Page 26

“If I’ve learned one thing from Archie, it’s to never bet against a marine.” Cullen put an arm around her shoulders, and she turned her face to his chest. She was breathing hard, seeming to fight back tears. He was trying to swallow a lump in his own throat.

Then somehow her arms were around him too, and he found himself stroking her hair, this slender woman with a truck-sized helping of grit and grace.

Was it too much? He’d barely known her a day, but she felt so right.

The branches seemed to weave together around them, cutting them off in space and time from the wreck and ruin.

He angled his face down toward hers, drinking in her soft profile, the pearly glimmer of her eyes.

She tipped her mouth up to his and kissed him.

It seemed the most natural thing in the world to return that kiss with one of his own.

Surreal. Definitely not his imagination, though, because he couldn’t have conceived such beautiful warmth, the absolute perfection of that kiss.

They eased apart a few inches, and he was reaching to brush her hair with his palm, moving in for another kiss, when she twitched and inched away.

The moment popped like a soap bubble against an unforgiving thorn.

“I, um, I should close the doors. Keep the air clean for Tot.” She climbed back in and pulled the door shut while he tried to understand what had just taken place.

It felt so ... momentous, but that could be his thumping heart spinning a tale.

He’d shared a kiss with an astonishing, complicated, surprising woman because they’d been through terrible trauma and they were both worrying about Archie.

It probably shouldn’t have taken him aback that she clearly had some second thoughts and appeared not to want to acknowledge what had just happened between them.

Other things to consider at the moment , Landry.

But his lips still tingled and pulsed from the kiss, and his arms missed the feel of her body against his.

A twig caught his hair as he plowed back to the driver’s seat.

Tot had fallen into a quiet examination of a plastic toy Kit had given her.

All right. He resigned the moment to the back part of his brain.

They hunkered down in the ATV as the morning turned from silver to dull cream.

The less movement now the bet ter. The quick glimpses he’d gotten indicated Nico and Simon had moved almost out of range, uncertain about the location of their quarry, and they were no doubt still scanning for any sign of movement in the hollow.

He tried to calculate how long it would take Archie to reach the truck and radio for help.

Two hours? Three, maybe, since he’d have to move stealthily.

The list of potential complications was endless.

Archie could fall, break an ankle.

Become lost, victim to ground movement, toxic gasses, heart attack, simple exhaustion, or dehydration.

Kit startled him out of his thoughts by handing Tot to him. “She needs changing and it’s your turn.” She followed up by passing him the wipes and a padded mat. Tot’s legs bicycled as he began the process.

“Hold up, Tottie. You’re not competing in the long jump here.”

“Gah,” Tot answered, then offered a string of syllables that sounded almost like words.

Kit looked up from her perusal of the map to check his progress.

She wasn’t quite making eye contact, and there were spots of color on her cheeks.

He wrangled one of the diaper tabs closed and then the other, re-snapped all the access points, and cleaned his hands with a wipe.

Tot grabbed his sleeve. He suspected she might be ready for some refreshments.

“Would you like to sit up and have a snack, sweetie?”

He propped her up in the passenger seat and opened one of the packets Kit provided and a plastic bowl into which he dumped the cereal.

Tot wasted no time grabbing a handful and cramming it into her mouth.

The puffs he didn’t catch spilled onto the floor and some stuck to her fingers and his when he tried to catch them, but this was clearly an experience to be enjoyed. She smiled, hamster cheeks filled.

“Gah,” she said again.

“Not sure if this is playing or eating, but you’re doing awesome, Tottie.” He caught several more puffs before they hit the floor. Maybe his hand-eye coordination would improve along with his bowling. Delighted, he continued to field rice puffs, lost in the game.

“It’s small,” Kit said, startling him.

He looked at her. “What is?”

“Whatever Nico’s after.”

“Yes.” The thought had occurred to him too. “He mentioned photos. Could be prints or a memory stick?”

“Whatever it is, it’s easily hidden. You said he looked for it in Tot’s things, and he was after the diaper bag. And he didn’t care about the money?”

“He wasn’t aware she’d taken any, and he didn’t appear all that eager to retrieve it. He’s looking for something else.”

“Annette’s phone?”

“He asked about it. Could be why he sent Simon after her and came to the library himself to find us. Cover his bases. Do you remember her having a phone on her? Talking to anyone? Dirt bike Kyle maybe? I’m thinking he’s an ally of Annette’s.”

Kit exhaled in frustration. “No. So far I’ve only got that one memory of her in the pink coat.” She lapsed into a moment of silence. “She was desperate, Cullen. I remember that.”

Desperate. Scared, for herself and Tot. Going to meet Kyle? Escape her life as Nico’s prisoner? Cullen thought about plenty of things that might be stored on Annette’s phone to make Nico worry. Photos, recorded conversations, files. Tot dove in for another fistful of cereal.

“I’ll search through the baby bag again,” Kit said, “but if it were me, I’d have had my phone in my pocket, close by the whole time. She was trying to meet up with Kyle. It would have been her lifeline to communicate with him, especially meeting in the wilderness like this.”

“Yes. My guess is it would have been on her person when she bolted.” He hesitated. “But it could be that Nico might not have allowed Annette to have a phone, or he cloned it to his so he could track everything she did.”

He could feel the fury radiating off Kit as she extracted the duffel bag and plopped it on the seat next to her. “Nico’s an animal. If he’s still looking, Annette is probably alive though, right? Or at least he’s worried she is. The helicopter spotted her, like John said.”

Her voice lifted with hope he didn’t want to squash.

Annette had been spotted hours before, according to John, and there had been no further contact.

Plenty of time for Simon to have found her and killed her, while Nico pressed on to pursue the people he believed had her possessions. No point in sharing that information.

He peered through the binoculars with one hand, his other steadying Tot.

No sign of them or their vehicle, but they might have purposefully moved the truck out of sight to entice their prey into giving themselves away.

Much as he detested hiding like some helpless rabbit, it was the smartest choice, maybe their only one.

When he swiveled the lenses in the other direction, he could make out the timber boom of the mill in the dis tance, a relic from the lumbering days.

Though they’d decided to reroute to Flame Ridge, they hadn’t made it very far, and Silver Canyon was tantalizingly close.

He recalled what he’d seen on Archie’s paper map; this hollow where they currently hid was nestled at the side of a small valley through which ran a creek large enough to power that decrepit sawmill.

It was in ruins now, according to Archie, only some stout walls remaining, but interesting to hikers and the odd photographer.

The trailhead was accessed near that old dinosaur of a mill, the way they might just have to go, regardless of the fact that Nico and Simon were also on the trail. Maybe they could get ahead of the two. He didn’t put much stock in that idea. Nico and Simon had proved to be savvy trackers.

As soon as they moved away, Cullen would have no choice but to sneak them onto the Silver Canyon trail. Somehow. He felt better, having at least oriented himself. An illusion since they were on the brink of a geological catastrophe.

Stay asleep for a little while longer , Ember.

Tot wrapped her tiny fingers around his thumb and pulled it toward her mouth.

“No way, kiddo. You got barracuda teeth.”

She burbled at him.

Kit finished rummaging through the contents of the duffel. “There’s nothing in here that I didn’t see before. Now I wish we hadn’t taken the money along. It’s too bulky.”

Amusing. In what other circumstance would money be an inconvenience? Ten thousand in cool cash would certainly outshine his monthly police pension payout. But this was blood money, bought and paid for with the freedom of other human beings.

He checked his phone, glad he’d charged it while they journeyed away from the library.

No signal, but at least the clock worked.

Going on 9:30 a.m. Where was Archie? Not at the truck yet, for sure.

Archie didn’t expect to find John alive; he’d likely thrown that in for Kit’s sake.

No, he’d seen plenty of death in his day, and John couldn’t have survived the amount of blood he’d lost from those lethally placed shots. His stomach muscles tightened.

There would be a reckoning. Nico and Simon would pay.

He’d summon every last bit of his strength to ensure that they both went to prison for an eternity.

Justice. Elusive though it was, every once in a while he’d gotten a taste of it in his career as a cop.

He craved another, one last savor of it, and he’d get it when he handed Nico and Simon over with enough evidence to lock them both up.

“Cullen.”

He whipped his head around while Tot tried again to chomp his finger.

“There’s something in the bottom of the duffel, underneath the liner. I can feel it.” She’d carefully unloaded the contents and stacked them neatly on the seat while she searched.

“Can you get it out?”

She peeled the bottom panel from the bag, putting the rigid plastic liner on top of the unloaded supplies.

He kept a palm on Tot as he watched Kit remove a small clasp envelope secured in a zip-top bag.

“Bingo,” he murmured. “Good search, Garrido.”

She held it up, opened the plastic bag.

So this was it, the prize that Nico and Simon were willing to kill for, had killed for. Cullen could taste it again on the edges of his tongue, the hint of justice, close and pungent. It was now in their possession.

“And there’s something else ... a lump—”

An odd sound caught his attention. “Did you hear that?”

“Uh-huh.”

It was a roiling, billowing boom as if an enormous load had been dropped from a great height. The vehicle began to shudder, and the spilled puffs of cereal fell off the seat. The tremoring grew more pronounced.

Kit dropped the envelope back into the duffel. “Earthquake.”

“Worse. Buckle in,” he snapped. He handed Tot over into the back seat and she did so.

“This is going to be rough,” he said.

“What is it?”

But he didn’t need to explain. She’d looked out the passenger side window and seen the enormous belch of smoke cloaking the slopes above the valley, the roiling clouds of debris gathering into a monstrous river above the trail as the cliff above them collapsed. Landslide.

He heard her gulp.

A tsunami of timber, rock, and earth was headed right at them.

He put it in gear and punched the ATV out of the blackberry brambles. How fast could he go without hitting a tree or rock that would immobilize them? And Tot with no car seat, nothing to protect her from impact except Kit’s determined hold. Lord , get us out of here .

In the back of his mind, he thought of Archie.

He wouldn’t have had time to hike far enough to be out of range.

Cullen sped through the trees, avoiding a collision with a boulder at the last minute.

Each ticking second revealed the sickening truth.

They wouldn’t outrun the onslaught. The edges of it were already outpacing the ATV, slithering trails of debris that would engulf the tires soon enough.

Their only shot was to find something, anything that would protect them.

“The lumber mill,” he shouted over the growing din.

She might have answered, but he was barely able to control the ATV.

A pile of loosened rocks he hadn’t noticed slid across his path. He braked hard, corrected, and avoided the slide. Around and in between and behind, he drove frantically, riding the gas and brake pedals. Tot cried as Kit struggled to keep her in place.

The far edge of the hollow appeared, close.

Movement in the rearview made his heart stop.

An ocean of debris behind them, swelling with every passing moment as the fallen trees knocked over standing ones, ripping them from the ground and snapping them like matchsticks.

The sheer enormity of it took his breath away for an instant.

He goosed the gas, launching the ATV clear of the hollow and onto a smoother hillside where he pushed the speed. The wheels bumped and ricocheted as they traversed the shuddering ground. Fewer trees here also meant the monster behind them would surge unimpeded.

The jutting remnant of the lumber mill appeared above the choking clouds.

Those old bones had withstood decades of punishment.

He prayed they would be enough to save three helpless people from the rage of an angry mountain.