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The car rolled to a stop, and he opened the back door. When he slid inside beside her, her whole body locked with terror.
“Honey, I’m home.” He gave her a wide smile.
Her skin crawled and icy fear replaced the blood in her veins. Somehow she conjured the composure that years of hospital emergencies had given her, and she believed was lost.
“We’re not together, Lance. I’d hoped you would figure that out when I left. Vanishing without a word usually sends a fairly clear message.”
His gaze traveled over her with a slow assessment, lingering in places that made her gut heave. “You changed your hair.”
She forced a light laugh. “Had to cut some length. Long story.”
Dread clawed up her throat, threatening to choke off her next breath. She knew what Lance being here meant.
Knew too that the Black Heart Security team was tracking her and already moving because she’d pushed the button. She just had to survive long enough for them to reach her.
Corbin pulled back onto the road without a word, and the miles ticked by in tense silence. Lance’s presence was a physical weight she couldn’t escape, close enough that she caught the familiar whiff of the cologne he always wore. Bile burned in her stomach, but she kept her hands folded in her lap and forced a mask of calm she didn’t feel.
Wyatt. Please find me. Please, please, find me.
The road eventually morphed from crumbling pavement, then into gravel and then dirt. Trees crowded close on both sides, and in the distance, the sky was dark and unforgiving against the wild peak of the mountain.
Corbin stopped the car.
I don’t want to die here.
Corbin got out and whipped the door open, then Lance shoved her hard onto the ground. She caught herself before she fell and scrambled upright, her heart thundering so violently she felt it in her throat.
“Move.” His voice lost any trace of the charm he led with, now flat and lethal. “We’re walking from here.”
She looked up at the mountain rising ahead of them. Not her mountain, not the one she’d survived on for two months. If she got away from Lance, could she survive up there?
She thought of Wyatt and the promise he’d whispered against her lips. I’ll find you. No matter where you go, I’ll find you.
She held on to that promise with both hands as Lance shoved her toward the trees. Toward whatever he had planned for her.
Her boots found purchase on the uneven, unforgiving ground only because she learned how to navigate ground like this with the same confidence she’d walk across the hallway to Wyatt’s room.
She lifted her chin and stared at the ruthless beauty of the mountain…and it almost felt like coming home.
She’d survived this before, alone and sick, running purely on the will to live.
She would survive it again. She had to.
Because somewhere behind her, a man who’d promised to find her no matter what was already closing the gap—she knew it.
And she had to be alive when he did.
Chapter Sixteen
“Faster.” Wyatt gripped the dash hard enough to feel it creak under his fingers. “Carson, goddammit, faster!”
“I’ve got this.” Carson’s knuckles were white on the wheel, but he kept his voice level even as he took the mountain curve doing eighty, tires screaming and the vehicle shuddering with the strain of it.
Wyatt forced himself to shut up and unlock his fingers from the dash. The fury in his chest was another story.
Trees blurred past the window in dark streaks and the road twisted upward toward the foothills—in the opposite direction of the office Whitley was supposed to be headed to.
Every mile felt like a vise clamping tighter around his chest. He checked his phone again and stared at the red dot moving at a rate of speed similar to theirs until his eyes blurred.
