she wanted tunnel vision, to focus on a single goal.
Running for her life. Escaping.
She pressed on, plowing through waist-deep snow, gripping branches for support in her push to escape, to get far from the assailants. All the while, she never stopped searching the woods for any sign of Rich.
There was none.
It was as if he’d simply disappeared from that snowmobile.
She believed he hadn’t fallen into the hands of these guys after them or else why were they after her and Zach if they had the person they’d come for? Could she be wrong about all of it?
Finally, exhaustion slowed her efforts. Her sluggish legs burning, Olivia leaned against a tree. She would wait for Zach here while she caught her breath. Rest her muscles, slow the hammer in her heart.
He would never find her if she didn’t stop. As her breathing calmed, she had the chance to get her bearings. A few feet from where she stood the ground dropped away into a deep fissure—a crack at least seventy feet deep or more. She knew about it from her summer hikes, but in the winter hidden dangers grew more treacherous. Snow and ice covered the fissure, hiding it in places.
She would definitely need to wait here for Zach, if for no other reason than to warn him and keep him from plummeting to his death in the crevice. She wasn’t sure if it was wrong but she wished that fate on the shooters.
A brutal storm moved in quickly. Could her predicament get any worse? Still, a raging snowstorm, possibly with blizzard-force winds, would also be a problem for the bad guys. They’d need shelter, too, and they couldn’t follow Zach and Olivia’s footprints.
A new cause for panic settled in her chest. Zach hadn’t caught up with her yet. In a snowstorm, would he be able to find her? Here she was hoping the storm would hide her tracks from the shooters, but if Zach hadn’t found her by then, he never would.
A twig snapped. Someone approached—had they seen her? Once again she found herself asking if she would see friend or foe. She’d long ago lost her knife in the scramble down to the brook. She grabbed a big branch she could use for a weapon and waited, the element of surprise her only advantage.
A figured moved past. She recognized Zach’s thick head of wheat hair as he stumbled forward into the deep snow around the group of Douglas firs where she’d been hiding. He’d followed her tracks, just as they would. But she was more than glad to see him.
“Zach!”
Bending next to him, she grabbed his arm and assisted him up and out of the thick white powder. Then Olivia threw her arms around him. “Zach, I was afraid you wouldn’t find me before the snow covered my tracks.”
She quickly dropped her arms and looked him up and down. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head, too out of breath to answer her. Then finally, “They’re not too far behind so we need to keep moving. If we’re fortunate, we’ll get a blizzard.”
Zach had been counting on her to lead the way since she’d had many summers to explore the area before she’d made the vacation home permanent. With Rich’s sudden appearance, and just as sudden disappearance, and then the shooters, she’d been slow to process the events.
But beyond this stand of firs, she remembered the orange-trunked madrone trees and a few maples before the rocks. And then...
“Come on, I know where we can hide.”
He angled his head, his intense gaze catching hers, radiating reassurance as if to say, I knew you would.
His confidence in her had her heart dancing when it shouldn’t, especially in the middle of this threat. Still, she could use that to bolster her courage.
“Come on.” She held out her hand and he took it.
Olivia pointed out the fissure to Zach, just to be sure he wouldn’t fall to his death if he came back this way.
“I think I remember that from before.”
“Good. Just making sure. But you know what, maybe we could lure the shooters this way, trick them into falling in.”
Zach’s face twisted up. “Only as a last resort. No. Just no.”
“Fine.”
And as Zach had wished, the wind drove the snow hard into icy pinpricks against her face. They might even find themselves in a whiteout. Bad news, but they could use this development to their advantage.
Olivia kept to the trees as she led Zach, holding his hand as they hiked through what seemed like bottomless layers of snow in places, and up a rocky incline. She slipped once on iced-over rocks, but Zach’s hands slid around her waist and assisted her up and forward. Even without the heavy, driving snow to cover their trail, they could have already lost their pursuers in this treacherous part of the wilderness.
Zach hadn’t asked her exactly where she led them, which meant he trusted her to find the way. The longer it took, the more she began to doubt her sense of direction. She’d been here many times as a kid, but hadn’t come back even once since living at the cabin. Maybe all the gunfire and fear had confused her sense of direction.
But she kept moving, plowing and hiking forward. Now they faced off with a rocky wall, snow and ice catching in between the small cracks and fissures.
The cave had to be here somewhere.
And then it hit her. Would Rich have come here, too, knowing it was here? Had he thought to hide in the cave just like Olivia had?
Her hopes jumped.
She glanced back at Zach. He’d left his helmet behind, but he’d long ago covered his head with the hood on his winter coat, as had Olivia, so she couldn’t see his eyes at that moment. Maybe that was a good thing. She returned her energy to finding the cave, pressing her hands against the rocks as she went. Even though she wore gloves, her fingers grew stiff and clumsy.
One look at Zach’s red cheeks and she knew the truth.
The dropping temperature was getting to them.
And what of their pursuers? Did the shooters realize they could die if they didn’t find shelter, too? If the men after Rich were anything like him, then they too were survivors and were prepared for anything, carrying their bivouac gear with them in the mountains on their murderous hunting trip. Olivia’s shred of hope took a dive.
But why should she focus on them? She had yet to find the cave that would keep her and Zach warm, two people who hadn’t carried bivouac gear with them.
God, please, where is the cave? We have to find the cave!
Worry and doubt threaded through her thoughts. Did she have the wrong place, after all? And if she did, how would they survive?
If that was the case, they were as good as dead.
No. Olivia wouldn’t accept that. She cleared away the morbid thoughts and kept her gloved hands pressed against the rock wall, letting it guide her inward until she found the small opening.
There.
“It’s
