The teens huddled up, and Brian helped ease Nimue from Liam’s back and lay her on the ground.
His back burned, his muscles bunching up after carrying her, but…yeah, it didn’t matter.
I’m sorry. I just didn’t know if?—
She could trust him? Emberly would want her to? Whatever it was, it still felt like a raw wound inside. Even with his words about forgiveness.
But oh, he wanted to forgive her.
Now she stared up at him, pain in her eyes. He knelt next to her. “Rest.” He tucked Jeff’s rolled-up jacket under her head, avoiding her eyes. Too much emotion there. Too much that he wasn’t ready to face. “I need to double back and see if we’re being tailed.”
She put a hand to his arm, gripped it.
“There’s more gold in the cave.” Her voice stopped him cold. “Twenty bars, maybe more. I thought if I could pay Teresa what I owe?—”
“Not now.” No one needed to know. She needed rest. He needed space to think. Process. Figure out how they were getting out of this alive. He paused. Shoot. Where was that gold bar now?
He set her water bottle within reach. “I’ll be back.”
Turning, he nearly collided with Brian. The kid stood there, his hands gripping Nimue’s pack. “You had me gather her stuff.”
Right. And that look said it all. He must have seen the gold bar among her things, and by the look in his eye, he’d heard what she just said.
Problem for later. Liam gestured to him. “C’mon.”
They’d left David two hundred yards behind. He crouched near the canyon’s edge, watching distant flashlights—two beams maybe a quarter mile off—veer down a side trail that wouldn’t bring them closer.
Liam dropped beside him, eyes straining through darkness. “Any change?”
“They turned off.” David pointed into the void. “Not coming this way anymore.”
Liam’s jaw clenched tight enough to crack teeth.
Those lights could mean salvation. Search and rescue with radios and medical supplies and a way out of this nightmare.
Or they could mean death. Bratva trackers following their sat phone’s last signal, armed and ready to finish what Teresa started. Although a voice in the back of his head suggested they’d be following the decoy and traveling downstream, right? But the larger fear was that by now the trackers had put together that Liam and Nimue weren’t swimming down the Colorado and were back on their trail.
He doubted Russian enforcers were wilderness experts—most city killers weren’t—but desperation made people dangerous. The tampered phone. Nimue’s story about four million dollars. Teresa’s threats. It all painted a picture of relentless pursuit that wouldn’t stop until they were all dead.
If those people in the distance were rescuers, signaling could save Nimue’s life.
If they were Bratva, signaling would end it.
“I don’t understand why we’re hiding from them.” Brian gripped their dying flashlight.
Because you have no idea what’s hunting us.
“I’m watching their pattern first.”
Brian’s eyes narrowed. “You’re acting like they’re terrorists or something. What’s really going on? Why are you so paranoid?”
Liam couldn’t explain about the Bratva without sending these kids into complete panic. “Not paranoid. Careful.”
Brian hesitated, then nodded. But skepticism radiated from every line of his teenage posture.
Liam turned back to the lights, mind racing through impossible scenarios. If it was the Bratva, he’d have to act fast. Draw them away from the kids.
But with Nimue down, he couldn’t leave her side. And the thought of facing armed killers with nothing but a failing flashlight made his hands curl into fists.
