CHAPTER THREE
Cold.
The kind that reached his bones, settled in the depths of his soul. That signaled he was almost out of time.
Nick clenched his jaw, shoved everything down. The bite of the tourniquet, how his leg throbbed with every slow beat of his heart, or the way his fingers tingled from the blood loss. He inhaled, not that it helped, each breath too shallow, too ineffective, washing his vision into a patchy gray.
Sloane had sent a reply several minutes ago — COMING — 15 — HOLD POSITION. DON’T FUCKING DIE. All caps. What he assumed was her barking out an order. Her way of getting him riled, keeping his head in the game.
One of the things he loved most about her. How she always knew which button to push to get the response she wanted. And she obviously wanted him motivated. Angry, even, at having her ride to the rescue. What she figured would keep him alive the longest.
She wasn’t wrong.
He focused on breathing, on keeping his damn eyes open as the minutes ticked away, all that resolve slowly bleeding into the stone. Into the press of the rocks against his torso, the steadydrip of blood down his leg. He tried to shift, nearly blacked out, that warning voice in his head shouting at him.
And it didn’t take a medic to know he might have finally come out on the wrong side of a few inches.
He shook his head, straightened, gaze snapping to his phone. To the blip he’d banked his hope on. How it moved with impossible speed down the highway, then onto some obscure forest road.
A renewed flicker of hope cut through the dread until her icon stopped, lingered at some crossroads with a logging spur.
One minute. Then two.
No movement, just that blue dot pulsing in place.
All his hope going up in flames.
She was in trouble.
He knew it. Sensed it. The primitive part of his brain still functioning. He tapped the screen, willed her to move, but the dot stayed over that intersection, the truth glaring up at him.
That maybe she was out of time, too.
Voices.
Drawing closer.
Starting and stopping, scuffs sounding between.
They were searching in a grid formation. Inspecting anything remotely large enough to hide a body. And it was only a matter of time before they found him.
He could wait, maybe take one or two of them with him — go down guns blazing. Or he could move — toward Sloane. Give her some much-needed backup.
Images of her walking into an ambush, facing multiple tangos with nothing but her Glock and the fury of a caged badger looped in his head. And he realized her facing that alone terrified him more than taking another bullet. Having to confront the assholes hunting him while teetering on the brink.
He drew in a breath, worked his way out of the fissure, every twist pure agony. Sweat beaded his skin, pain a constant, thudding rhythm in his leg, as he leaned against the cliff, tried to clear his head.
Hearing those assholes nearing the tree line off to his left got him stumbling across the small opening, using anything waist high as a tether. A rock, a tree, a low-hanging branch. One brace to another until he’d faded back into the forest.
Not that it would take long for them to track him down. Once they discovered the fissure — the pool of blood he’d likely left behind — they’d follow his footprints. The slight drag of his left leg through the moss and mud, the bloody handprints smeared across any decent-sized rock.
He’d deal with them. Whatever it took to reach Sloane before…
He shoved down any doubts, kept slogging his way through the wet ferns until he reached a nondescript fork in the road, one deer path heading left, the other right. Neither seemed all that familiar, the scenery nothing more than a wash of green and gray. He looked at his phone, judged which way would take him to Sloane the fastest, then turned right, took a step.
A whoosh, then a bullet cracking a trunk behind him, spitting wood back at him. He dropped, then rolled beneath a thick pocket of salal, gun shaking in his hand, streaks washing across his vision.
The men emerged out of the trees like a pack of wolves, silent, focus set on where his shadow had been a moment earlier. They closed in on the branching paths, scanning each way before the lead asshole pointed left. What likely headed back toward the lodge. They took off, boots sinking into the ground, weapons notched in their shoulders.
