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Chapter Eight
“Be quiet.” Motionlessbeside her, he strained to hear anything that would herald approaching footsteps. Her fear-filled gaze held a healthy dose of contempt as well.Damn it!He didn’t have time to convince her that she could trust him—he’d have to do this the hard way.
“We’re getting out of here. Stay close to me and don’t make a sound. Got it?” At her slight nod, he removed his hand from her mouth, stood, and reached out to pull her to her feet.
Jordan shrank away from him.
“Look, you can either walk, or I can carry you. Either way, we’re leaving here together.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you.”
Travis fisted the collar of her coat and yanked her up. She cried out as though he’d hurt her, but he was too furious to care. His face inches from hers, he used his gruffest voice. “We’re leaving. If you want to stay alive, you’ll do exactly what I say. Now, let’s go and remember—not a sound.” He pushed her roughly toward the door.
No one had returned to the clearing. Even the black tent seemed abandoned. Smoke hung in the air, and shouts came from the direction of the bunker. Within the trees behind the tents, Travis turned west. With a hand on Jordan’s elbow, he forced her to match his brisk jog. Before Brody’s men extinguished the fire and discovered Jordan was gone, Travis wanted a sizable head start. The rough terrain would slow their getaway soon enough.
A few minutes from camp, Jordan stumbled and barely caught herself in time to keep from falling. He stopped to let her rest. They wouldn’t get far if she hurt herself.
“How much is Brody paying you?” Her voice rose in anger, echoing sharply through the quiet setting.
“Keep your voice down.” This wasn’t the time or place to have this discussion. They were still too close to camp, and every moment they wasted could mean the difference between escape and discovery.
A cynical smile curved her pretty mouth. “Whatever it is, it won’t be worth it once Alex catches up to you.”
Travis growled, which the woman didn’t have the sense to consider a warning. He stepped toward her, grabbed her forearm, and drew her within inches of his face. Ignoring her hands shoving against his chest, he registered the anger and fear in her dark eyes.
“Let go of me!”
“Shut the hell up.” Travis’s voice rang too damn loud as he struggled to control his temper. False bravado was all she had going for her, but she’d managed to piss off the man trying to save her life. “Alexisn’t the hero you think he is. I’m the only one who cares whether you live or die, and right now, I could go either way. If they catch up to us, we're both dead, so let’s move.” He waited for some sign of comprehension, but her momentary uncertainty turned to defiance in a heartbeat. He gave her a shove and kept her beside him as they continued deeper into the woods.
Jordan walked like a trooper for the next hour. She remained tight-lipped and submissive, even when he asked if she needed to rest. Her drastic change in demeanor jarred a warning note in his brain, but he would take what he could get. Maybe she’d thought her situation through and realized she was in danger. After seeing Alex all chummy with Brody, it was hard to believe she could still trust that asshole. Travis would lay out Alex’s plan for her as soon as they got to a safe place. See if she still thought he was her knight on a white horse.
She kept pace, climbing over fallen trees and steep inclines without slowing, her head down, carefully choosing each step. It was mid-afternoon when Travis turned them north. The trees and underbrush became denser, the forest eerily silent except for their breathing and the crack of twigs and pine needles beneath Jordan’s feet. She had to be exhausted, but she kept moving without complaint, declining to answer each time he asked if she needed to stop. He respected her efforts and began to regret his harsh treatment.
Travis’s plan was simple—get to the small town of Mitchell and call for reinforcements and a helo extraction. It sounded easy enough, but the odds were shitty. Mitchell was thirty miles by forest service road, but they didn’t have the luxury of traveling that route. As the crow flies, they might cut off a few miles, but what remained would arguably be the roughest country in the Ochocos. They’d be lucky to make half the distance before sunset, and darkness would force them to stop or risk injury.
There would be no cell service until they were close to town. If Travis missed his check-in the day after tomorrow, Coop would be alerted to a problem, and their contingency plan—evacuation—would be triggered. But there were few places to land a helicopter in these mountains, and it was likely they’d be too late.
Brody and his crew would be looking for Jordan as soon as they discovered her missing. It was unlikely they would link Travis’s absence to hers right away, and they wouldn’t expect a lone woman to travel far, which might give him and Jordan an advantage. Even so, Brody would have the roads covered, and he wouldn’t quit at nightfall. They couldn’t hope to outdistance them, traveling on foot through the brush.
Time and again, he altered their direction to find a safer path. He often stopped to check their position by the compass sheathed on his belt and a well-worn map he carried folded in his shirt pocket. At the top of each ridge, he visually charted their course through the thick forest that stretched out below them.
A thick bed of pine needles muffled their footsteps. An occasional bird chirped in the top of a tree, but the squirrels and chipmunks were conspicuously quiet. Not too far away, deer or elk stamped the ground and rapped their antlers against low-hanging branches. Rabbits hopped for cover at their approach, reminding Travis that humans were the intruders here. Gradually, the silence began to wear on his nerves. He’d almost rather listen to Jordan telling him off.
Cresting a ridge, he stopped so suddenly that Jordan jerked back and would have ridden the loose rock to the bottom if Travis hadn’t grabbed the front of her coat. Once on solid ground, she pulled away and brushed past him, loathing in her expression.
“Sit down and rest.” He took a couple of breaths and fought his irritation. She had no problem pushing all of his buttons.
“I’m not tired.” She spun to face him, a challenge in her eyes.
