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A chill ran through her. “We need to get out of here. It looks like they’re checking the detonation wires. They’re going to blast into the mountain.” She pushed away from the rock.
“They’ll see us!”
“Better than being blown back into that hole. Move, Frogman.”
She edged away from the boulder. Then, as one of the men disappeared behind the truck, she took off.
Boulders and dirt and scrub brush evidenced previous mining efforts, although years had gone by, because trees had found footing in the soil.
A shout lifted behind them, but she ignored it. And then shots. They pinged off the boulders around them, shredded bark?—
The shooting stopped, and now a shout lifted.Ogon’!
Fire in the hole.She skidded behind a protruding boulder, Stein on her tail. He slid, then caught up to her?—
The mountain blew. The explosion rumbled the entire mountain, the hillside shuddering, rock spitting down over them, dust rising from the hole.
“Now we know what caused the earthquake,” Stein said, but his voice sounded tight, his breathing fast.
“C’mon!” She grabbed Stein’s shirt and hauled him up, but he was already moving. She ran down the hill ahead of him, spotting a dirt road ahead. It led back around the mountain, hopefully toward Esperanza and her boat ride out of here.
And it hit her then?—
She’d done it. Gotten her hands on the program, andhello,mission accomplished. Sure, Stein might try to grapple the program away from her, but frankly, he could have done that any time during their trek.
Or negotiated for it on the cliffside—her life for the program.
But he seemed rattled by what she’d told him about his boss, so...
They reached the road, and she lit out into a run, the dirt and stones of the unpaved road digging into her feet, despite the padding. But she ignored it, kept moving.
This island wasn’t so big that she couldn’t simply run all the way back to town, her fatigue gone in the rush of adrenaline.
A grunt lifted behind her, and it occurred to her then that Stein hadn’t caught up to her. She slowed. Turned.
He went down hard, twenty feet behind her. Rolled onto his back, and now his grunts turned verbal.
What the—“Stein!”
She ran back, her gaze on the mountain. Dust still puffed the air, but it seemed they hadn’t alerted anyone. For now.
He lay on the ground, grimacing, holding his torso, and?—
Blood soaked his hands, his shirt.
“What happened?” She skidded to a stop, dropped to her knees beside him.
He grimaced. “Sorry.”
“Sorry? You’re sorry—” She moved his hands away. “Oh?—”
Blood spurted from a hole right below one of those perfect pectoral muscles. “You’re shot.”
“You don’t have to sound so disgusted. It wasn’t on purpose.” He groaned, lay back. “It’s getting hard to breathe.”
“You could just be out of shape.”
He opened one eye.