“He was here. This is where we rested last night.”
“Three nights ago,” Trey prompts, reminding me of the lapse in my timeline.
I nod, truly confused. “Despite our conflicting times, Nikolai should be here. He has a broken leg. He couldn’t travel far.”
Air leaves my lungs in a hurry when Trey says, “He would for you.”
My heart squeezes in my chest. “He would,” I agree. “As I would for him.”
As the low-hanging sun casts hues of orange around me, I return to my earlier memory. It’s just several hours later. . .
“Nikolai.” Not wanting to agitate his wounds, I gently shake his uninjured shoulder. “It’s morning. We need to wake up.”
Fear rains down on me when he fails to answer. Nikolai has been called many things, but ignorant isn’t one of them.
I shake him again, a little harder this time. “Nikolai. Please wake up.”
My hand shakes furiously when I raise it to his neck to check for a pulse. He has one, although it is extremely faint.
“You just need to hold on a little longer, okay? Help is on its way.”I hope.
Peeling his shirt back from his chest, I check his bullet wound. The blood trickling out of the hole is only lukewarm to touch. He’s going into shock.
Oh god. This isn’t good.
With my mind spiraling, I scream, “Help!”
I don’t care if my alerted cries make the men trying to kill us return. Any help is better than none.
“We’re down here! We’re alive! You didn’t kill us!”
Nothing but the echo of my words pierce my ears.
While circling my temples, I pace the minimal ground I have access to while contemplating what to do. Nikolai said we need to wait for his men, but what if they don’t get here in time? He needs surgery and, at the very least, a blood transfusion. They’re not things that can wait. He needs them now.
Recognizing what I must do, I crouch down in front of Nikolai. “I’m going to get help, okay? I know you said we should wait, but I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
I know I’ve made the right decision when I press my lips to Nikolai’s. His mouth is as cold as ice, and his breathing barely registers on my trembling lips.
“I’ll be back soon. I promise,” I say over his lips.
After removing my overshirt to prop Nikolai’s head against the rock, I map my course. Not eager to head in the direction we fled from last night, I cross the gorge via a small track etched on the lip of blasted rock. The terrain is more hilly on this side, but it keeps Nikolai in my line of sight a majority of the way.
I only lose him from my view when I start an eighty-foot climb. I was an adventurous teen, so things like rock-climbing and hiking were regular activities for me, but this is the first time I’ve attempted to scale a cliff edge without safety equipment.
“I know, baby. Just a few more hours,” I promise to the stabbing pain in the lower right quadrant of my stomach. “Once we get Daddy out of here alive, we’ll have every inch of you checked over.”
I could blame a lack of sleep for my delusional state, but I’m reasonably sure that isn’t the cause of me talking to our baby like he or she can hear me. I’m on the verge of a breakdown, my symptoms oddly familiar to the ones I endured after being mauled by a dog.
If Nikolai doesn’t survive this, I won’t either—not mentally, anyway.
A grunt rumbles in my chest when I grip the final rock needed to hoist me over the cliff edge. With recent rains loosening the ground, it isn’t as firmly embedded as I’d like, but it will have to do.
I sigh in relief when the rock maintains it clutch on the ground. Sweat and dirt grinds into my cami when I roll onto my back, relieved I’ve climbed the wall without incident. I take a few minutes to suck in some much-needed breaths before commanding my wobbly legs to commence my mile walk to a line of a trees on the horizon.
Pain spasms in my stomach with every stride I take, but I don’t slow down. A twinge in my gut will be nothing compared to the pain I’ll endure if I lose Nikolai.
Halfway across the grassy field, my brisk pace slows. Noisy engines are zooming my way, the rowdy cheers of their riders indicating their heritage. They’re Russian.
