expected hail of bullets came, but this time the shots weren’t intended for him. The shooter had turned his attention to Leah, who huddled behind the thick-trunked juniper as the gunfire tore at the bark. The sight of her trapped that way drove Travis to act on raw instinct. He pushed himself away from the bridge piling, deliberately exposing himself to the shooter above. “Over here!” he shouted, and fired three shots in rapid succession.
When the shooter turned his attention to Travis, Leah ran. But not, as he had hoped, away from danger, but toward it. She catapulted toward him, slamming into him and driving him farther under the bridge. He wrapped his free arm around her and sheltered her between his body and the bridge piling. “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance?” he muttered.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave.” She touched his torn shirt. “You’re hit. You’re bleeding.”
He pushed her hand away. “Nothing serious.” Though he could feel blood seeping from the wound. “How many of them are there?” he asked.
“It depends if Duane left someone back at the house,” she said. “There are four altogether—Duane, Eddie and two who just arrived yesterday, Buck and Sam. I never heard their last names. But I don’t think Duane would have wanted to leave the house unguarded, so he probably left Sam there.”
“Why Sam?”
“I overheard Eddie teasing him about not being a good shot. His specialty is technology.” She glanced over her shoulder. “They’ll come down the bank in a minute,” she said.
“I’ll kill them when they do.” He readied the gun to fire.
“They’ll wait until you run out of ammunition. They won’t give up.”
A rock tumbled down from the road, gathering momentum as it rolled, landing with a splash in the water. “They’re coming down,” she said, and buried her face against his chest.
He inhaled deeply, making himself go still. He had to shove aside the fear and call on all his strength. He had no control over what Duane and his thugs did, but he was in charge of his own actions. He raised the Glock and lined up the sights on where he thought the shooter would show himself, then took another breath and let it out slowly.
The echo of the gunshot against the concrete of the bridge made his ears ring, but the sight of the shooter staggering backward let him know he had done some damage. He had no time to bask in this victory, as a second man followed the first, this one armed with a shotgun capable of gutting them both with one shot. Travis retreated farther behind the bridge support, pulling Leah with him.
“We’re going to have to run for it,” he whispered, his mouth so close he was almost kissing her ear.
She stiffened. “That’s crazy.”
“Crazy enough to work. And it’s our only chance.” Already, he could hear someone moving down the other side of the bridge. “Climb onto my back and hang on tight,” he said. “If I go down, keep running on your own, but until then, don’t let go.”
“I’ll slow you down,” she said. “Leave me here. I’m the one they want, anyway.”
He was no longer certain of her relationship to Duane, but he wasn’t going to let her go back to that killer. “You’re still my prisoner,” he said. “I’m not going to give you up to him.” He slipped the revolver from the ankle holster, then turned his back to her. “Climb on. Keep your head down.”
She jumped onto his back, her arms around his neck, her legs wrapped around his waist. The weight was awkward, but not impossible. “When I give the word, scream as loud as you can,” he said.
“Why?”
“Just do it. Scream as if you just saw the biggest, nastiest-looking spider you can imagine.” She had always been terrified of spiders.
“All right.”
The revolver in one hand, the Glock in the other, he watched the bank to his left. When a second shooter dropped into position there, Travis said, “Now!” and charged forward.
The keening wail she let loose echoed beneath the bridge, a high, sharp note that pierced his ears, but as he had hoped, the sound startled the two shooters as well. They hesitated a fraction of a second, long enough for Travis to gain the advantage. He charged toward the downstream shooter, both guns blazing. The man fell back. At the same time, the upstream man couldn’t risk firing, for fear of hitting his boss.
He stuck to the bank at the edge of the water, feet sinking deep in the gravel and mud, staggering as if fighting his way through molasses. Leah had fallen silent, her face pressed against his neck, her fingers digging into his shoulder. He turned to fire at the men, then pulled at her legs. “Can you run?” he asked.
“Yes.” She nodded, her hair falling forward to obscure her face.
“Then we’re going to run, as fast and as far as we can.”
She was swifter than he would have expected, keeping pace with him as they zigzagged through the trees. He led the way up a slope away from the creek, deeper into the area she had identified as wilderness. The shooters had run after them, but they were slower and clumsier, stopping from time to time to fire in Travis and Leah’s general direction. After what could have been a half an hour or only ten minutes, the sounds of the gunfire and their pursuers’ shouted curses faded away.
Travis risked stopping near a downed pine tree. Leah collapsed onto the fallen trunk, holding her side and gasping for breath. Several moments passed before either of them spoke. “I’ve never been so terrified in my life,” she said.
He holstered his weapon and sank down beside her. “I think we’ve lost them for now.”
She shook her head. “Maybe. But they’ll be back. They’ll hunt us down.”
“How can you be so sure?” She talked as if she knew these men so well, but how could that be, when she had only been with them a few months? He had known her for years and would have sworn he knew everything about her, and yet he had never seen her betrayal coming.
“They’re ruthless,” she said. “When Duane decides he wants something, he’ll stop at nothing to get it. He’ll steal, kill and use people every way you can imagine. He’s an expert at it.” The grief that transformed her face as she spoke made him want to pull her to him, to comfort her. But he held back.
Instead, he looked around them, at the trees crowded so close together there was scarcely room to walk. The sky showed only in scattered puzzle pieces of pale blue between the treetops. He thought the creek was somewhere to their right, but he couldn’t be sure, having lost his bearings in their frantic flight. “Do you have any idea where we are?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I’ve never had much of a sense of direction, remember?”
He almost smiled, remembering. Her propensity for getting turned around and lost had been one of their private jokes. At the entrance to a mall department store she would address him with mock seriousness. “I’m going in, but if I don’t come out in an hour, you’ll have to come in after me.”
That particular trait of hers wasn’t so funny right now. “Let’s hope Duane and his gang don’t know where we are, either.”
