by Bella Andre
The guys on Sam’s hotshot crew used to joke that he was superhuman, able to outrun a ball of flames in a single bound. Somehow she needed to keep believing that if anyone could survive a fall off the trail, it was Sam.
She could almost hear him telling her, “Don’t worry about me. Just concentrate on staying alive. I’ll come for you. I promise.”
As the man pushed her farther down the trail, she tried to think what she could possibly offer this man that would make him back down. Practically, all she had was money. But even though she knew that nothing could ever bring his brother back, she still had to give it a shot.
“Let April go and I’ll pay you whatever you want.”
She heard harsh laughter behind her. “I knew you’d say that. Rich bitch like you probably thinks she can buy anything she wants. I’ll bet you’ve never had to work an honest day in your life. Not like the rest of us.”
“You’re wrong about me,” she told him, even though she knew he wasn’t going to change his mind. “I’ve worked hard. Really hard. To provide a good life for my sister. That’s why I understand how you’re feeling.”
He shoved the gun even harder into the soft spot beneath her ribs. “Your money won’t bring Jacob back.”
“Please, just let her go and I’ll give you anything you want,” she begged, wanting to make herself perfectly clear. “Anything at all.”
“You stupid slut. I wouldn’t fuck you if you were the last cunt on Earth. Now shut up and keep moving.”
With his gun at her back, she had no choice but to continue moving down the narrow trail, farther away from Sam, but, hopefully, closer to her sister.
She wanted him to think she’d given up, but she hadn’t. Not by a long shot. Every moment, she looked for an opportunity to escape. So when the narrow trail finally intersected a much wider dirt road, figuring it was her best chance to make a break for it, she went for a move she’d learned in self-defense class.
Kicking behind her, she nailed him in the kneecap with the sole of her shoe, then ran as fast as she could.
The sound of a gun exploding pierced her ears and she instinctively threw herself to the ground.
Quickly realizing the bullet had missed her, she scrambled to get back up, but before she could get back on her feet, his hands were yanking her hair and he was pulling her across the dirt.
“You tricky little bitch. You’re just like your sister. Don’t you dare fuck with me again or I’ll make sure not to miss next time. Your fans might not think you’re so pretty with half your face blown off.”
He shoved her forward with his boot and she realized she was looking at a black tire.
“Get on the bike,” he said, pointing to a dirt bike parked in the bushes just off the dirt road.
Finally accepting that the most important thing was to get to April in one piece—and praying the two of them would be able to come up with an escape plan once they were together again—Dianna straddled the leather seat while he shackled her arms and legs to the bike with sharp, thin chains that cut into her skin.
Although she tried to mentally prepare herself for his touch, she couldn’t stop from shivering with revulsion when he got on the bike behind her and said, “You took my brother from me. I can’t wait for you to watch me take your sister from you.”
———
His body throbbed in a dozen different places, but Sam barely noticed. All he’d been able to think during his long fall was that he’d left Dianna completely at a stranger’s mercy.
Up on the mountain trail with no supplies, with nothing to protect herself with, who knew what the crazy bastard would do to her, if he’d pull a gun and rape her?
Thoughts of losing Dianna threatened to overwhelm him completely, even though any hotshot worth his turnouts knew how to keep going, even when a wildfire turned into a clusterfuck.
On the day Connor had been burned, he’d managed to get right back out on the mountain to fight the wildfire, he knew he had it in him to ignore the sharp pains shooting through him head to toe. He needed to get back on that trail and save Dianna, goddammit.
Slowly activating one painful muscle group at a time, Sam pulled himself upright, letting lose a stream of guttural curses into the otherwise silent forest. It was almost as if the birds and animals knew something bad was going down and had decided to stay hidden until the danger passed.
Incredibly, he hadn’t passed out. Fifty feet, at least, of crashing into boulders and tree stumps and thorny bushes and he’d felt every goddamn thing. If it weren’t for the mock-orange bush that had stopped his fall, he’d be as good as dead. He was going to plant a fucking grove of it when he got back to Lake Tahoe.
His pack was still strapped to his back—he figured it had probably kept his back from breaking—but the fabric was almost completely shredded. By the slight weight of it as he shifted, he guessed it was pretty much empty. He’d have to make do without his first-aid kit and the extra food, water, and supplies.
All Sam had left to work with was a pocketknife and a handful of flares that remained in his cargo pants’ pockets.
Grabbing a thick tree trunk, he pulled himself upright, fitting the toes of his boots into crevasses between the rocks.
It was slow going up the mountain. His joints screamed in agony. The lacerations on his head and face stung as sweat dripped into them. With each painful bit of progress, he called on his years of extreme wildfire training, pulled from every deadly situation he’d ever made it out of alive.
Sam had risked his life a hundred times over for strangers. This time he was giving everything for the woman he loved.
Finally, his fingers hooked over the edge of the trail. So far, he’d been able to use the muscles in both his upper and lower body together, one compensating for the other when needed, but now he had to rely on his upper body alone to hoist himself up onto the ledge.
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and put himself deep in the zone, a place where pain was irrelevant, where all that mattered was that his body obeyed his brain.
Three, two, one—up!
Sam’s biceps and triceps shook and his left shoulder hurt like a mother, but he got himself up on the ledge, belly down, and lay there until he caught his breath, then crawled on his hands and knees to solid ground, leaving a trail of blood and sweat behind him.
Pulling himself to his feet, he leaned heavily against the cool rock on the inside of the trail.
He was worse off than he wanted to admit.
One step at a time, one foot in front of the other, was how he was going to have to do this. At least their footprints were clearly marked in the mud. Thank God at least one thing was on his side.
The first quarter mile was the hardest. Sam felt like a newborn foal just learning to walk—stumbling, tripping, then picking himself up and trying again.
It was impossible to ignore the shooting pains through his right knee and the left side of his hip, so he gave in to them instead, letting the pain fuel his rage, along with his determination to find Dianna.
Finally, Sam picked up speed, managing to find his rhythm on the trail, even though he was moving a hell of a lot slower than he usually did. It helped that he didn’t have a hundred-and-fifty pound pack. Without any sort of vehicle, he wouldn’t overtake them, but he held tight to the hope that he wasn’t too far behind.
Until he got to the dirt road and saw the tire tracks.
Fuck! The bastard must have stashed a dirt bike on the trail.
Sam could easily follow the tracks. But on foot, he didn’t stand a chance of getting to Dianna nearly fast enough.
He needed help, but heading back to the Farm for reinforcements and to call in the Rocky Mountain hotshot crew and police force was out of the question. Odds were Dianna would be dead by the time he hiked back the way they’d come.
Knowing he’d have to make do alone, Sam ran through the meager tools he had on him. The knife might come in handy later, but what about the flares? He still had four le
ft.
Best-case scenario, the flares would simply send off a smoke signal to any passing aircraft. Worst case, they would ignite a forest fire.
As a hotshot, it went against everything in Sam to light a wildfire on purpose. Arson had always been his biggest enemy, but he couldn’t waste any time feeling conflicted over the choice he was making.
He’d face a hundred arson charges if it meant saving Dianna.
Pulling the cap off of one of the flares, he bent down and lit a clump of dry brush on the edge of the trail.
Watching it burn and move across the mountain with the wind, he hoped like hell that Will and the rest of the Rocky Mountain hotshot crew were canvassing these mountains hourly for wildfires. If the wind picked up, the flames would either ravage the forest in a matter of hours—or turn on him and catch him up in the fire he’d started.
Following the four-inch tire tracks up the dirt road on foot, he continued to light flares every half mile until he was down to his final one. Praying that someone on the local hotshot crew would read his smoke signal, he held one last flare in reserve.
Sam continued to make his way up the trail, his legs and lungs burning, sweat soaking his clothes, praying all the while that Dianna was still alive.
Stay strong, sweetheart, he silently pleaded. I’m coming to get you.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
WIND WHIPPED across Dianna’s eyes, making them water as she held on to the handlebars for dear life.
The man was driving way too fast, the trees a blur beside them as he sped up the bumpy road. She kept sliding, first to one side, then the next, as she overcorrected. She squeezed her eyes shut against the trail dirt flying up from under the wheels, but she couldn’t block out the image of Sam falling off the trail. It would haunt her forever.
Her captor pressed close against her, and even though he’d told her that he was disgusted by the thought of touching her, she could feel his hard-on pressing into her rear every time they hit a rough patch.
What if he changed his mind about raping her?
What if he’d already raped April?
Bile rose to her throat again, and along with the motion sickness she was feeling, she nearly spewed all over the handlebars.
You’re going to see April soon and then you’re going to figure out how to get away from him.
This mantra was all she had to cling to.
Her heart squeezed and she momentarily lost her breath as she thought about Sam being pushed off the trail. These past three days with Sam had been more than she could have ever hoped for. But they weren’t enough.
She wanted a lifetime.
As the dirt bike wound up the trail, Dianna’s hands quickly went numb and her legs and rear soon followed. She wasn’t sure if it had been thirty minutes or two hours by the time he abruptly hit the brakes.
Her chest flew into the handlebars and she grimaced in pain as the man got off the bike, walking away without undoing the locks that held her captive on the dirt bike.
Dianna clenched and unclenched her hands to bring life back to her numb limbs until tingles started shooting up both of her arms. Blinking fast to clear the wet dirt from her eyes, she looked around at where he’d taken her. They were parked beside a barn on its last legs at the end of a long row of ratty old trailers. Surrounded by the metal boxes, it was almost like being a kid again, except for one big difference.
No matter how bad life in the trailer park with her mother had been, she’d never feared for her life.
“April!” she screamed just in case her sister was close by, but there was no answer.
And then the man reappeared, pushing April forward with his gun.
Although Dianna was overjoyed that her sister was still alive, she gasped at the state she was in. Her face was a mess of blood and bruises, her wrists were bound together with tape, and she looked horribly weak, like she might drop unconscious to the ground at any second.
“You found me,” April said through wobbling lips.
Before Dianna could tell her sister how much she loved her, that she would have moved heaven and earth to find her, the man lifted up the gun and laid the barrel against April’s skull.
“I didn’t get to say good-bye to my brother,” he said, his hands and voice shaking with rage. “You’re not going to get the chance either.”
Dianna frantically pulled at her chains, but there was no way she could get off the bike and save her sister.
Right before he pulled the trigger, April’s gaze was steady, utterly unflinching, and Dianna read all of the love she and her sister had never been able to share with each other in her sister’s beautiful hazel eyes.
———
Sam had been running too many miles, too fast without any water. His legs were starting to go and his chest was burning. With a stiff breeze sending the small fires he’d lit crawling up the mountain’s mounds of dead brush, he was afraid this was about to turn into his worst-case scenario.
With no other option but to keep moving forward, Sam pushed through another tenth of a mile, his muscles and tendons screaming with every footfall. Minutes dragged by as he continued to put one foot in front of the other.
Hotshots were often called superheroes. But Sam had been doing the job long enough to know that they weren’t. They were just average men who sometimes did extraordinary things. And like any other man on the verge of dehydration, he needed water.
Or he’d die.
And then, suddenly, he heard the sharp whirring of helicopter blades breaking through the silence of the forest. Using the last of his strength, Sam clambered up the tall edge of the cliff to try to make himself seen in the nearest clearing.
But the helicopter flew right past him.
All out of options, he lit his last flare and dropped it on the dry grasses a few feet away.
The seconds ticked by, the fire grew hotter, but Sam held his ground. And then, finally, the helicopter headed straight for him, his friend, Will, manning the controls.
With the open space too tight to land the aircraft, Will dropped the ladder and hovered above the spreading flames. Sam jumped up and grabbed hold of a step, commanding his weakening body to get the fuck up into the helicopter without blacking out.
Will was on his radio giving the Rocky Mountain hotshots the coordinates for the fires when Sam finally crawled inside. Usually, when wildfires were caught this early, it was only a matter of a couple of bucket drops to put them out. Sam hoped it would be the case this time, too.
And yet, even if the local authorities threw him in jail for arson, he wouldn’t change what he’d done. Not when using the flares had been his only chance to get back to Dianna.
Will’s eyebrows moved up toward his hairline when he put down his radio and saw the wrecked state of Sam’s face, arms, and clothes that were soaked with sweat, dirt, and blood.
“Drink this,” he said, handing Sam water.
As he drained the bottle, Will said, “I got a call from some guy at the commune. He said you and Dianna were heading off on this trail to look for her sister and asked me if I was planning to fly over this area today. What the fuck is happening?”
“Long story,” Sam said, knowing he needed to conserve his energy. “Dianna’s in trouble. Big trouble. We’ve got to find her. I’ve been following tracks from a dirt bike. How low can you fly?”
“Low enough.”
“Fly as fast and as low as you can.”
The chopper ate up the distance a hundred times faster than Sam had been able to on foot. A handful of minutes later, the tracks abruptly veered off the road into a thick grove of trees.
“I can’t follow the tracks any farther,” Will said.
“Find a place to drop me in,” Sam instructed. “They’ve got to be close.”
Through the thick tree cover, they looked down into a small trailer park.
“Damn it,” Will said, “I thought all of these trailers had been cleared out last year by the Forest Service.”
; Just then, Sam saw a flash of color and movement. Yanking the helicopter’s ladder back out, he secured it to the lip of the aircraft. “Get as close as you can. I’m going to jump.”
Will didn’t bother telling him he was crazy; he simply got to work positioning the chopper over a small hole between trees.
But as he prepared to descend, Sam’s blood ran cold.
Dianna was chained to a dirt bike, and the man who’d shoved him down the mountain was holding a gun to her sister’s head, only feet away. In the time it took him to get on the ground, both April and Dianna could be killed.
On the verge of fighting the hardest fight of his life, rage swept through every cell, every nerve.
He was going to save Dianna, even if he had to die to do it.
Time seemed to slow down as the man’s finger twitched on the trigger. And then, suddenly, sand and dirt and pine needles were whipping into her eyes, and Dianna realized whirring helicopter blades were breaking apart the silence of the forest.
Without yet seeing him, Dianna felt Sam’s presence and she was filled with renewed strength.
But before she could act, April took advantage of the man’s distraction, kicking him hard in the balls, successfully knocking him off balance, the loud bang of a shot going wild and slamming into one of the trailers.
When keys fell out of his pocket, despite her obvious exhaustion and injuries, her tough little sister managed to grab them with her bound hands. Dashing over to Dianna, she got to work on undoing the chains around her right wrist.
But all Dianna wanted was for her sister to get away.
“Give me the keys and run!” she pleaded with April.
But April’s stubborn expression said she wasn’t going anywhere. “I’m not leaving you,” she said in a gravelly voice.
But seconds later, seeing that the man was back on his feet, Dianna grabbed the keys with her free hand and tried again.
“Go!”
This time April started running, but she was too weak to outrun the man with the gun. His face furious, he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into the forest.