“I don’t know,” he said.
Just then, the door from the garage eased open. Blessing’s face, dark and glistening with sweat, peered out. Then the door burst all the way open and men poured out.
The first bullets thudded into the dirt around them, followed by the sickening sound of ammunition striking flesh. Heart racing, Travis scanned the area and located the source of the shots. Cursing, he fired off half a dozen quick rounds at the man stationed behind the tripod-mounted machine gun on the deck overlooking the garage. The felons must have figured out what was going on in the rec room and stationed themselves to ambush the agents as they emerged from the garage. Travis was too far away to get a good shot at them. All he succeeded in doing was attracting the shooter’s attention.
“Go!” Travis shouted, and pushed Leah ahead of him. “Run!” She started running and he took off after her. They fled the hail of bullets that bit into the trees around them and plowed the leaf litter. When she stumbled, he pulled her up and dragged her farther into the woods, running blindly, praying they wouldn’t be struck by the bullets that continued to rain around them.
He didn’t see the edge of the bluff until it was too late. One moment his booted foot struck dirt, the next the ground fell away beneath him. The last sound he remembered was Leah’s anguished scream, echoing over and over as they fell.
Leah had thought she was ready for death. In the past six months there had been times she had prayed to die. But falling off that cliff, gunfire echoing around her, the ground rushing up to meet her, she wanted only to live. Her hands bound behind her by the cuffs, she had only Travis’s strong arms to save her as he wrapped himself around her. She buried her face against his chest and prayed wordlessly, eyes closed against the fate that awaited.
They hit the ground hard. Her head struck the dirt and she rolled, a sharp ache in her shoulder. Stunned, she lay slumped against a tree trunk, aware of distant shouts overhead and the sound of the rushing creek below.
Travis! Frantic, she struggled to sit and looked around. He lay ten feet down the slope, his big body still, blood trickling from a cut on his forehead. Crawling, half sliding on the steep grade, she made her way to him. “Travis!” she called. She nudged him with the toe of her shoe. “Travis, wake up.”
The shouts overhead grew louder. She looked up toward the house, but trees blocked her view. Had Duane and the others seen them fall? Would they come down here to look for them? She leaned down, her face close to his, so that she could smell the clean scent of his soap, mingled with the burned cordite from the weapon he had fired. “Travis, you have to wake up,” she pleaded. “We have to get out of here before they find us.” Duane would waste no time killing them, as she had seen him kill others before. She nudged him with her knee. “Travis, please!”
He groaned and rolled away from her, clutching his injured head.
She scooted after him. “We have to get out of here.” She kept her voice low, fearful Duane and the others might hear. The shouts had died down, but maybe they were only saving their breath for the climb down.
He groaned again, but shoved himself into a sitting position and studied her, his gaze unfocused. “Leah? What happened?”
“Duane was shooting at us and we went over the cliff.” She glanced up the slope again, expecting to see Duane or one of his thugs barreling toward them. “We have to get out of here before they come after us. Please, untie me.” She half turned and angled her cuffed hands toward him. Her shoulder ached with every movement, but she couldn’t worry about that now.
He frowned at her, his vision clearing. “I remember now,” he muttered. Some of the hardness had returned to his gaze, and she knew he was recalling not just what had happened moments before, but the ugly history between them.
“Please cut me loose,” she said. “I can’t move in this rough terrain with my arms behind my back like this. I promise I won’t try to run away.” He was her best hope of finally escaping from Duane Braeswood and his ruthless gang.
Travis hesitated, then shifted to pull a multi-tool from a pouch on his belt and cut the flex-cuff. She cried out in relief, then pain, as she brought her arms in front of her.
“You’re hurt.” He was on his knees in front of her, concern breaking through the coldness in his expression. “Were you hit, or did it happen in the fall?”
“I landed on my shoulder.” She rubbed the aching joint. “I’m just a little banged up. But you took a nasty blow to the head. You’re still bleeding.”
She reached toward the gash on his forehead. He shied away from her touch. “I’m okay,” He shoved to his feet, stumbling a little as he fought for balance. “Where are we?”
“Above the creek that runs below the house.”
“Which direction is the road?” he asked.
“That way, I think.” She pointed to their left.
“What’s in the other directions?” he asked.
She tried to visualize the area, but in the two weeks since they had relocated here, she had spent most of her time in the house, or running errands in Durango. Duane never left her alone, and he would have laughed in her face if she had expressed a desire to hike in the woods behind the house, though she had grown up hiking and camping very near here. “I’m not sure. It’s pretty rugged country. Duane had a map in his office of the Weminuche Wilderness area, so I think we’re very near there.”
“So no houses or roads?”
She shook her head. “Maybe some hiking trails, but nothing else. Wilderness is, well, wild. Undeveloped.”
A gust of wind stirred the aspens, and a tree branch popped, making her jump. “We have to get out of here before they come after us,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t they be more interested in going after the rest of the team?” he asked, even as he ejected the magazine from his gun and shoved in a fresh one. “They don’t even know who I am.”
“They’ll have figured out I’m with you.” She stood and brushed dry leaves from her jeans. “Duane won’t let me get away.”
“Because you mean so much to him.” No missing the bitterness behind those words.
“Because I know a lot about the things he’s done and I can testify against him.” And because he never let anyone cross him without making sure they paid for their betrayal. She started to move past him, but he snagged her arm.
“We’re not leaving,” Travis said. “We’re going back up there.”
She stared at him. “We can’t go back. They’ll kill us.”
“I’m not leaving until I’m sure the rest of the team is all right.” He holstered his weapon again and started up the slope, tugging her with him.
She gazed longingly down the slope toward the creek. “Try to run and I’ll shoot you,” he said.
The hardness of the words sent a chill through her. She could scarcely believe this was the same man
