Page 15

FIFTEEN

EMILY

“Oh my God, Ryder, henchman!” I cry, pointing at the terrifying man who just jumped out from behind a tree. “Henchman!”

The henchman looks at me in confusion. “No. Malcolm.”

“The henchman’s name is Malcolm!” I tell Ryder, who’s standing right next to me and therefore doesn’t actually require a play-by-play of the situation. “Malcolm has a gun!”

I curse myself for getting so distracted by Ryder’s abs—again—and listening so intently to what he was about to say that I didn’t notice an armed man creeping amongst the trees.

“Oh, this?” Malcolm, whose blocky head, muscular neck, and wide mouth give him the look of a human pit bull, points at the gun with his free hand. “This is nothing for you to worry about, as long as you do what I say.”

He uses the gun to beckon us toward him. “Come on. I’ll take you back to the ship, we’ll give Dr.Sinclair his diamond, and you’ll be free to enjoy the rest of your vacation. Pretty good deal, right?”

“Wrong,” Ryder says flatly. “That sounds like a terrible deal. Besides, the diamond isn’t Sinclair’s. And this is not a vacation! This is actually the worst trip I’ve ever been on.”

“To be honest, it’s not my favorite, either,” Malcolm the henchman says. “Too many insects.” He swats at a mosquito, then waves his gun at us. “Come on then, lovebirds. Let’s get a move on.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Ryder says. “Oprah taught me never to let myself get taken to the second location.”

“And just to be clear, we’re not actually lovebirds,” I tell Malcolm, gesturing to Ryder and me. “It’s kind of a complicated situation.”

I’m pretty sure the surly giant in front of us couldn’t care less about whatever romantic entanglement we have going on, but I figure that the longer we stand here talking, the better chance Ryder and I have of coming up with an escape plan.

“I’m just his client,” I add. “And he’s just my tour guide.”

“Come on, do you have to say it like that?” Ryder asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Like what?”

“Like the idea of us being together is so crazy.” He gives me a meaningful look, and it takes me a second to realize that for once, Ryder and I are on the same page: keep up the banter. Distract Malcolm. Survive.

“It is crazy,” I insist, giving him a look right back. “Because how could I ever be with a man who doesn’t read memoirs?”

“Great question, Edwards. Here’s another: how could I ever be with a woman who irons her bedsheets?”

“Why do you say that like it’s weird?” I ask, my response genuine. “That’s a thing that people do! It makes sheets crisp and wrinkle free!”

“Who cares about wrinkle-free sheets?” Ryder says. “It’s what happens between them that matters.”

“You two are something else,” Malcolm says, shaking his head at us. “You remind me of me and my wife, Miriam. We couldn’t be more different, her and I. It’s funny how opposites attract, isn’t it? She’s a real stickler for the rules, and I’m…not.”

“You don’t say,” Ryder says dryly, his gaze shifting toward Malcolm’s gun, and I scramble to keep the chaos going.

“You know what, Fleet?” I ask, putting my hands on my hips. “I bet Malcolm here would never call Miriam ma’am. Or call her breast a chesticle. And I bet he would never in a million years imply that he doesn’t find her any more attractive than a tree. Right, Malcolm?”

“Well, obviously,” Malcolm says. “I’m not a total idiot.”

“Listen,” Ryder argues, “I already told you, I didn’t mean what you heard me say. I do find you attractive. I find you very attractive. Even when you’re correcting my speech and blasting me with bear spray and getting us tangled up with the Sinclairs and Malcolms of the world.”

“ I’m getting us tangled up?” I ask in disbelief. “ You’re the one who initially got us lost. Besides, you can say you find me attractive all day long, but everyone knows that actions speak louder than words.”

“Oh, I see. You want action, huh?” Ryder says. “Like what went down in the pond?”

Malcolm glances from Ryder to me warily. “What went down in the pond?”

“Do you want me to kiss you again?” Ryder asks. He takes a step closer to me, and I swear my heart, already racing from having a gun in my face, speeds up even further at his nearness.

“Because I’ll kiss you right here, right now,” he continues. “Right in front of our buddy Malcolm. Would you like that?”

“Uh, not so much,” Malcolm chimes in. “That kinda seems like something you should save for later.”

Ryder nods.

“Malcolm’s right. Our kisses should be private,” he agrees, his gaze lingering on to my lips. “Intimate, if you will.”

All seven trillion nerves in my body tingle at his use of intimate , at how he says it slowly, carefully, like his tongue is savoring every syllable.

“Besides,” Ryder adds, his body mere inches from me, “I wouldn’t want to start something I couldn’t finish.”

“No,” I agree, my heart thumping. “You wouldn’t.”

“Yeah so, this is all making me pretty uncomfortable,” Malcolm says, tapping his gun against his palm. “Let’s go. My canoe’s that way.”

“Just let me check her leg first, okay?” Ryder says, bending down to examine my ankle. “She’s injured.”

I don’t point out that we have more pressing matters than my sprained ankle. Instead, I watch as Ryder, quick as a flash, grabs a rock off the ground and curls his fist around it.

“She looks fine to me,” Malcolm says, nudging Ryder in the back and pointing toward the stretch of Lake Superior that’s barely visible through the trees. “Chop, chop.”

Ryder finally breaks his heated gaze away from me and looks at Malcolm, the show clearly over. “Fine,” he says. “But I call dibs on seat one.”

He takes my hand and leads me toward Malcolm, and I dig my fingernails into his palm.

“What are you doing?” I hiss, barely moving my lips to get the words out.

He squeezes my hand in response. “I’ve got this. Just follow my lead.”

But his lead seems to be taking us straight to Malcolm, who is probably in for a hefty payday the second he hands us over to Killian. And once Killian finds the Evermore diamond hidden in my pack—well, that’s a path too dark to let my mind wander down.

“Now, just so you know,” Malcolm says, removing actual zip ties from his pocket, “none of this is personal. You two seem like nice enough folks. But orders are orders, you know?” He motions for Ryder and me to turn around. “I’ll cut the ties as soon as Dr.Sinclair’s got the diamond. I promise.”

“How reassuring,” I say dryly, waiting for Ryder to reveal his brilliant plan.

“Hey, do you guys want to hear a knock-knock joke?” my tour guide asks, grinning at the henchman and me.

“No,” Malcolm and I say in unison.

Ryder scoffs at us. “Rude. Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. Knock, knock, Malcolm,” he says, looking cool as a cucumber as the henchman strides toward him, gun and zip ties ready.

Malcolm, who seems to be a pretty good sport for an armed criminal, rolls his eyes. “Fine. Who’s there?”

“SLINGSHOT!” Ryder cries, whipping the homemade contraption out of his pocket just before Malcolm reaches him. He loads a rock onto the slingshot, pulls it back, and releases as Malcolm lunges at him.

It would have been a decent plan if we were in a fourth-grade recess brawl, or if he had an actual functioning slingshot and not one fashioned out of sticks and underwear elastic. But we aren’t, and he doesn’t, and I watch, stunned, as the elastic breaks, sending the rock flying directly into the side of my head.

“What the fuck, Ryder!” I cry, my head throbbing with pain.

Malcolm, his vibe much less amicable now, curses under his breath. Then he reaches into his jacket with his free hand and pulls out a second gun, aiming one at Ryder and one at me. “I was trying to be nice about this, but no more fucking around.”

“Great job, Ryder,” I say sarcastically. “Way to go. Now he’s double fisting guns.”

“It worked on Losers in the Jungle ,” he grumbles.

“Move it,” Malcolm instructs with a scowl, raising his guns an inch. “Head east.”

A dejected-looking Ryder nods and begins to hike, and I take a shaky breath and walk along after him.

“That’s west,” Malcolm says, shaking his head at Ryder.

“I knew that,” my tour guide says, turning swiftly on his heel and hiking in the opposite direction.

“Hopeless,” Malcolm mutters.

“You know, you’re right,” Ryder says. He turns around to face Malcolm, whose gun is mere inches from his face. “I am hopeless. This whole situation is hopeless. Because we all know that once Sinclair gets the diamond, he’ll have you shoot us dead.”

Malcolm blanches. “Well, not me, exactly. He’ll probably have Butcher handle it.”

“Oh my God,” I exclaim. “There’s a guy on your team named Butcher ?”

“No, no,” Malcolm says, shaking his head like that’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard. “Butcher’s a lady.”

My head swims, and it’ll be a miracle if I don’t pass out before we reach the canoe.

“Anyway, Dr.Sinclair likes you,” Malcolm tells me. “He might let you live.” He glances at Ryder. “You’re probably a goner, though.”

“If that’s the case, then I accept my fate,” Ryder says. He looks at me, his brown eyes flickering with defiance. “But I won’t go to my grave without kissing you one more time, Emily Edwards. I need to remember how your mouth tastes, how the softness of your lips drives me wild. I need you to be mine, for real, if only just for a moment.”

His chest heaves as he takes a step toward me, and I don’t know if this is genuine or part of another harebrained scheme to escape Malcolm’s clutches, but I honestly don’t even care. All I know is that I want to remember how his mouth tastes, too. I want to feel his lips on mine again, too.

I want to feel what I felt when he kissed me in the pond, when he said my name with an ardent, heated reverence.

“You know, now is really not the time,” Malcolm says, but Ryder struts past him as if he doesn’t have a gun pointed in each of our faces. As if we’re not in imminent danger of being killed just like Dr.Sharp. As if he doesn’t care even if we are.

“Be mine,” Ryder says, his voice gruff and wanting. “Please, Emily, be mine.”

“I’m yours,” I say, and I don’t know if he means it, but I do, and my lips part instinctually as he leans his face down toward mine and grabs me by the waist, pulling me toward him. He lowers his forehead to mine, his eyelashes tickling my skin. I close my eyes and wait for the delicious sensation of his lips on mine, for one fleeting moment of pleasure in the midst of a hellish ordeal.

But his kiss never comes. Instead, Ryder snakes an arm over my shoulder, reaching past me. Then he grabs the bear spray holstered to the straps of my pack, spins around, and unleashes it on Malcolm.

“My eyes!” a stunned Malcolm cries, falling to his knees as he fires his gun blindly. Ryder torches him with another blast as I cover my head, and then he reaches back to grab my hand.

“Run!” he shouts, coughing, and he grips my wrist and leads me east.

“Run faster!” Ryder cries when I can’t keep up. My injured ankle throbs with every step, making it impossible for me to pick up speed.

I grit my teeth and push through the pain, adrenaline coursing through me, until suddenly Ryder scoops me up into his arms like I’m a giant baby. Terrified, I squeeze my eyes shut as Malcolm shoots at our backs. Luckily, being temporarily blinded does no favors for his aim, and Ryder grunts as he sprints toward Lake Superior.

I have no idea how he’s managing to carry me and my heavy pack, but I bury my face in the nook between his chest and neck and hold on for dear life. And though I’ve never been in a more dangerous circumstance than this one, the realization strikes me that somehow, in defiance of reason and logic and the bullets whizzing around us, I’ve never felt more protected.

—

“There,” Ryder says finally, gasping for air. “The canoe!”

He sprints another fifty meters and sets me down unceremoniously, rushing to move the canoe off the rocky shore where Malcolm beached it.

“Hurry!” he instructs. “Get in.”

I grit my teeth and clamber to my feet. “Where are we gonna go?”

“I don’t know, but we have to get the hell out of here. If any of Sinclair’s men heard those gunshots, they’ll come running. And once they find Malcolm, he’ll tell them we came this way.”

He shrugs off his pack and tosses it into the canoe. “Get in!”

“Wait,” I say, unzipping my pack. “First, life jackets.”

“There’s an army of minions after us, Edwards!” Ryder cries. “We don’t have time for life jackets!”

I scowl at him. “There is always time for life jackets.”

He rolls his eyes but slips his on when I toss it to him, and I grab my pack and carefully step into the boat.

“Do you know anything about canoeing?” I ask, watching as he pushes the vessel into the water and hops in.

He looks at me. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want answers to.”

I sigh and take a paddle, dipping it into the water as Ryder grabs the second one.

“Go, go, go!” he says, rowing furiously. “Push, Edwards, push!”

I don’t know what he means by push—surely I’m not supposed to literally push the water away from the boat with the paddle?—and so I just paddle as hard as I can, my arms ablaze with exhaustion.

“You’re doing it wrong!” Ryder says, yelling at me like he’s Jason and I’m the underperforming kickball teammate who cost us the big game. “You’re doing it wrong, and we’re going in circles!”

“ You’re doing it wrong!” I counter, water splashing in my face as I realize that we are indeed turning the boat in circles.

“Steer with me, not against!” he cries, his arms working the paddle vigorously.

“I don’t know how to steer!” I tell him. “I couldn’t steer against you if I tried!”

“Why would you try to steer against me?” he asks, his tone aggrieved. “We’re supposed to be a team!”

“Can you chill out?” I ask, my ankle throbbing and my head pounding from where Ryder pelted me with the rock. “I can’t think when you’re like this.”

“No, Emily, I cannot chill out!” Ryder says, spiraling. “Because we both just almost died again , and I’m exhausted, and I’m hangry, and I think I got stung by a bee or something on my calf, because it really fucking hurts! Oh, and also, I lost my pack. I slid it off so we could run faster.”

Well, that effing sucks, considering his pack had most of our food, but we don’t have time to wallow.

“Here,” I say, setting my paddle down. “You steer. I’ll look at your leg.” I scoot toward him and gently lift his right leg, placing it in my lap. “Is this the one that hurts?”

He nods, and I glance at his calf expecting to see a bugbite or a beesting. Instead, I find a one-inch wound that, despite not being very deep, looks gnarly as hell.

“Is it a beesting?” Ryder asks, grimacing. “I hate bees.”

“Um, Ryder?” I ask. “Did you feel something sting you?”

He shakes his head. “I just felt a sharp pain when we were running back there. Why?”

I bite my lip, not sure exactly how to deliver this news. “Because you appear to have been, shall we say, a little bit grazed by a bullet.”

Dazed, Ryder drops his paddle into the water, and I rush to grab it back.

“ A little bit grazed by a bullet? ” he repeats, going alarmingly pale. “Holy shit. That fucker shot me!”

“It’s not so bad, really,” I say, trying to comfort him. “The bullet nicked your skin and then kept on zooming past.” I make a cute zooming sound, hoping that will ease some of the tension, but it doesn’t.

“Zoomed past, my ass!” Ryder says, retching when he glances at the wound on his calf. “I have been shot! I have been wounded . We don’t even have any bandages left! Which means we can’t cover my gunshot wound . Which means it might get infected, and my leg might swell up, and I might die.”

I watch as he grows increasingly flustered.

“That seems to be an unlikely escalation—” I say, but Ryder cuts me off.

“Who will watch Hallmark Channel Christmas movies with Lulu?” he asks, his chest heaving. “Who will give Tara Caleb’s boat? I never even got to catch up on Breaking Bad , Emily! I mean, I know how it ends, because how could anyone not, but I hadn’t actually seen it, you know? I just started streaming season two!”

“Who’s Lulu?” I ask. “Caleb had a boat?”

He doesn’t seem to hear me. Instead, he runs his hands through his hair, panting.

“Ryder,” I say gently, placing a hand on his chest, “look at me. You’re going to be okay. But I think you’re having a panic attack.”

“No, it’s blood loss,” he insists, gripping the sides of the canoe so tightly that I can see his knuckles blanch. “I’m feeling faint from all the blood I lost from my gunshot wound —”

I glance at the wound again, which is small enough that two Band-Aids could cover it. “No, I don’t think that’s it.”

“I can’t breathe,” Ryder wheezes. “Malcolm shot me, and now I can’t breathe.”

He looks at me, his expression haunted, and I can practically see the stress of the last few days bubbling up inside him.

“Hey,” I say, keeping my voice steady and calm. “Look at me. You’re okay.”

“I’m not okay—”

“You’re okay,” I repeat, cupping his face in my hands. “Feel my hands. Look into my eyes. Hear the sound of my voice.” I pull him down to rest my forehead against his, hoping physical touch will calm him in a way my words cannot.

I take one of his hands in mine and place it on my chest, letting him feel the rise and fall of my rib cage.

“You got this, Ryder,” I say, telling him the same thing Dad used to tell me when I would get myself too worked up over a spelling test or a mean girl at school telling me my curly hair looked like a lion’s mane. “Just breathe. I’m here. You’re okay. I’m here.”

He does as I say, breathing in and out, trying to match his inhales and exhales to mine.

“Thank you,” he says after a few minutes, when his hands have stopped shaking and the hollowness leaves his voice.

“You’re welcome,” I say quietly, his hand still on my chest and mine still cupping his face. And I know he’s okay now, that I can pull away and scoot back and find something in my pack that’s halfway sterile enough to use as a makeshift bandage.

But I don’t. Because nothing that’s happened in my life in the last eleven months—Dad dying, my work performance slipping, surviving run-ins with a moose and a wolf pack and a henchman named Malcolm—makes any sense. And I’ve spent the last few days feeling cold and tired and frightened, and the months before that feeling guilty and heartbroken. But now, my forehead resting against Ryder’s as we huddle together in a canoe that neither of us knows how to paddle, I don’t feel lost or lonely, even though I should. I feel something brighter, something stronger.

I feel loved.