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SIX

Cullen would not allow himself to think about what had almost happened in his cabin.

“Narrow escape” didn’t even capture it. The SUV guys hadn’t wasted a moment fixing their flat and tracking them.

And Evel had actually busted through the kitchen door.

Cold swamped him from the inside out. Evel could have killed Kit if she hadn’t unloaded on him.

A smile curled his lips. Kit was impressive.

He snaked an admiring glance at her, his cheeks warming when she caught him looking.

“What?” She clutched the baby defensively. “I’m holding her as tight as I can without squishing her.”

“Not that. You’re doing fine. Kudos on the way you handled Evel back there. That was excellent.”

She blinked, smiled faintly, and lifted a shoulder. “He had it coming.”

“That’s for darn sure.”

She shifted on the seat. “He said ‘She’s mine. They’re mine. I want them back.’”

“Did he drop any names?”

“Annette. And he said she could hurt them.”

“If Annette is Tot’s mom, she’s clearly been trying hard to escape and she must have found something to serve as insurance.”

“Evel could be lying.” She voiced his own question. “Is she running from him? Or the SUV guys?”

“Maybe both. Whatever she did, stealing that money or running away, she made some people angry.” Angry enough to kill.

“She’s not anybody’s,” Kit said fiercely.

“What?”

“He said, ‘They’re mine,’ but they aren’t anyone’s property, Annette and Tot. I don’t have to be acquainted with Annette to know that.” She jiggled the baby more vigorously.

“Agreed.” The emotion in her voice tightened the muscles in his belly. Kit was a force, an enigma. He wished they could sit down across from each other so he could look into her delicate face and understand who she was and what she’d been through. It’d be a fascinating story, he had no doubt.

Concentration was required elsewhere. He attempted to avoid the big dips that might take out the axle, but he was flying blind with the darkness and the debris.

“You ...” He lost the rest of it as they slammed into a hidden crevice and out again, his cranium impacting the roof. She yelped, and Tot let loose a screech as he struggled to correct but not before another tooth-rattling jostle.

“Sorry.”

“Where are we going?” Kit said over the baby’s screams.

“There’s a bridge over the creek. Only shortcut to Grandlake from here.

” If we don’t blow a tire first. He wondered again how the SUV guys had managed to change their flat so quickly.

Must have some mechanical skills. Definitely advanced tracking ability since they’d been found again in speedy fashion in spite of the conditions.

The only glimpse he’d gotten had been two guys, one trim and dark-haired, the other with a bush of unruly curls protruding from under his knit cap.

Only two? He prayed there were no more wolves circling, waiting to join in the hunt.

Bad enough the motorcycle dude had made an escape.

They bumped their way past the trees and up a gradual slope that reassured him they were headed in the right direction. Thick clumps of pines grew sparser as they rose in elevation, and he tried not to listen to his brain screaming, This isn’t safe , you dolt!

His breath caught as they took in the massive bulk of Mount Ember silhouetted against the shrouded moon.

Normally her steep granite sides, rising some nine thousand feet into the sky, would be visible only occasionally, her top sporting a crown of snow that remained year-round.

Now the magnificent slopes were misshapen, the eastern side bulging out like a grotesque pimple.

Farther south there was a giant pockmark where none had been before.

He felt like they were traversing an alien terrain.

They were only ninety miles south of Seattle, but they might as well be on Mars.

Kit peered out the driver’s side window to get a look.

“I heard on the news Tuesday night that the steam explosion made a two-hundred-fifty-foot crater. The bulge in her side is growing six feet a day as the magma rises up the cone of the volcano. Geologists are predicting the main eruption within days. There’ll be an avalanche and mudflows from the melting snow.

Smoke, ash, catastrophic ground movement.

The red zone is expected to be fully impacted. ”

“The red zone was extended fifteen miles last I checked.”

She nodded. “Maybe twenty now. Emergency Services keeps updating it.”

Kit had to be thinking what he was. They were well within that deadly distance and moving deeper into the explosion zone with every mile.

The town of Grandlake where they were headed was settled squarely in the foothills of the angry monster, as was his cabin.

Was there another way? Find the nearest cleared road and try to get off the mountain?

“In the articles I’ve read, scientists are predicting total devastation within the evac area.” She spoke calmly, as if she were delivering a weather report.

“I’m not sure I want to know all that.” In his peripheral vision he caught her puzzled head cock.

“Why wouldn’t you? It’s all relevant information.” The baby’s cries had settled to low whimpers.

“Facts aside, I prefer to leave room for the ‘what if.’”

“The ‘what if’?”

He edged them around an endless series of fallen trees. “Sure. We’re being chased by killers and we have this unidentified baby and a volcano threatening to go bananas, but what if we get out of this unscathed?”

He heard her dismissive sniff.

“There’s practically zero chance of that happening, Cullen.”

“Yeah, but what if we succeed in spite of everything?”

“Rose-colored glasses aren’t going to keep us from dying.”

“I prefer to attribute it to experience. I’ve seen God do plenty of miracles, so why not another one here and now?”

She didn’t quite roll her eyes but almost. “We’re on our own. God’s not interested in three insignificant people.”

“You’re not insignificant,” he said quietly. “And neither is Tot.”

She rested her cheek on Tot’s head, her shoulders softening for a moment before she spoke again. “We’re probably not going to get out alive, but if the ‘what if’ gives you comfort...”

It did. This moment, these days, his life, would be over when God said so. Not a moment before. He’d learned that when the truck door had come flying off its hinges, missing him by inches.

But not missing his partner, Daniela. There’d been moments, plenty of them, when he’d wished he’d taken that impact instead of her.

He realized with a jolt that if God had answered that prayer, Kit and Tot would likely be dead.

There was a reason Cullen had been climbing down from the roof of his cabin at the very moment Kit’s truck hurtled off the road.

That was too massive a coincidence, and he didn’t believe in those.

He swallowed, gripped the wheel tighter.

Let’s see what you’ re up to here , God.

Eventually they reached the far end of the pasture where he let them out through another gate and locked it behind him. He’d never secured his fields before, until he heard reports of animals being stolen a few months back. Painful to put locks on, he’d thought at the time. Now he was grateful.

“Another mile, but it’s steep.”

She nodded, braced her bare feet against the floor. The meager moonlight had succumbed under a thick haze. The tires kicked up a coating of muck that the wipers smeared instead of cleared as they headed away from his land.

“It’s like driving through a bowl of chowder,” he muttered.

The river would be swollen, both with the aftermath of a recent storm series and the deposited debris from the continuous earthquakes. Once they were over, it would be a fairly straight shot to Archie’s place. Another thirty minutes, tops.

He prayed they would find something to help.

A working phone, a search and rescue safety patrol, heck, even an old CB radio they could use to contact the outside world.

He felt acutely the loss of his rifle, dropped when the drainpipe had given way.

He hadn’t had a moment to reveal that setback to Kit.

The woman had enough on her plate, didn’t she? They were down to one handgun.

The air was choked with a cloud of fine dust. Reluctantly, he rolled the window down just far enough for him to stick his head out. “Sorry. I gotta see where I’m going. Hold your breath if you can. Keep Tot covered.”

It was the odor that warned him first, a fragrance of freshly moved earth that swelled above the acrid tang, as if a backhoe had recently plowed up the compacted ground.

Stop! His brain shouted the command. After a hard brake, he put the truck in park and got out. He blinked, shone his flashlight across the soil as he tried to absorb what he was seeing. Great chunks of the riverbank were gone, along with the bridge supports. Not six feet from my front tire...

His boots sank a few inches into the loose debris as he tiptoed closer.

The bridge itself was knocked sideways, sticking out like a severed limb from under a tomb of fallen rock. Even as he watched, the detritus rattled and slid as if the volcano were reminding them it was far from finished.

Hands on his hips, he stared.

There was no way to cross the river, not in the truck.

Kit climbed out. “Tot’s on the floor and she’s not happy that we stopped. What’s the delay?” With her elbow crooked over her mouth to protect her lungs, she took in the ruins.

“No way across.” Captain Obvious. Regroup. Now. “New plan. We’ll have to hike.”

“No way. Can’t we find another route?”

“Too steep and wooded here. Only other choice would be to retrace back to my cabin. And we know who we’d encounter if we chose that option.”

Kit’s breath puffed white in the air. “How far?”

“Good news is they won’t be able to cross either, and they don’t know the way around, I hope. They’ll double back in their vehicle. Buys us time.”