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“Uncertain.” It was more than happenstance how Nico kept zeroing in on their location.

“I’m thinking he’s got a tracker on us somehow, but we’ll deal with that later.

He’ll have to stop the bleeding. Get another weapon and his brother.

” He grabbed the water and shoved a sleeve of crackers into his pocket.

“We can’t go out the way we came in. Too easy for them to stop us. We’re slow in the bus.”

“Thelma and Frank had a trail map in the bedroom, and I took a look at it. There are a couple of routes out of the valley, one road winds past the lake. Nico probably won’t expect us to take that one.”

They’d still be painfully slow, but what was the alternative?

His gut quivered at the thought that once again they were on the run, away from the location where Gideon would arrive to save them.

They could hide somewhere close, if possible.

Desperation plucked at his nerves, but he elbowed it aside.

“I’ll go first and check. Stay in the trailer until I signal you. ”

She nodded. Tot’s hair was sticking up in clumps, and she reached for Cullen.

“Later, Tottie girl.” When he thought of how easy it would have been for Nico to kill her or Kit, his fear turned to fury.

He hurried across the road, scanning, but he saw no sign of Nico having doubled back.

He signaled to Kit, who sprinted with Tot across the road.

He took the baby and buckled himself in while Kit did the same in the driver’s seat.

Once again it required several moments of patience on Kit’s part before the engine throbbed into action.

He watched her profile, face set with determination.

Though love wasn’t an issue for him and Kit, he could not battle back an enormous swell of admiration.

He wasn’t certain he could’ve come up with the idea to use a hanger as a weapon. Courage under fire.

He kept hold of Tot as the bus jostled back onto the road heading in the opposite direction from the trailer park. “There’s a lake access this way,” Kit said. “Hopefully it will be wide enough to accommodate the bus.”

It’ ll have to be , or we’ll be on foot again.

The morning was frosty, glimmers of ice showing in shallow pockets on the ground.

He wished they’d had a minute to warm some formula for Tot or even change her into heavier clothes.

He wrapped his jacket around her, keeping her down well below the windows in case Nico or Simon was in a position to take a shot at them.

It was a point in their favor that Nico was likely bleeding with an injury that had to hurt like nobody’s business.

He’d need to address that immediately before he passed out.

Unfortunately, Kit was forced to keep their speed to a slow creep to avoid areas of thick mud.

Twice she had to back up and navigate around fallen logs, an effort made harder due to the fact that the sunrise didn’t actually penetrate the thickening gloom.

Once they stopped for him to clear an obstruction, which took longer than it should have.

Back aboard, he wondered if the movement he felt was purely the wheels searching for traction or more earthquakes.

Or maybe it was his growing angst that they were moving away from the rescue location he’d given Gideon.

They rumbled up the slight slope, trees crowding in on both sides of the path. Below and to the right the lake rippled, pushing debris across its surface as if it were trying to cleanse itself. Kit slammed on the brakes as they came upon a log stretching the length of the road. A log. Odd.

Too neat, too precise. “Turn—” he started as Nico drove from behind a screen of shrubs, stopped on the other side of the log, and hopped out, using the door as a shield to protect himself.

He smiled grimly as if he’d been expecting them and raised a rifle.

Cullen lowered Tot onto the floor, where she immediately started to cry, and pulled his own weapon, breathing hard. Escape options. Now.

Movement by the lake below caught his eye.

Simon was in the distance, wrestling with an enormous branch near the water.

Cullen discerned their plan. Simon would lug it behind them while Nico covered them with his gun.

They’d be boxed in. How could they have emerged from one ambush directly into another?

Should Kit reverse before Simon got the branch into position? If anyone could steer a bus backward down a hill it was her.

Kit’s hand hovered on the gearshift. Cullen glanced from Nico to Simon down by the water. A shorebird pecked at the sandy soil near Simon’s feet, snagging whatever it could find to eat. Nico pointed his gun at the bus windshield, holding the weapon with both hands.

He’d shoot the moment she began to back up.

Cullen wouldn’t have time to draw and fire his own weapon, which Nico fully knew. The moment he showed his gun, Nico would fire a round through the glass and kill Kit, then Cullen and Tot. A standoff if there ever was one.

Nico jerked the weapon toward the bus door. The message was clear. Get out.

And he’d shoot them dead on the spot and take the duffel. Simon succeeded in hefting the branch from the sticky shore. No more time.

Cullen kept his eyes on Nico. “I’ll go meet him. Soon as I step down, you reverse out of here.”

“No.” Her jaw was clenched so tight a muscle danced and twitched.

“No other choice, Kit. You done real good getting us to this point.” There were so many more things he wanted to say, but it was game over.

He slid the gun behind his back and tucked it into his belt before he raised his palms slowly and pointed to the door, indicating he was getting out.

As he turned, the tires began to bump up and down on the ground, the windows rattling. Another quake.

Nico felt it, too, and grabbed his open door, but he didn’t lose his concentration on his target. He was leaning on one foot, favoring the leg with the wound Kit had given him. Satisfying, but not enough. Neither was the heaving ground sufficient to distract Nico.

The interior of the bus rattled louder. Not a massive quake by the feel of it, but the lake demanded his attention, suddenly boiling and bubbling like a massive stewpot. He peered in disbelief. Kit gasped.

Simon straightened at the shore’s edge, arms still around his dripping bundle.

Nico shot a half look, trying to spy his brother and maintain his aim on his prisoners.

A pungent smell of sulfur drifted into the bus.

The bird took off flying crookedly as if it had lost its equilibrium.

Without warning, Simon collapsed, sprawled spine first on the damp ground, the branch falling on top of him.

Cullen gaped. What had he just witnessed?

Nico’s mouth opened as he shouted for his brother.

“It can’t be,” Kit murmured.

“Can’t be what?” He darted attention between the fallen Simon and Nico, trying to understand what he was seeing.

Nico goggled, eyes wild as he tried to comprehend.

“Down!” Kit yelled as she ripped the bus into reverse and hit the gas, scrunching low. He grabbed for Tot as she slid around the floor. Nico fired a series of bullets shattering the windshield and spraying them with glass.

Cullen held Tot tight, struggling to keep them from being tossed about.

Twenty frantic yards of full-speed retreat and Kit stomped the brakes, swung the bus into a turn.

He managed to crawl into the seat, curl over the baby with one arm and hold on with the other.

They were moving at top speed, the trees and bushes flashing by.

A risky glimpse told him Nico had run toward Simon but changed his mind and dove into his SUV instead.

Leaving his brother?

She passed the flooded parking lot by the trailers.

“Exit road,” Cullen said. “Maybe we can outrun him.”

“No,” she said frantically. “We need to go up.”

“Why?” he shouted over the squeal of tires, but she didn’t answer.

Several steep routes spidered up and away from the trailer park.

The first he spied was a twisting horse trail, a wooded hillside path with places where they could hide—which might be her plan—but it was rough and rutted.

He grimaced as she rammed the gas and surged ahead.

Would the bus be able to take the grade?

Boots braced against the floorboards, he held steady as she zoomed up the hill.

The path was tight. The bus sprayed debris from its wheels as it struggled to keep traction. She swerved into a turn, then another. Why had she chosen this way?

There was no chance to ask her about it as they sped upward for one mile, then two.

He’d lost sight of Nico. Behind them? Had he taken a different route?

Gone back for Simon? When she finally guided the bus to a stop behind an enormous rock pile, overgrown with stringy bay bushes, he handed the baby over and grabbed his binoculars. “I’ll check.”

She triggered the door to open for him. He slipped out and climbed atop the rock pile to scan the routes leading up the slope to their position. He didn’t see Nico’s truck. He zoomed in on the lake, still uncertain about what he’d witnessed. What he saw there confirmed she hadn’t been overreacting.

He returned to the idling bus, and Tot lay against Kit’s shoulder watching a leaf on the windshield caught in a bullet hole, her fist wrapped in Kit’s hair.

“Didn’t spot Nico, but I could see the lake.” He hesitated.

She freed her hair from Tot’s tugging fingers and waited for him to continue.

“Simon’s ... still lying there. Looks dead.” His stomach felt queasy as he took Tot from her. “What happened, Kit?”

She chewed her lip. “I’m not sure.”

“Yes, you are. Explain it to me, please.”

She darted a look at the spinning leaf. “I think it was a limnic eruption.”

Tot grabbed for the binoculars hanging around his neck. He let her toy with the strap. “What’s that, exactly? I’ve never heard of a limnic eruption.”

“It happens when magma builds up under a lake and the carbon dioxide dissolves into the water until it becomes saturated. It’s like if you shake up a soda can.

Some trigger pushes the gas upward, probably the volcanic activity, and there isn’t enough pressure to keep it in solution.

It explodes and discharges the gas into the air. ”

The gas. He stared at her. “Carbon dioxide causes suffocation.”

She nodded, resting her shaking hands on the wheel. “Yes.”

He reeled. Simon had suffocated, along with anything else in the vicinity that required oxygen. If Nico hadn’t put enough distance between himself and the lake, he might very well be dead also.

“And you drove up instead of down because carbon dioxide is heavier than air.”

“Yes.”

He let out a long, low whistle. “Kit, thank you for not doing what I told you.”

“You’re welcome.”

His gaze remained on her until a pink flush crept up her cheeks, and he realized there must be out-and-out admiration in his expression. “How did you know all that?”

“I read a lot.”

“I think I need to renew my library card.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And the driving. In reverse. Evel Knievel couldn’t have done better.”

She shrugged, looking away. “Where’s Nico, do you think?”

“If he changed his mind and went back for Simon, he could be dead too. If not, he may be somewhere close. Won’t take him too long to figure out he bypassed our hiding spot, especially if he’s got a tracker on us. Guy has more lives than a cat.”

“But his brother didn’t.”

“No.” They fell silent for a moment.

His pulse still thundered in his ears. They’d just watched a man suffocate. And they’d been moments away from doing the same.

Cullen paced the narrow aisle, distractedly patting Tot as she gummed the strap of the binoculars. “The only item of Annette’s we’ve been carrying is the duffel bag.”

Kit’s eyes went wide. “The lump. I felt a lump when I discovered the envelope. I completely forgot about it with everything that’s happened. You don’t suppose ...”

“Hold her a minute, would you?” Cullen handed off the baby and snagged the duffel from under the seat where it had settled. He unzipped it and dumped everything out.

“I packed that up carefully,” Kit said, disapprovingly. “You’re making a mess.”

He ignored her and ran his hands over the lining, checking the pockets, turning them inside out.

“Bingo.” He pulled out a small rectangular device for her to see. “It was between the lining and the outer fabric. Explains how they found us at the library too.”

She groaned.

He felt like doing the same.

Nico and his brother had been tracking them the whole time.