Brace For Impact

Two minutes later a raised voice froze him in place.

“Found the pilot.”

Another male voice answered from a greater distance, the words indistinguishable.

So two, at least.

Taking the Glock from the small of his back, he waited where he was, listening intently. The same two voices called back and forth. He thought they might have found the dead marshal, too, but couldn’t be sure. He wanted to do further reconnaissance, but knew he couldn’t risk it. Maddy wouldn’t make it out of the backcountry without him, especially now that they had to dodge two or more heavily armed soldiers.

Soldiers? No, they weren’t that, he thought grimly. Call them mercenaries. Killers for hire.

The marshal had saved Maddy’s life by sending her on the run. Now it was on Will to bring a seriously injured woman to safety despite the men who would soon be hunting them.

MADDY AWAKENED WITH a start, staring upward at raw rock and a crack of blue sky. Completely disoriented, she didn’t understand where she was. Pain pulled her from her confusion. Staying utterly still, she strained to listen. Was Will back? But what she heard was far more ominous.

A helicopter.

Her panic switch flipped. Will had sent them to pick her up. He hadn’t believed her. He’d betrayed her.

Run.

But he’d promised, and he’d made her promise to stay where she was. He hadn’t said, ‘Whatever you hear,’ but that was what he’d meant.

Here, she was hidden. Stay still. Stay still. What if they’d captured him, or even killed him? She knew exactly what that looked like. Shivering despite herself, feeling like a coward, she nonetheless refused to believe they’d surprised Will. He’d said he was army. A medic, yes, but didn’t they fight, too? Have the same training? She hoped he’d taken the handgun with him. At least he knew how to use it.

The terrifying drone grew louder and louder. Maddy forgot to blink, staring at the thin sliver of blue sky. When darkness slid over it like a shadow, the helicopter was so loud she pressed her good hand to one ear. It thundered in her head, but the streak of blue reappeared and...was the racket diminishing? She thought so.

Did that mean they hadn’t taken any notice of the tumble of boulders that had made a cave?

What had Will done with the gun? Maddy tried to remember. Before, she’d believed she could shoot someone, and she still thought so. His pack was right there. She groped all the outside pockets but didn’t feel anything the right shape. He wouldn’t have just dumped it inside, would he? Even so, she unzipped the top and inserted her hand. The first hard thing she found was a plastic case holding first-aid supplies. Packets of what she guessed were food. Clothes—denim and soft knits, something puffy with a slippery outside. A parka. A book?

She gave up, lay back and waited, staring now at the opening she’d crawled through.

Once again time blurred—or maybe it had ever since the crash. Had that really happened today? Was she forgetting a night? Maddy clung to a picture in her mind of Will Gannon, alarmingly tall as he looked down at her. That too-bony face with a nose that didn’t seem to quite belong, but eyes that were kinder than she deserved, considering she was holding a gun on him.

Hearing that deep, husky voice saying, I was shot, so you’ll excuse me if I don’t love seeing that gun pointing at me.

The relief of letting it sag, of feeling his big hand close over hers as he deftly took the gun.

Her head throbbed even as the pain radiating from her arm and shoulder worsened.

Please come, Will. Please hurry.

HE STOPPED UNDER cover twenty yards or so from the boulders to use his binoculars again. He could no longer hear the helicopter, but after a slow sweep he found it, deep down in the Stetattle Creek valley. Down there only fools would think they’d see anything from the sky; the Stetattle and Torrent Creeks ran through tangles of vegetation as thick as any jungle. When Will was reading about routes into and out of this wilderness, he’d seen several references to “bushwhacking.”

If he could get Maddy down to that low elevation, they’d be hard to find. On the other hand, he didn’t have a machete or any other tool that would be good for clearing their way.

He wondered if he wouldn’t be able to find something like that in the airplane wreckage. Crap, he wished he’d beaten the damn helicopter there, had time to search.

Couldn’t be helped.

He rose and scrambled the distance to the two largest boulders, steadying himself on other large rocks.

“Maddy? It’s me.”

The silence stretched. He was almost to the opening when she said, “Will?”

“Yeah, I’m coming in.”

He parted the pile of fir branches and crawled between them. Same response he’d had earlier. Disliking the cramped space, he wanted to back right out. Tending to claustrophobia, Will had been especially unhappy when his unit was assigned to search caves in Afghanistan for the Taliban. Until today, he’d hoped he would never see a cave again.

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