by Janie Crouch
They began walking up the riverbed, one slow step at a time. Within just a few minutes Tanner wasn’t even trying to keep his weight off her. When he began wanting to rest, she knew they were in even bigger trouble. If Tanner sat down, there was no way she was going to be able to get him on his feet again. Tanner finally collapsed completely against her just about the time they rounded a corner and she saw the bridge.
“Tanner, there’s the bridge. We’re almost there.”
“Leave me,” he whispered.
Bree just rolled her eyes and kept walking forward. “Don’t go all martyr on me now. If I was going to leave your heavy, muscled ass it would’ve been half a mile ago.”
He didn’t respond. And he stopped walking. That wasn’t a good sign.
“Can’t. You go.”
Bree got in front of him again, grabbing him by his soaked shirt, careful not to hurt any of his many injuries. She was going to use his greatest weakness against him and didn’t even care if that made her a bitch.
“You want me warm and safe inside that shelter, Hot Lips? Then you keep going. Because if you stop here, I stop here. That’s it. End of story. Dig deep for me, baby.”
His expression didn’t change, but he started walking again.
She couldn’t even see the crude door until they were right up on it. It was a small shelter that had been built into the highest section of the river’s ravine walls. Unless you knew it was there, you’d never guess that was what it was.
She was carrying almost all of Tanner’s weight the last dozen yards up the trail. He was almost unconscious on his feet.
And that damn storm never let up.
Leaning Tanner up against the side of the shelter, she pushed the heavy door open the only way she could, by throwing all her weight against it.
Nothing came flying, slithering or growling out. Anything else she didn’t care. Grabbing Tanner on his good side before he fell face-first, she eased him inside the door. Then helped him as best she could down to the ground.
He was out cold.
“You made it, Lips.” Not that she’d ever doubted he would. Not when it came to keeping her safe too.
She kept the door open to try to look around the shelter in the dark. There wasn’t much. But what there was, was beautiful.
In one corner were five blankets wrapped and sealed in plastic. In the other corner, at least a dozen cans of food and a couple of can openers. She wouldn’t be able to start a fire to cook whatever was in the cans, but she would gladly eat it cold at this point.
But first she had to get Tanner warm.
When she stumbled to the blankets and was assaulted by dizziness, she knew she was on the last of her own reserves. Tanner hadn’t been the only one to draw on every remaining bit of strength.
She pulled the blankets over near him and began stripping off his clothes. He wasn’t shivering—that was a bad sign. She dragged off every piece of clothing, then did the same for herself. Fingers nearly numb, she ripped open the packages containing the blankets. She immediately began wrapping them around Tanner, starting with his feet and head. She wasn’t sure if what she was doing was technically right but figured anything had to be better than his cold, wet clothes. When she’d wrapped three blankets around him, she lay down beside him and wrapped the final two around them both.
And then she rubbed. She rubbed his chest and shoulders with her hands. She rubbed his legs with her feet. She rubbed her body all over his.
If he was awake, he would’ve teased her unmercifully about her gyrating, but at least it was creating warmth between them.
She rubbed until she wasn’t able to find the energy to move anymore, then tucked his hands between their stomachs, and his feet between her calves.
She slept in fits and starts over the next few hours. At one point she got up and opened herself a can of what ended up being black beans, eating it with no hesitation whatsoever right out of the can using her fingers. But when she tried to wake Tanner up to get him to eat, he didn’t even budge, not even when she wrapped his bullet graze with some gauze she found.
Shouldn’t he be waking up? What if he had a concussion? Internal bleeding? She still had him wrapped in the blankets. It wasn’t unbearably cold now that they were dry and out of the elements, but still his skin was cool to her touch. How many times this past winter had she called him her personal electric blanket, always rolling in toward him seeking out his warmth? But it wasn’t there now.
Darkness had fallen, and there was nothing she could do right now anyway. If he still hadn’t woken up by first light, she’d have no choice but to leave him and try to get help herself. She lay back down, pulling his body close to hers, resting her hand over his heart, assured somewhat by its strong, steady beat.
So many variables came into play, so many things that could still go wrong. Of course, she and Tanner had had all sorts of variables—good and bad—laid out in front of them before, and they’d always dealt with them one by one because…
Bree sat straight up, then lay back down.
She had her vows.
Just like that, they’d come to her. Right here, lying naked on the ground after eating a cold can of beans, she’d finally figured out her vows.
They’d been right in front of her all along.
She wrapped Tanner tighter in her arms.
Now she just needed to have the man with her in five days to say them to.
Chapter Eighteen
Tanner lay on the cold hard floor, consciousness coming back slowly. The first thing he became aware of was Bree pressed up against him, but that wasn’t unusual. She was almost always the first thing he became aware of when he woke.
The second thing was that he wasn’t cold. There’d been a time trudging up that riverbank where he was sure he would never be warm again.
He seemed to have all his fingers and his toes, so that was a good sign. Honestly, he was just surprised he was alive. He’d been sure he wouldn’t make it. If it hadn’t been for the fact that he knew Bree wasn’t going to leave him, he’d be dead right now out in that water.
She sighed and moved against him, quickly proving the rest of his body was working just fine also, as her naked skin brushed against his.
She’d killed a man. In the midst of attempting to survive there had been no time to process that. He knew what it was like to take a life and wasn’t going to allow her to feel any guilt over it. If she hadn’t shot when she had, Tanner would be dead. She’d saved his life multiple times yesterday.
He pulled her closer until she was half lying on top of him, her favorite way to sleep. She let out a shuddery little breath and his heart clenched. He knew that sound. It was the sound she made when she had been crying. It didn’t happen very often—for the longest time Bree had a difficult time accessing her feelings at all—and the sound gutted him now.
When he trailed his hand down her back, she shifted against him. “Tanner?”
“You went to an awful lot of trouble just to get me naked here with you, freckles.”
She bolted upright. “You’re awake!” She rubbed her face with the back of both hands. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. I’m not a very good watchman.”
“You’ve got that gun right by your lap. I daresay if anyone came to that door you would’ve woken up. Your body needed rest.”
He wanted to ask her why she’d been half crying in her sleep, but she was already starting to inspect his body for injuries.
“Your shoulder is definitely dislocated. If I had my computer, I could look up how to put it back into joint, but now it’s so swollen you really need a medical professional.”
He definitely already knew that from the fire shooting down his arm and chest every time he moved.
“I’ll try to make some sort of sling out of your jacket. I don’t know if that will really help, but it s
hould at least take some of the weight off your shoulder,” she continued. “I also think you have a concussion, but there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“Nothing is life-threatening—that’s the most important thing, okay?” He trailed the fingers of his good hand up and down her arm. “Given the fact that I was shot at, fell over a ravine and was nearly clubbed to death, not to mention hypothermia… I feel pretty damn lucky.”
She nodded. “You have to be hungry. There are some cans of food. Nothing particularly appetizing, especially since we’ve got no way to heat it up. But at least filling. I have no idea who keeps this place stocked, but the food isn’t expired.”
“Old man Henrikson. He lives just outside town, but comes through once a year and makes sure the three or four shelters in this area have some basic provisions.”
“Henrikson? Who would’ve figured the most ornery man in town was a good Samaritan.”
“When his grandson was a teenager, he got caught out in a freak June snowstorm. Broke his leg, couldn’t get back home. He would’ve died if it hadn’t been for a shelter that happened to be stocked by a hunter who’d been in a couple weeks before. Henrikson has come out every year for the past twenty years to make sure these shelters in the area are stocked.”
She kissed his forehead. “Hopefully that lovely story will make your cold franks and beans taste better.”
He ate the can she opened for him, careful to keep the Glock close to his side in case it was needed, while she laid their clothes out a little better to dry. Outside the rain continued to fall, although at least most of the thunder and lightning had stopped.
“How safe are we here?” she asked.
“This place is difficult enough to find in sunny weather. No one will stumble on it in this rain. It’s possible they would know about it if they researched hiking and hunting up here, but otherwise I wouldn’t count on anyone coming through that door.”
Tanner remembered the maps he and Noah had seen Jared and his friends looking at the night they’d surveilled the town house. Could they have been looking at trails and shelters around here? It would’ve explained a lot: how they’d known where the rafts would be located, and the best place to puncture them. They could’ve studied the best places to try to ambush them.
He realized that Bree was sitting just out of reach, smoothing out the legs of his pants, then doing the same to hers. Her movements were jerky, almost frantic.
“Freckles, come here and sit by me.”
“Why? Are you hurt? Why didn’t old man Henrikson put some ibuprofen in the shelters, for goodness’ sake?”
He smiled and held out his good hand. “Actually, I’m sure if you mention it to him, he will.”
“Well, that’s not exactly going to help you, is it?” Her voice was tight. Shaky.
“Bree.” He patted the space beside him. “I’m okay. Come sit with me.”
She did, although a little reluctantly. “We need to get back into town.”
“We will. We’ve had rest, food. It will be much easier now. Let’s just give the storm a few hours and see what happens.”
If anything, that made her tenser.
He took her hand in his, twining their fingers together. “Why were you crying in your sleep, freckles? Not because of shooting that guy, right? His name is Paul Wyn. We have a file on him in the office and I recognized him when we were fighting. He’s one of Jared Ellis’s good friends.”
Her eyes widened. “He was in Risk Peak the night of the fire. He’d been dressed as a paramedic and tried to get me to leave Sam and Eva with him while I got looked over in the ambulance.”
Tanner let out a low curse. “Yeah, I think they knew about this trip and have been planning a kidnapping the whole time. But you shouldn’t feel guilty about shooting him. You know you had to do that, right? He would’ve killed me.”
Tanner would give anything if he could take that weight off her. Carry it himself. Taking a life, even in self-defense, or defense of a loved one, was still weighty.
But evidently, not too much to Bree. “Oh, no, I know I had to shoot him. He definitely would’ve killed you with that club. Honestly, if I had had a clear shot while you were fighting, I might have taken it.”
Tanner let out a short bark of laughter. God, he loved this woman. She was so damn practical.
“Well, as a law enforcement officer, I’m much happier that if you had to shoot Wyn, you did it when he was about to kill me, rather than when we were fighting. That’s much more defensible in my report.” He rubbed her hand. “If that wasn’t it, then why the tears? You were crying in your sleep.”
“It’s nothing.” She looked away.
“Freckles, you’re the least prone person to hysterics that I know. So if you’re crying in your sleep, it’s a big deal. Is it everything we’ve been through in the last couple of days? That’s understandable.”
“No, I—I… Forget it. Don’t worry about it. Let’s just worry about you getting back home in one piece. I’m fine.”
Now he was really worried. He hadn’t even thought to ask her if she’d been injured in some way. Was she hurt and trying to play it off?
He swallowed a groan of pain as he shifted his weight so he could get a better look at her.
“Tanner, what are you do—”
“What aren’t you telling me? Are you hurt?”
He didn’t see any marks on her naked body, but a lot of her was covered in blankets. “Bree?” He caught her chin in his hand, forcing those green eyes to look at him. “We’re a team, right? That means you tell me when you need help too. It goes both ways.”
His heart sat heavy in his chest as big tears rolled down her cheeks.
“Fine,” she finally murmured. “I was crying because I was relieved, okay?”
That definitely wasn’t what he’d been expecting. “Relieved that we made it to shelter? That we are warm and dry?” That made sense, but why not just admit that?
“No, relieved that I finally came up with my wedding vows!”
She closed her eyes and bowed her head as if she’d just admitted to committing the most atrocious of crimes.
“You were crying over our wedding vows?”
“You do know we’re getting married in four days, right? And we have to say vows.” Her whole body seemed to deflate. “I’ve just been in a state of panic, thinking of standing up there in front of everyone… I’m already such a social spaz, and you’re so important in Risk Peak. I wanted my vows to be perfect so I don’t embarrass you in any way. It’s just been stressful.”
He trailed his fingers down her cheek. “More stressful than running through the wilderness with people trying to kill you?” Because she hadn’t cried then.
She tilted her head, obviously seriously considering the stress levels of both. “Actually, about the same.”
He wanted to yank her to him but couldn’t force his left hand to work at all. Instead, he threaded the fingers of his right hand into the hair at the nape of her neck. He’d known the wedding planning had been stressful for her but had no idea she’d been feeling such pressure about the ceremony itself.
He leaned his forehead against hers. “If you got up there and couldn’t say a single thing except ‘I do,’ I wouldn’t care. All I care about is that you’re willing to give me forever.”
“I do. I do want forever. But everyone you’ve known your whole life is going to be there. All your people. I just don’t want to mess it up.”
He’d been selfish. He’d wanted a big wedding—talked her into it—and why?
Because he’d wanted to make his declaration of love for and commitment to her as public as possible. But he should’ve taken into consideration more what she really wanted. Bree could barely stand to be around a group of people at the best of times. And standing up in front of five hundred of them, many of them she barely
knew… No wonder this had been so stressful for her.
He leaned forward and kissed her. “I never really thought about the wedding, the event itself, and how it would affect you emotionally. I’ve been joking all these months about taking you in front of the judge. Let’s just do that. We don’t need a big event. At the end of the day, our love, our marriage, is between you and me. Nobody else matters.”
She smiled at him, the sight so beautiful and pure it nearly took his breath away. “Last week I might’ve taken you up on that. Hell, the night of the fire I almost got killed because I was in the office working on those stupid vows.”
He smiled at her description. No one was ever going to accuse Bree of being overly sentimental. That was just fine with him.
“But they came to me while I was trying to sleep,” she continued. “All this… And they just came to me. Honestly, that’s why I was crying. I was just so relieved.”
“Tell me them.”
She reached up and kissed him softly. “I will. On Saturday. Four days.”
He could wait. “Are you sure that’s all that was upsetting you? You seemed flustered.”
“I just want to get back so I can write all this down, so I don’t forget them.”
Tanner shook his head. “I’ve seen you memorize entire pages of coding after reading it just a couple of times. Your brain is like a computer.”
“Exactly. I can remember coding, but words? Emotions? Not so easy.”
He tucked her against his chest with his good arm, ignoring the pain as best he could in the other. “If you’re worried you won’t be able to remember the words, just write a program in your mind that includes them.”
“What? I—” she paused. “Damn it, Dempsey, you’re a genius.”
She lay down next to him and he could almost hear her brain running like a machine. He had no idea what program she was writing, or what it would do, but knew whatever information she needed was now safely locked away in that brilliant mind of hers.
When she slept this time, there were no tears.
