smirk.
At least that was what she thought he said, as it was nearly impossible to hear him over the storm and the river barreling below them. As he spoke, she got into a crouching position, trying to think of something to say, something she could barter with, but nothing came to her exhausted mind. She wiped the rain from her eyes and got a good look at the man for the first time.
“You. You’re the paramedic from the night of the fire.”
“Yep, and things could’ve gone much easier if you’d just left those two brats with me. That’s why we started the fire to begin with. To get them or Marilyn outside. But then that entire damn town showed up.”
She leaped to the side while he was talking, knowing it wasn’t going to be enough, that he’d still have an easy shot.
But the shot never came.
Instead, Bree watched, first relieved when Tanner crashed into the man, knocking them both to the side and the guy’s gun out of his hand, then in horror as the momentum kept them moving forward and over the side of the ravine.
“Tanner!” Bree screamed, scrambling forward to get to him. But both men had already fallen into the water below by the time she got there. The ridge wasn’t very high at this point, like Tanner had said—maybe fifteen feet. But how deep was the water? It was flowing pretty quickly, but she couldn’t tell how deep it was. In the rain it was difficult to see either man.
When Tanner’s head burst through the surface, Bree let out a sob of relief. He was alive. She looked along the ridge for a way to get down to him as he fought to make his way to the river’s edge. Every stroke seemed like a struggle for him. Unlike when they’d capsized in the raft, Tanner didn’t have on a life jacket. Waterlogged clothes and shoes were dragging him under.
She pushed herself to her feet. In the rain, she would’ve completely missed the guy’s gun if she hadn’t literally stepped on it. She knew only a little about handguns, based on what Tanner had taught her the last few months, but any weapon was better than nothing. She tried to keep an eye on him as she ran parallel to the river, looking for any way to get down.
Panic ate like acid through her gut when she finally had to take her eyes off Tanner to find a way down from the ridge. How was she ever going to find him again? She finally found an overhang of rocks and slid and jumped down them as fast as she could, ignoring the burning cuts on her palms as her skin tore on the jagged edges.
“Hang on, baby. Hang on.” She said the words over and over as she reached the riverbank and began sprinting back toward Tanner, cursing when she couldn’t get enough speed out of her body.
Thunder crackled heavily overhead, lightning immediately flashing in the storm-darkened sky. Vaguely she wondered if the storm would kill them both, even if she could get to Tanner.
The longer she ran, the more panicked she became. Had she somehow missed him? Had he not been able to make it over to the edge? There wasn’t any riverbank here, so she was forced to walk in the water. The air seemed to be sucked out of her lungs from the cold, and she was in only six inches of water. How could Tanner have survived completely immersed in the water?
She pressed forward, harder, drawing on energy from her innermost center. Tanner needed her. She had to get to him.
She rounded a small ledge and let out a sob of relief when she saw Tanner standing at the edge of the water. He was swaying almost drunkenly, his big body tilted at an odd angle, his shoulder held awkwardly.
He made some sort of jerky movement, shifting to the side clumsily, and Bree realized the paramedic guy was right behind him. They were fighting. Or…trying to fight. The awkward, stiff movements Tanner was making were definitely not the complex fighting maneuvers she knew he was capable of.
She winced as the paramedic got a solid hook into Tanner’s jaw. Tanner stumbled to the side but didn’t go down. His left arm still held awkwardly at an angle to his side, Tanner got his own punch in.
Bree kept moving toward them, not wanting to call out and distract Tanner. After another couple of minutes and a few more exhausted punches from both sides, it became evident Tanner was going to triumph.
She was almost to Tanner when his last brutal uppercut to the paramedic’s chin sent the man flying back and into the water. He probably would’ve drowned, but Tanner grabbed him with his good hand and dragged him to the shore, leaving him.
The relief she felt at seeing him alive, and the other man unconscious, wiped the last strength she had, almost causing her to collapse in the water. She slowed to a walk, the fifteen yards she was from Tanner seeming like a mile. She yelled to him, but he couldn’t hear her over the storm.
He was looking up at the ridge, and she realized he was looking for her. She called out to him, her voice sounding weak even to her own ears, and he turned. The relief she saw in his eyes, the way his posture relaxed to know that she was alive and unharmed filled her heart almost to bursting.
She stumbled toward him, her own movements jerky with cold and fatigue. She felt like she would never be warm again. She couldn’t imagine what Tanner felt like with his body still submerged to midthigh.
Then the whole world seemed to turn black in front of her as the man behind Tanner got to his feet, a huge branch in his hand, held up like a club.
She opened her mouth to scream a warning to Tanner but knew he couldn’t hear her. And it would come too late. She did the only thing she could—swung up the gun in her hand and pointed it in the man’s direction.
But to Tanner it had to look like she was pointing it directly at him.
His face blanched, but then without her having to explain the plan, without her even knowing what the plan could be, he dropped like a rock into the water, giving her a clear shot of her target.
Tanner trusted her.
Bree didn’t hesitate. She squeezed the trigger gently twice the way he’d taught her, aiming for the paramedic’s chest—the largest mass.
Surprise lit his face as the force of the shots propelled him backward.
She’d killed a man. She would have to deal with that later. Because unless she got them somewhere where they could dry off and warm up, there was going to be more than just one dead body.
She worked herself around to Tanner’s less-injured side. Close up, she realized just how much worse his injuries were than she’d realized. His arm was definitely dislocated, but there was also a gash on his head and his face was chalk white.
She stuffed the gun into the waistband of her jeans as she wrapped her arm around Tanner’s hips when he staggered. “We’ve got to get you somewhere you can get dry and warm.”
He didn’t argue. Couldn’t even seem to find the strength to say anything, just nodded.
What was the best plan? Downstream toward the town? But what about the other hunters? They had to have heard all the gunfire and could show up any moment. How many bullets were left in the gun she had? She fought down her panic at not knowing what to do.
“Up—up bridge.” His words were so jerky she almost couldn’t understand them.
“You want us to go upriver? That’s farther away from help.”
“Shelter.” He was already swaying on his feet. “Sh-shelter by bridge.”
She moved directly in front of him, cupping his cheeks with her hands, looking deep into his eyes. It would’ve been romantic if they both weren’t freezing, and he wasn’t injured, and she hadn’t killed somebody, and other people weren’t still hunting them. Romantic.
“Tanner, I need to make sure you’re lucid. If you send us upriver and there’s nothing there…”
“Shelter. Trust.”
She did trust him the same way he’d just trusted her rather than stop and ask why the heck she was pointing a gun at him. He would’ve been dead if he’d done that.
He knew these woods. He knew where they were. She would trust that the shelter was where he said it was.