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He kicked dirt over the fire, packed up his gear and we set off into the forest.
24
COLTON
I took her back to the path she’d been following when she’d tried to escape: I figured it must lead somewhere. This time, though, we turned the other way because that put us a little further from the white-haired, scary dude.
We walked for close to an hour, with Tanya in front so that I could keep an eye on her. For a little while there, we’d almost felt like a team. But she still wouldn’t tell me what was going on so we were back to prisoner and guard. That bothered me more than it should.
The path seemed to be getting a little wider and sometimes, right at the edge of my hearing, I thought I could hear traffic in the distance. Maybe we were getting closer to civilization. Maybe, in a few hours, I could hand Tanya off to the CIA. Then I was going to find a donut shop and buy myself some fucking donuts, and a cup of coffee the size of my head. That was another reason I was grouchy, I hadn’t had my morning cup: even the one I’d tried to share with Tanya had mostly wound up on the ground when she dived on me. I’m gonna get a maple glazed and a strawberry cream—
“Freeze!”
The voice came from off to our left. I whirled and cursed when I saw a guy less than ten feet away, stepping out from behind a tree. Not one of the military types we ran into before: he was in camouflage pants and cap but he was wearing a bright orange bib. A hunter. He had his rifle leveled right at us.
Tanya reacted first. “Oh thank God!” I stared because suddenly, she was from Kansas. Her accent was perfect, soft and sweet and as American as root beer floats. “I was hiking, he kidnapped me!” She ran towards the hunter, holding up her bound wrists. “He was going to—He was going to—” Her eyes glistened with tears. How did she do that?! “He s—said he was going to—”
The hunter snarled in protective fury and the rifle shifted to point right at my chest. “Get your hands up!”
“Now wait!” I put my hands in the air, still trying to catch up. “She’s not—She’s a Russian spy!”
I winced as I heard myself say it, but it was too late. The guy gave me a disgusted look. You expect me to believe that?
“I swear it’s true,” I said. “She’s my prisoner, I’m taking her to—” I winced and bit it back.
“To who?” the guy demanded.
“The CIA,” I said, knowing how it would sound.
The hunter shook his head. “Drop your weapons. Real slow.”
I sighed and slowly took off my shotgun and handgun and put them both on the ground. “I know how it looks. But I’m transporting this woman.”
The man snorted. “On your own?!”
“I work for a private security company—”
“Bullshit!” snapped the man. And with my tattoos and beard, I couldn’t blame him.
Tanya had sidled over to the man and grabbed onto his arm. “I think he’s a biker,” she told him. “He said he was going to have me first and then…” She blinked away fresh tears. “Give me to the whole gang.”
The hunter’s face turned crimson. Ah hell. Tanya was completely convincing. And I did look and sound like a biker.
“You’re going to jail,” the hunter told me. His eyes flicked to Tanya. “You know how to use a gun?”
“I—I think so,” said Tanya, her eyes huge. God, she was jaw-droppingly good at this. “My brother taught me once.”
“Don’t give her a gun,” I said quickly.
“Shut up,” the hunter told me. Then, to Tanya, “I got a pistol on my belt. Take it and point it at this guy while I tie him up.”
“Do not give her that gun!” I pleaded. “Please!”
“Quit your yappin’” the guy told me. Tanya slid the pistol out of its holster. “Good,” he told her. “Now—”
She smacked him across the back of the head with the pistol and he crumpled to the ground. Before I could take a step, Tanya had the pistol pointed at me. I cursed.
She found a knife on the hunter’s belt and quickly sawed through the rope binding her wrists, keeping one eye on me the whole time. Then she searched him and took his phone.
“That accent...” I said, shaking my head in wonder. “Is it just Kansas, or can you do anywhere?”
“I do a particularly good New Jersey,” she said calmly in her normal, Russian accent. She stood up. “Goodbye, Colton.”
In another few seconds, I’d lose her forever. “That all you gonna say?”
She blinked as if that caught her off guard, then sighed. “Good luck,” she said at last.
I knew I wasn’t Danny, or Gabriel, when it came to understanding women. I wasn’t what people call sensitive. Fuck, most of the time I had no idea what was going on in women’s heads. But I knew I’d better get this right, or she was gone. So I stared into those cold blue eyes, scrunched up my brow and thought, sorting through everything I’d seen in the last few days.
