Finished tying the bandage, Mike sat back on his heels before rising. He held his hand out to Mollie; he needed to get her away from Holden. His breath caught in his chest when Mollie hesitated before taking it. He inhaled a ragged breath when her hand enclosed around his, and she rose to her feet.
“We have to leave here, now,” Mike said crisply as Mollie bent to retrieve the quilt.
Holden glanced between the two of them before rising unsteadily to his feet.
Chapter Twenty
The cliffs had startedto dwindle in size, and the sun was nearly gone by the time they stopped again an hour later. The same eerie howls reverberating through last night had already started, but this time, they were closer.
Mollie’s skin crawled as she scanned the growing shadows. She would give anything to be sheltered somewhere, but there was nowhere to hide. Holden looked about ready to collapse, and the incessant rumbling of his stomach sounded louder than a car engine.
Mike walked over to the edge of the cliffs and gazed down; they were only a forty-foot drop now. Instead of crashing against the rocks, the waves rolled onto a ten-foot strip of sand lining the cliff walls. The fall was still lethal to humans, but he could land on the beach without harm.
However, he had to find shelter soon. The only problem was, he’d been searching for somewhere ever since they acquired Holden and discovered nothing. If he went down there, he might be able to find a way to get Mollie down there and, hopefully, locate a cave or someplace they could hide for the night, but he didn’t want to leave Mollie with Holden. His instincts when it came to her, and other men, were skewed right now, but something about the guy bugged Mike; probably the fact he was still breathing.
Stepping away from the cliffs, Mike glanced at Mollie as she surveyed the woods with the rifle against her shoulder. Holden stood far too close to her for Mike’s liking. Striding forward, he clasped Mollie’s elbow and drew her close against his side when someone screamed just as the sun was vanishing behind the horizon. Mike’s gaze lifted to the upper limbs of the trees; if they didn’t find something soon, their only hope might be to climb one and try to remain hidden for the night.
“Hurry,” he urged, leading Mollie onward.
Lowering the rifle, she practically jogged alongside him to keep up with his long legs. She glanced back to discover Holden struggling to follow them. “We have to slow down,” she whispered.
“We can’t,” Mike said.
His callous attitude irritated her, and she scowled at him. “We’reallgetting to safety.”
Mike stopped himself from scowling back at her. When it came to making sure she stayed alive, he didn’t care what happened to Holden, but she didn’t want to hear that, and he had no time to argue with her.
He was about to turn back for Holden when his attention was drawn to the nearly full moon rising over the sea. The white light shimmering across the gentle waves created a pathway toward the shore. The same thing probably happened every night, but tonight he couldseethe moon rising, whereas the other nights the height of the cliffs blocked his view of the ocean.
That’s when he realized the cliffs were almost gone. Mike kept hold of Mollie as he veered to the right and stopped at the edge of the cliffs; it was only a ten-foot jump now. The humans could climb down without a problem, but what if they got down there and there was nowhere to hide? They would be visible to anyone who looked over the cliffs.
Another howl sounded, but this one was practically breathing down their necks. “We have to climb down,” he said.
Mollie leaned over the edge to peer at the sand below. A few rocks jutted up here and there along the beach, but the space beneath her was smooth from years of the ocean rolling over it.
She pulled her arm away from Mike and, bending her knees, jumped off the edge. Air rushed around her as she fell; for a second, she felt like she had as a kid when she would jump off the swings to fly through the air.
Then she was hitting the ground. Her knees bent to take the brunt of the impact, and the sand gave way beneath her feet, making the landing easier than she’d anticipated. The man in the moon looked close enough to touch. She’d never seen the phenomenon so clearly before, and it caused hope to fill her as the breeze speckled her cheeks with sea spray. They would find Aida, and they would get out of this somehow.
Then Holden landed beside her and Mike fell on the other side of her.
“What now?” Holden asked.
“Now we stay to the wall and hope we find shelter,” Mike replied.
* * *
Mollie crepttoward the back of the cave Mike had discovered. Her shoes slipped in the sand beneath her feet, and she kept her hands in front of her, so she didn’t walk into a wall. She only made it twenty feet before her palms smacked against a stone wall at the end of the cave.
“You okay?” Mike whispered from behind her.
“Yes,” she replied as she turned away from the wall.
The moon’s rays dimly illuminated the front of the cave, but Mollie couldn’t see anything in the oppressive dark surrounding her. She tried not to think about the spiders and other critters watching her from the shadows as she slid down the wall to sit against it. Beneath her ass, the sand was dry, but the crash of the waves outside chilled her. Unfolding the quilt, she draped it around her shoulders. The rocks may be cold, but the thick walls helped mute the howls and screams piercing the air with increasing frequency.
Holden released a breath, slumped against a wall, and slid to the ground. It had taken them almost two miles of traversing the beach before discovering this cave, and by then Holden was barely standing. His head bent forward, and less than a minute later, his rhythmic breathing filled the air.
“The water comes in here sometimes,” she murmured.
