Chapter Fifteen
KRIS
The air wasn’t filling her lungs like it should, but she kept running as fast as the snowshoes allowed, following the tiny prints and drag marks the dog had left in the snow. After tripping for the second time, she stopped only long enough to unclip the bottom of the shoes, freeing up her boots. Drake was close behind, calling her name, but the only thing that would make Kris stop was death itself.
She ran when the land allowed it, and climbed over the drifts where the dog had jumped, her mind racing the entire time. Kris was sure Zoey wouldn’t abandon them, she just wouldn’t. She was beginning to feel the space between them closing, when Zoey yelped in pain. Within seconds, a howl, long and victorious, raced down the hill at Kris and she began to cry. It couldn’t end like this, she screamed in her mind. It couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair.
Along some parts of the trail, the snow had thinned enough that she caught glimpses of grass, or rock, or tree root. She hopped on these spots, glancing up and then down with each stride, breathing through her mouth and ignoring the swish-swish sounds that her arms made as they rubbed against her coat sides. When she heard footsteps behind her, slapping against the wet earth, Kris assumed it was Drake or Connor. But after an instant of fear, thinking it was something with four legs instead, she glanced over her shoulder to double check. She tripped on a water-logged branch and went down violently, the bottom of her chin smacking the ground with a jarring thud. The impact shot dark stars across her vision and even though she tried to shake them away, they danced through the trees as she looked around, stunned.
“Fuck,” Drake said from above her, rolling her onto her side and pulling her into a sitting position. “You okay?” he panted.
She’d forgotten about the scarf he’d tied around the lower half of his face, and stared up at his eyes like she was seeing them for the first time. The forest did a beautiful thing to his hazel gaze; the woodsy spectrum turned them on, like a light. They seemed to match everything around them: the trees, the soil, the sky that peeked through from high above. Drake was the perfect forest accessory. It made her laugh, and when his eyebrows pulled together into a confused set of wrinkles, she could only think of one thing to say.
“Pretty.”
“Huh?” Drake asked, carefully lifting her scraped chin with one finger. “How hard did you fall?”
Connor slid to a stop beside them, out of breath and scanning their surroundings. “She okay?”
“Don’t know yet,” Drake mumbled.
“What do you mean?” Connor finally looked down, and Kris pushed Drake’s hand off her face.
“I’m okay,” she wheezed.
They helped her stand, but Drake shook his head at Connor. “She’s not okay, she called me pretty.”
“Shit,” Connor said, grabbing hold of Kris’ arm. “Definitely not okay then.”
“No,” Kris said, “I didn’t say you were pretty. I meant your eyes. Your eyes are pretty.”
That didn’t sound any better, but she saw the brief look of amusement flit between Connor and Drake before they remembered why they were standing on the slope of the mountain. Another whimpering sound, followed by a howl, and Kris forgot completely about Drake’s pretty eyes.
“Zoey,” she whispered.
“Stay behind me,” Drake told her, shoving her body into Connor. With his gun out, he aimed up the trail. “Keep close.”
They walked nearly on top of each other’s feet, shuffling through the muck and grime of the after-snow mess on the trail, until they reached a giant fir that blocked their view of the next bend. In some places, she could see for what seemed like a mile into the trees, but in others, the land dipped or rose, and the trees huddled together as if in deep conversations, blocking out most of the light and making her feel tiny and insignificant. She clutched Drake’s shoulder, and let Connor hold her other wrist. They used the tree as a shield, and each of them peeked around it carefully. Kris lurched forward, but Connor held onto her.
“Zoey,” she cried.
Blocking the trail was a vine-covered clump of twigs and fallen branches that looked as if it had rolled down the mountain side and come to a stop, wedged between two large trees. The dog had snagged the handle of her leash in the cluttered mess. She whimpered when she saw them, and yanked hard against the brush, but it didn’t free her. Above the brambles, a low, guttural growl made Zoey yelp again. She shook her head from side to side in a panic, and pushed with her feet at the ground, attempting to slide out of the collar. Before they set out, Drake had tightened it to prevent her from doing just that.
Again, Kris tried to break free, but Connor held her close. “Wait,” he hissed.
Two wolves paced behind the mini-avalanche of logs and briar, eager for the easy meal, but hesitant to attack for a reason Kris didn’t understand. She watched, horrified, as Zoey’s struggle against the leash excited them, and the pair split, each moving around the blocked trail and flanking the dog. Connor heard the third wolf before Kris did. It came from below, having quietly circled them while they were distracted. Connor pushed into Kris, smashing her body into the thick tree branches, using himself as a shield as the three wolves charged. They were no longer interested in the trapped dog. And then Drake began shooting.
RILEY
I fled down the slope, sliding onto my ass, tumbling over my feet, and bouncing off trees, until Jin caught up to me. He tried grabbing me from behind, but snagged my coat instead. The momentum tangled his feet and he fell, saying my name at my fleeing backside in a harsh whisper. Begging me to stop. I didn’t. I let my instinct pull me down the trail, dodging what I could, ignoring the scrapes and bruises that my legs and hands collected. Something was close, something I had to see.
At some point I lost one of my gloves, and only noticed when a wolf cry weakened my knees and I slammed into a tree. I waited there, using it to hold me up while cursing my legs to function. I broke three nails in the collision, and pressed my body into the wood, waiting. Feeling. There were voices nearby, hushed and scared.
It could be anyone, I realized. Anyone in the world. From behind the tree, I closed my eyes and listened. When a hand touched my lower back, I flinched, scraping the tip of my nose on the bark. It was Jin, out of breath, his oval eyes round with fear. He leaned against me, using the tree as cover for both of our bodies.
“You are one crazy woman, Riley,” he gasped into my hair. “Where’s your pack?” he whispered.
I didn’t remember dropping it, and couldn’t remember when I had it last. I shook my head at him, and felt along my waistband. No knife. His hand fumbled between us then found mine, and he waited for me to take the cool metal from him.
“Use it wisely,” he warned. “There’s more than one target.”
Whether he meant more than one person, or more than one animal, I didn’t know. It didn’t matter, though, because all spilled blood was red. We stood behind the tree, holding onto it like a life raft until the voices rose, then fell, leaving behind a soft murmur through the forest, like crying.
“Someone’s hurt,” I whispered.
“We’re waiting,” Jin insisted, leaning harder into me.
“I can’t,” I argued, trying to wiggle away from his weight.
“No,” he objected, pressing my hips into the tree. “I’ll go. You stay.”
He was gone before I could argue, a blur of movement in the trees, darting in and out of the shadows till he became one himself. I ripped the hood off my head and let the wind fan out my hair. I had to hear what was happening clearly, but I couldn’t see him anymore. Pushing off the tree, I cocked my head to the side. Footsteps crunched and paused, crunched and paused. Then there was shouting, a considerable amount of it. And another deafening gunshot.
All I could hear after that was the pounding of my own feet on the ground, and with each step or stumble, my broken voice chanted, “No, no, no, no, no…”
I hadn’t run long before the tightly cramped trees sprea
d out and the trail curved inward around a cluster of rocks. I saw Jin first, splayed out on the ground, his face in the snow. Several forms were rushing up the trail toward him. I kept flailing downhill in a deadly race to get there first, but something leapt at me from the side, and knocked me off my feet. I went down hard, striking a tree with my elbow, and rolled off the trail and into the underbrush, losing Jin’s knife.
A creature was on me instantly. Paws ran up my back, nails dug into my spine, and I tried to throw it off, but it was at my neck, licking and nipping at me, trying to eat me alive. I knew enough about wolves to understand how it would most likely kill me, so I shut my eyes and curled into a tight ball, covering my throat as best as I could, waiting for its jaws to start ripping through my clothes. But the bite didn’t come.
I became a trampoline as the animal jumped up and down my side, then fell onto the ground. It pawed at my face, and began to whimper in noisy snorts into my ear. The arm of my coat ripped, and I cried out from the sound, thinking it was my skin that was tearing, and refused to open my eyes. Someone screamed, either from the trail, or inside my head. With my fingers locked together behind my neck, I hid under my arms until the animal stilled beside me. Trembling, a small furry body pressed into my legs and began to cry. I’d never heard such a sorrowful wail before, and screamed for it to stop. When it did, a snout nudged under my arm and I finally opened my eyes.
“No,” I whispered. “You’re not real.”
Zoey licked my face, then crawled closer, shoving her head into mine, leaving barely enough room for me to breathe. I had to push her away before she choked me to death with her wet fur, but she crawled back, panting and crying, waiting for me to love on her. My hands shook uncontrollably as I gathered her up, pulling her into my chest, telling myself it wasn’t real, it was just a dream. Or a nightmare.
“Zoey, come! Zoey!”
The dog ignored the call, but I shoved on her until she let me sit up. Through the brush, all I could see were figures, not faces, but I knew the voice. A cry started low in my throat and I scrambled free of the undergrowth, crawling back onto the trail. Kris stood five feet away, staring at me with her mouth open, her nose red from the cold, her brown curls poking out of her hood like she’d grabbed hold of a power line.
“Riley,” she whispered.
She tackled me much like the dog had, and as she landed in my lap and threw her arms over my shoulders, Connor stood behind her, a look of shock on his face, his short hair disheveled, his eyes gaunt, his cheeks flushed pink. He took one step, then a second, and that’s when the shock turned into something else and he began to cry. With a shaky sigh, he collapsed onto his knees and wept into his gloved hands. Jin lifted his face out of the snow, and watched as a second man approached me, hesitant at first, and hidden behind a black scarf. But his eyes were unforgettable. Drake reached over Kris and grabbed my coat by the shoulders, lifting me onto my feet, and displacing Kris into the mud. She hugged her knees to her chest as Drake held me at arm’s distance, and with a dirty hand, I pulled the scarf down, exposing the rest of his face. He began to shake, and gathered me into his chest, folding his arms around my upper body, squeezing so hard that it hurt. I was afraid to touch him, like if I moved, he would vanish into a dream, so I stood there while he began to sob into my hair, clutching me harder with each breath.
When Drake began kissing my face, his tears smeared across my lips and I tasted the saltiness of them. I could smell the sweat on his body, and the fading scent of deodorant from within his clothes. The hairs of his beard scraped along my skin, and I felt each one. When the heat from his wrist met my neck, I realized he was real. He was there. They all were. He began to murmur my name, and my knees locked. My eyes lost focus and I made the mistake of closing them. My body went limp, and the forest became the dark, mellow waters of the night sea. I floated there willingly, happily, because this was the place where reality ended and nightmares had yet to be born. It was the in-between place where the voice in my mind was quiet and alone, safe from the monsters.
It was home.
CONNOR
With Drake on her left, Connor on her right, and Riley asleep between them, they were the true definition of a love triangle. He tried hard to ignore the other person holding her, and he refused to let go of his half. She’d passed out from shock, Connor hoped, and not something worse. Drake had gathered her up into his lap, so all Connor could do was lean against her side and hold her arm. He wanted his face to be what she saw when she woke. Neither of the men spoke, not to each other, not to Kris, and not to the stranger that had finally sat up from the snow to stare at them. Zoey wouldn’t leave Riley’s feet, either. Their tight huddle quickly became awkward and uncomfortable, but when Riley’s head began to move, the fact that his left foot had gone numb beneath him was forgotten.
“Riley,” he whispered next to her ear. Drake shifted, gently moving her upper body, trying to wake her.
“Is she okay?” Kris asked, scooting closer, and Zoey tried to climb into Riley’s lap.
Connor licked his chapped lips, wincing when his tongue ran over the healing cut. “I think so,” he said.
The man she was with approached slowly, his arms stiff at his sides. “She’s not been well,” he said.
Connor looked up once, noted that the man was unarmed and sounded foreign, and placed him from an Asian country. Other than that, Connor knew nothing about him. Not a damn thing. Who he was, or how he came to be with Riley. He could have been her captor, Connor thought suddenly. He dropped her arm and jumped to his feet.
“Who are you?” he demanded, keeping his body between the stranger and the rest of the group.
The man lifted his hands. “I’m no threat to you.”
“Who are you? How does she know you?” Connor pressed. He widened his stance, hoping it made him look twice as large, but the two men were near equals in stature and weight. Both were lean and fast, but Connor was clearly injured.
“My name is Jin,” the man said with a nod. “Riley’s my friend.”
“How…how did you meet?” Kris asked. She had taken up Connor’s position by Riley’s side.
“We met here. In these woods. I told you, she was not well. We’ve been resting here,” Jin answered. He gestured up the trail and into the trees.
Connor blinked. “You’ve been staying here, on the mountain? For how long?” He began to shake, and Drake began to laugh. It was a scary sound that didn’t fit well with the quiet trees.
Jin shrugged. “A few weeks. A month.”
Connor pointed at the ground. “You’ve been here,” he asked again. “Jesus.”
Kris went up on her knees. “It was your smoke we saw?”
Jin eyed her, taking in her young age and small frame and then smiled tightly. “You’ve come from the lodge, down in the valley.”
“We’ve been snowed in there for weeks, staring up at your fucking smoke the whole time?” Connor snapped. But he didn’t aim the words or his frustration toward Jin. He stared at the trees and the sky, blaming God for bringing them so close together but keeping them separated.
The group jumped in unison when at the top of the trail, twigs began to snap and the unmistakable sound of approaching footsteps could be heard. Before Jin could open his mouth to object, Drake’s hand swung out from his back, and he pointed his gun at the trees, waiting for a shot.
“Jin? Riley?” A careful voice snuck down the pathway. “You there?”
“Who the shit is that?” Drake snapped. He shifted again, trying to rouse Riley. She groaned, but didn’t open her eyes.
Jin cleared his throat. “A travel companion,” he answered. He looked down sharply at Kris, Connor noticed, but then met his eyes with a clear and unreadable gaze.
“We know you’re there,” Connor yelled up the trail. “Come down slowly.”
The footsteps stopped immediately, but he couldn’t see anyone. After a long pause, there was a curse, then the footsteps began again, moving slowly toward
them. He glanced sharply at Jin, then back up the trail. The light from the day was fading quickly, and Connor realized too late that it would be dark soon. It felt like an hour had passed by the time a figure came into view. In a full snowsuit, with the hood pulled up, Connor could make out little, other than that the person was a man. But as he approached, he could see parts of his face and realized the new stranger was young.
“Ah, shit,” Drake cursed, and then said, “Kris, wait.”
She had stood behind Connor, and stared up the trail at the young man. With a gloved hand, she pushed her bangs out of her face. With her lips pressed together and her eyes squinted, Connor realized she knew the boy. And wasn’t happy to see him. It took almost a full minute for his brain to make the connection, but by then, the boy had seen Kris, too. He sprinted down the rest of the trail and skidded to a stop in the mush when Zoey let out a soft bark.
“Cole,” Kris whispered. She bent down, and Connor flinched as something flung over his shoulder. A small rock landed in the snow beside Cole’s foot, but he didn’t react. The boy stared at Kris with his mouth hung open in surprise, and rubbed at his eyes.
“You’re alive?” he croaked. “You’re alive.”
She threw another rock, then another, and continued chucking miscellaneous objects from the forest floor at the boy until she pegged him in the face. He stumbled backwards, holding his mouth, but began to laugh when he pulled his glove away and saw fresh blood on it.
“What are you doing out here, man?” Drake grumbled.
Cole, giddy and quickly regaining color to his cheeks, bounced on his toes from excitement. “I came out here for her…for Kris,” he said. When he smiled, his teeth were stained red. “I can’t believe I found you.”
“You didn’t,” she snapped.
Confused, he searched every face in the group, then realized that Riley was on the ground. “Is she okay?” he took two steps forward, and Connor closed the gap between them, pushing hard on the boy’s chest.
Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost Page 14