by Ally Carter
“It’s going to be okay, Logan. We’re going to get the phone and call my dad. He’ll tell us where he can land his plane, and then we’ll all go to Canada.”
“And get donuts,” Logan said.
Maddie smiled. “Exactly.” She turned and looked out at the frosty wilderness, eyes still scanning, mind still working. “But first we get a plan.”
You could hardly tell there’d been a bridge there.
Between the fire and the snow, all the boards were gone, burned or crashed into the water below; the rope had turned to ash. It seemed so much farther down in the light of day, so much so that Maddie wondered if she would have even been able to summon the courage to do what she’d done the night before if she’d been able to see the rocks and the rapids and the ice that lived below.
“It’s not that far down.” Logan’s words were strong, but his voice was significantly less steady.
“Yeah. Totally easy.”
“Right?” Logan asked.
“Right,” Maddie said.
But neither of them believed it. They stayed hunched behind an outcropping of rocks, higher on the hill. The river curved, and from their hiding place, with a light-colored blanket from the cabin draped over them, they had time to study the deep ravine and look for the pack and the phone and the man they knew had to be out there.
Hunting.
Maddie felt every bit her father’s daughter as she scanned the trees and the rocks. She looked up into the icy branches and squinted her eyes, cursing the fact that she didn’t have binoculars as she tried to see any footprints in the snow.
“What if he’s down there?” she said.
Logan looked at her. “Then I guess we can stop worrying that he’ll find us.”
It seemed as good a point as any.
Maddie didn’t want to wait too long. They didn’t want to lose the light, and even with the berries they’d found, that morning’s fish was a distant memory. And Maddie’s shoulder was starting to burn. The wound needed more than a splash of old vodka and some bandages. She needed a big shot of antibiotics and a bath.
And a hairbrush.
But mostly she needed to get Logan out of there and far away from Stefan and whatever mysterious rendezvous was waiting in the woods.
She cut her eyes up at Logan. “Will it work?”
He grinned back. “There’s one way to find out.”
The heat that Maddie felt as they eased down the hill, closer to the ravine and the river, had nothing to do with Maddie’s wound. It wasn’t even the fault of the boy who stayed at her back, glancing over his shoulder periodically, their footsteps light and soft on the slick ground.
When they reached the place where the bridge used to be, Maddie could see that the two posts that had once held the ropes were still standing, but the rest of the bridge was a memory.
She crept closer to the edge and peered over.
“I should go,” she said.
“No way,” Logan said too loud.
“I’ve been living here for six years, Logan. I’ve climbed trees and cliffs and pretty much anything that can collect ice. I can do this. I can—”
Logan didn’t argue. He just placed his hand on her shoulder and pressed his thumb against her bullet wound, and Maddie almost passed out from the pain. Stars swirled and her vision went black as she swayed. He hadn’t even pressed very hard.
“You were saying?” he asked.
“You don’t climb with your shoulder,” she tried, but Logan knew better.
“Liar. You climb with your whole body, Mad Dog. And you know it. Even a body as little and adorable as yours.”
Two things hit Maddie all at once:
First, the realization that Logan had called her little. And adorable. She wasn’t at all sure what that was supposed to mean, but she couldn’t possibly stop to figure it out because …
Second, Logan was taking off his coat and pushing up the sleeves of his shirt and she couldn’t really stop looking at his forearms. At some point in the past six years Logan’s forearms had become the most fascinating thing in the world, and Maddie had no idea how that had happened.
He placed his coat around her shoulders, tugged it tight. “Keep this warm for me, will you?”
Maddie didn’t know what to say.
Then Logan was looking over the edge again. Stefan’s pack peeked out from beneath the snow one-third of the way down. It wasn’t a solid cliff face, but it was close.
“It’s not that bad,” he said.
“Logan …” She started to argue. A part of her knew she needed to argue, but the part of her brain that was ticking away the moments had stopped sounding like a clock.
It had started sounding like a bomb.
“I’m lighter,” she told him.
He looked indignant. “I’m going,” he said. And then he grabbed her. And he kissed her. And Maddie thought that maybe Logan’s forearms were her second favorite thing.
When he paused and looked over the cliff one more time, he glanced back at her.
“It’s a piece of cake,” she lied.
But Logan just shook his head. “Man, I miss cake,” he said, then eased himself over the edge.
Maddie didn’t want to watch Logan’s descent. They had discussed this. They knew the risks—Logan knew the risks. They had both accepted them grudgingly, and yet accepting a thing and liking that thing were two incredibly different things indeed.
She watched until he was out of sight and then eased a little way down the edge of the river. She kept an ear tuned to the sound of her father’s plane. She kept one eye glued to the sky. Would he set out on foot, looking for them, or would he take the plane and search by air? Maddie couldn’t be certain. But she was sure she wasn’t alone.
She put the outcropping of rocks to her back.
And waited.
Alone.
Logan would be back soon.
If this plan worked, then they wouldn’t have to worry about being chased anymore. They’d get the phone and call her dad and then he’d come get them and fly them far, far away. If this plan worked, then it would soon be over.
Maddie wrapped Logan’s coat around her as she stood waiting. Listening.
The forest was full of sounds—rabbits and birds scavenging among the snow. Limbs falling and cracking under the weight of the first ice of the year.
But this was different. A crisp, clean snap.
Maddie spun to her left—looked back to the cliff—but it was too late. He was already there, standing in front of her. The gun was trained on the center of her chest, and the look on Stefan’s face was pure, unadulterated loathing.
“You should have forgotten about the phone,” he said.
Maddie had seen evil up close; she’d witnessed terror and rage, and she knew better than most people the effect that pure hate can have on the human body.
First, in Maddie’s experience, it was terrible for your skin. (If there was one thing a zit loved, it was stress.)
Second, it could do awful things to your eyes. They got glossy, but not with tears, with wild and untamed fury.
Finally, that much adrenaline might make you strong enough to lift a Toyota off a toddler or whatever, but it could also make your hands shake and your heart race.
That’s how Stefan looked. His eyes were too wide, his lips were too dry, and his grip was too hard on the gun.
Maddie didn’t scream. Or plead. Or cry. She just rolled her eyes and said, “But I’m a teenage girl. We’re addicted to our phones, or haven’t you heard?”
She could feel the boulder at her back, and as Stefan stepped closer, she knew there was nowhere to go. So she tensed.
“You think you are so smart.” Stefan’s accent was thicker. The words were cold.
“Well, not to brag, but I am number one in my class. Does it matter if you’re the only one in your class?” she asked. “I don’t know about—”
“Shut up!” he yelled, limping closer.
Maddie glanced d
own at the leg that wasn’t moving quite right. The bear trap must have gotten him good, she realized. She tried not to smile. He’d wrapped rags around his hands, probably covering up some pretty nasty burns. Maddie thought about the pack that still rested on a ledge one-third of the way down the cliff and wanted to smile because Stefan no longer had his food or his phone or his map.
He didn’t even have Logan, and Maddie wondered if he’d been able to make a fire the night before. Honestly, for a second she was simply impressed that he was still alive. He didn’t just have a reason to kill, she realized. He had a reason to live. And that fact could prove very useful.
“Your boyfriend should not have left you here.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. I can tell because I don’t have his name drawn inside a heart on a single notebook. I swear. And who says he left me? Maybe I left him? Maybe we found someplace safe and I stashed him there.”
“I doubt that,” Stefan said.
“I’d totally leave him, you know. Boys are annoying.”
“True. But there is no safe place. And I am no fool. I knew you would come for the phone. I have been watching this spot since daybreak. I saw him go over the edge.”
Stefan jerked Maddie against him, sliding the barrel of the gun along the smooth skin of her cheek like she needed a shave. “Now you are going to be very still and very quiet, and when he gets back with my phone I promise I will not kill you.”
“You’re a real sweetie, you know.”
“Quiet,” he snapped, and placed an arm around her from behind. His big bicep pressed against her neck, but Maddie could look back at him.
“So what’s your story?”
Maddie didn’t try to hide the singsong lilt of her voice as she spoke. She didn’t want to. She’d learned at a very young age that nothing annoyed manly men more than girly girls, and if Maddie had one talent, it was truly exceptional girliness.
“Shut up and be quiet,” Stefan snapped.
“That’s just a tad redundant, FYI.”
“Shut up!” he hissed near her ear.
Maddie couldn’t help but shift her weight from foot to foot, almost pacing in place. She was careful of the ice and the snow, though. No use falling to the ground and having Stefan accidently pull the trigger.
“You really do give a lot of orders,” she told him.
He tightened his grip. “I’m the one with the gun.”
“Well, yeah. Sure. Technically. But I’m the one with the winning personality, and that should count for something.”
“You should be scared,” he said in the same tone a movie villain might use to say You should be dead when the hero materializes five years later, hungry for vengeance.
Stefan was confused, and Maddie couldn’t blame him.
So she turned back and shrugged. “Maybe. But I don’t think you’re a bad guy.”
He let her go and spun her around, grabbing Logan’s unzipped coat and pulling her closer.
“I. Have. The. Gun,” he reminded her.
Maddie smiled and pulled away. “And I have Taylor Swift’s signature scent. Doesn’t make me a pop star. It just makes me smell like Taylor Swift, which isn’t as great as it sounds because, to a bear, Taylor Swift smells delicious.”
Stefan stuttered for a moment, then fell silent. Maddie talked on.
“What makes you think he’s gonna care?” she asked. “He’s a smart kid. He’ll probably see you here, realize you still have the gun, and run for the hills.”
Maddie kept her gaze trained on the place where Logan was supposed to be. She only turned when she heard the laughter.
“What’s so funny?”
“You are.” Stefan actually smiled. It looked so foreign on his gruff face with its two days’ growth of beard, his dirty clothes. He looked … handsome. And Maddie was almost entirely certain that she hated him just a little more for it.
“I’m not funny,” she snapped. He’d knocked her down a cliff and held a knife to her throat and a gun to her back, but this was what Maddie found most offensive.
“Yes. You are. If you think he’s not going to move heaven and earth to get you back, you are as crazy as you are stupid. He’ll do whatever I say when he sees I have his woman.”
For a moment, she couldn’t reply. She was breathing too hard, like she’d just had to swim across the lake or climb a cliff or haul a whole elk carcass home by herself.
“If I mean so much to him, I would have gotten a letter at some point in the past six years, but thanks for the optimism. It’s been a rough couple of hair days. I appreciate the vote of confidence.”
She expected him to grunt something in Russian or threaten her with the gun again. But he just shook his head.
“You do not understand men.”
At which point Maddie decided to go ahead and get angry. She jerked away and snapped, “Well, that’s just silly, because clearly I’ve been around so many of them!”
She threw her arms out wide and spun, taking in the vast expanse of snow-covered trees and the ice-covered cliffs.
Down below, the river was running faster. The deepest portion hadn’t frozen and she could actually hear the roar of one of the waterfalls that cascaded down the face of one of the mountains, a never-ending flow of ice-cold glacier water.
But there were no puffs of smoke, no lights from high school football stadiums or movie theaters or any of the hundreds of things that Maddie imagined must dominate the life of a teenage girl.
There certainly were no teenage boys.
“What?” she snapped when she faced him again. “Why are you smiling?” She wanted to slap that smile off his face for reasons that had nothing to do with kidnapping.
“You remind me of someone,” he admitted.
This felt like progress to Maddie, proof that there might actually be a pulse beating beneath that too-broad, too-hard chest.
“Who?” she asked. “Is there a Mrs. Evil Assassin back in Mother Russia?”
“No,” Stefan said, pulling her back toward him, turning her to make her a human shield. It was like she could actually feel him freeze. “I have no wife. But I do have … a sister.”
She opened her mouth to speak, but the gun was pointed at her again, and Stefan was through talking.
But Maddie never quit talking, so she asked, “What’s she like?”
“Alive” was Stefan’s cold reply.
“She’s why you’re doing this, isn’t she?”
Stefan didn’t look scary, so much as he just looked scared. And something inside of Maddie actually hurt for him, in that moment. But she also hurt for herself and for Logan, because right then she knew there would be no stopping him. This wasn’t about money or politics or even terror. This was personal. And personal was the most dangerous thing of all.
“The president always liked me, you know. You might not even need Logan. I’m enough. Just forget about Logan. You don’t need him.”
“They do need him,” Stefan snapped. “Only him.”
Maddie pulled back a little. “They, huh? Not we?”
Stefan was silent for a moment. Eagles circled overhead, their shadows dark on the snowy ground.
But the darkest part was the look on Stefan’s face. “Maybe I will kill you after all.”
He raised the gun.
He shook his head.
And a shadow fell across them both as Maddie said, “Now.”
In the next moment, a haunting cry filled the air, and Stefan looked around like there must be a wounded bear or some other kind of animal, but there was just a shadow streaking across the sky.
Maddie was barely able to throw herself out of the way as Logan jumped from atop the outcropping of rocks, hurling himself toward Stefan and knocking him to the ground.
They hit the snow and started to roll, a tangle of limbs and ice and fury. Stefan was older and had some kind of training. But Logan was so terrified and so desperate that he didn’t seem to feel the cold or the force of the blows. He didn’t even noti
ce how close they’d rolled to the edge of the steep ravine.
He just kept yelling, “Don’t touch her! Don’t you dare—”
“Logan, stop!” Maddie shouted. The snow was flying as they punched and kicked.
Stefan lashed out, trying to reverse their positions.
They were too close to the edge.
Logan was losing momentum.
So Maddie did the most obvious thing in the world: She ran toward the two of them and kicked Stefan’s shin, right where the bear trap must have caught him, because he howled in pain, dropping the gun and bringing both hands to his leg.
And then Logan was on top of Stefan, pressing his head over the edge, like he might just pop it off his neck like the head of a dandelion, let it float away on the wind.
“Logan, stop. Please!” Maddie yelled, but it was like she was far, far away.
Like Logan still had to get her back.
Like he might never get her back.
“Don’t you touch her,” he growled, looking down at Stefan.
“Logan, stop,” Maddie tried again.
But Logan didn’t face her. He kept his knees on Stefan’s arms and his hands around Stefan’s throat. Squeezing.
“He would have killed you.”
“Logan.”
Stefan’s face was turning red and he wasn’t making a sound anymore. And Logan seemed to squeeze harder.
Maddie picked up the gun that lay, forgotten, in the snow.
And she fired.
The shot seemed to echo in the cold air, reverberating off the snow and the ice.
Overhead, birds flew away—eagles leaving their nests.
Logan dropped his hold on Stefan, pushed back, and stared up at Maddie.
“What the—”
“Get up.” Maddie didn’t point the gun at them, but she handled it like someone who would if she had to—like someone who knew how.