by Cassie Miles
“A witness saw someone fleeing the scene.” Anna Rose swore under her breath. “They said it was you, Noah.”
Gennie barely had time to register the lie when she heard something crashing through the trees, coming at them. She drew her Beretta.
Chapter Nineteen
Noah was stunned. He was being framed for murder, another murder. His name and photo would be on the radar of every law enforcement officer in the whole damn state. And he couldn’t just turn himself in and wait for justice to be done. Trust no one. As Anna Rose had said, he had to disappear.
He saw Gennie step through the door of the trailer, going outside into the rain. She seemed to be moving in slow motion. Her Beretta was braced in both hands. Now what? He watched her finger squeeze the trigger. A bullet exploded from her weapon.
The sound woke him. He stared in the direction she’d fired and saw a Hummer driving toward them on the path he hadn’t wanted to take with his SUV. He shoved the phone in his pocket, pulled his Glock from the holster and stepped up beside her. “Guess I was right,” he said. “Somebody was following us.”
“Good instincts.” She fired again—a reflex action because they both knew that her small caliber handgun wouldn’t have much effect on the tank-like vehicle.
He fired as the doors to the Hummer swung open. Two guys jumped out, guns blazing. A third and fourth emerged from the back seat.
He heard Gennie gasp, saw her stagger a step backward. “Were you hit?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Run,” he said. “Get behind the trailer and keep going.”
“Not without you.”
“I’ll be right behind you.”
He took a knee, braced his gun and laid down a steady barrage to cover her while she dodged behind the trailer. His assault had the desired result. The men who were after them ducked behind their car doors. Noah took advantage by hiding behind the edge of the trailer where he reloaded.
Peeking out, he saw the men from the Hummer creeping toward him. They were dressed in ordinary rain gear, not uniforms, and the weapons they carried weren’t highly sophisticated. The guy in front looked familiar. Was he one of Murano’s bodyguards?
Noah visualized his targets. He wasn’t going for a kill shot, but he sure as hell wanted to slow these guys down. Taking aim, he fired five bullets in quick succession. Two men fell.
This was his chance. While the attackers were taking care of their wounded, Noah could put some distance between them and him. He weaved a path through the trees. In the distance, he squinted until he spotted Gennie. She dashed full speed, leaping over downed logs and dodging around boulders. The rain actually worked in their favor, hampering vision and making pursuit more difficult.
He’d almost caught up to her when he heard shots behind his back. He pivoted, dropped to a knee, aimed and returned fire. He realized that she was doing the same. Gennie was a sharpshooter, deadly accurate.
He heard a scream of pain. Another guy went down.
He ran those last few yards and dived behind the boulder where Gennie had taken cover. Immediately, he noticed that she was shooting one handed. “Were you hit?”
“Upper left chest but it’s no big deal. Good thing I’m wearing my vest. Weird, huh? With so many parts of my body that don’t feel pain, I get popped in a place that hurts like hell.”
“Can you move your arm?”
She illustrated by raising it up and down. “It’s stiff but I’m okay. How many of those guys are there?”
“I counted four. There might have been others in the back of the Hummer.” He scanned the area, looking for the best escape. No houses, no roads, no signs of life. “I hear the creek over there. We’ll go toward it.”
“As if we’re not wet enough already?”
He didn’t have a fully formed plan, but heading toward the creek seemed like a start. The water might lead to a cabin or a road or something. This property was in the same general area as his cabin. Somehow, that had to work to his advantage.
He took off, running as fast as he could while still watching for the men who were after them. No shots were fired, but he didn’t think they’d given up. They were regrouping, setting up a better strategy.
Without help, he and Gennie didn’t stand a chance. There was only so long they could outrun the guys chasing them. If all the cops in the state hadn’t been looking for him, Noah would have called for backup. It occurred to him that there might be a way he could reach out. He had to try.
When he got to the creek, he looked back through the forest. The men from the Hummer were still coming after them, moving cautiously. “I only see two of them.”
She stood on the bank and looked down at the surging water. Spring runoff and the rain had swelled the mid-sized creek into a torrent that splashed over the bank and rushed forward, cascading over rocks and shrubs. The distance from one side to the other was about twelve feet. On the opposite bank was a rocky ledge to climb onto.
She turned to face him. “We should cross to the other side. It’s going to be miserably cold and kind of dangerous, which is why I don’t think they’ll follow. Even if they do, the creek will slow them down.”
He agreed with her logic. If he hadn’t been desperate to escape, there was no way he’d jump into that churning frigid water. “I’ll go first.”
He stepped into the creek. First, he felt the icy cold. Then the force of the water tugged and pulled, threatening to knock him off his feet. In two steps, the creek was higher than his knees. In the middle, he was up to his hips.
He reached toward Gennie. “Take my hand.”
“I can do this by myself. I don’t want to throw you off-balance.”
She was smaller than him and considerably lighter. He could be her anchor. “Trust me.”
Without further argument, she slapped her hand into his and held on tight. She waded forward with unsteady steps. The uneven rocks in the creek bed made it hard to walk without wobbling. Midway, the water was up to her waist.
“Come on,” he encouraged her. “You can make it.”
She moved cautiously. He was almost there, near enough to touch the rocky outcropping on the opposite bank.
And she slipped.
Gennie bobbed under the water. He tightened his grip, battled the force of the current and tried to pull her upright. Flailing with her free arm, she got her head above the surface. He dragged her toward the bank where he grabbed the jagged branches of a fallen pine tree. “Hang on,” he urged. “You can make it.”
She sank under the water again. Her grip released, and he couldn’t hold onto her. She slipped from his grasp. This can’t be happening! The rushing waters had claimed her. He stumbled back into the center of the creek, struggling to reach her as she was swept downstream.
Gasping, she rose to the surface. Her torso was out of the water. For a moment, she had regained her footing. She fought her way through the surging white water toward the bank.
He lunged toward her but couldn’t get close enough. Once again, she was pulled into the current and swept away from him.
Gunfire erupted behind him. He thought the bullets sliced into the water, sending up a spray, but he couldn’t tell. There was a bigger problem ahead of him. The creek roared as it narrowed to cut between two massive boulders. These were serious white-water rapids, deep and treacherous. Even if the current hadn’t been intense, they couldn’t escape from the water without facing a barrage of gunfire.
He crashed through the narrows, banging his hip. His head went under. He couldn’t breathe. If he died, he would never forgive himself, but that wasn’t the worst part. He never should have encouraged Gennie to cross the creek. She’d trusted him, and he’d led her into danger.
When he emerged, he sucked down a huge gulp of oxygen. He’d made it! The rapids were behind him. Where was Gennie? Without her, his survival m
eant nothing. His heart leaped when he saw her dragging herself onto a wide space at the edge of the creek.
The waters here were relatively still. He splashed up beside her, pulled her the rest of the way out and held her against him. There was no point in asking if she was all right. The creek had done a number on both of them. She was breathing hard. Her arms were limp. She must have gotten snagged on underwater rocks and branches because her cargo pants were torn in several places.
“The good news,” he said, “is that the bad guys can’t see us here.”
“Yippee.”
“But we need to move. Can you walk?”
Groaning, she forced herself to stand upright. “I can’t believe it’s still raining.”
When she stood, he looked down at her legs and assessed her injuries. She was bleeding from a couple of slashes. “You’re hurt.”
“I don’t feel a thing.” She stared at the blood. “I’ll be okay. It’s only a couple of flesh wounds. Superficial damage.”
Blood oozed from the slashes. She needed medical aid. “Let me bandage your leg.”
“Not now,” she said. “We’ve got to take advantage of this break.”
She was right. They needed to go. Their weapons were waterlogged and probably wouldn’t be much use in a fight. They had no defense but to run as fast and as far as they could. Later, he would tend to her injuries.
She was tough and strong. A soldier who felt no pain was what he needed right now. If they got out of this alive, he intended to pamper her like a princess.
Chapter Twenty
Though the lacerations on her lower legs didn’t hurt, Gennie knew the wounds were severe. The churning waters had slammed her into a submerged log with undeniable force and had dragged her against jagged slabs of granite. Her bones weren’t broken, and she didn’t think she had a sprain. But she was losing a lot of blood.
Under the bulletproof vest, her shoulder throbbed.
She was wet and cold, desperately cold.
Her ability to think and reason had deserted her. She was functioning on autopilot. The fact that she was still standing was a little bit miraculous, and she intended to survive. She had a will to live and a reason. Whether she liked it or not, she was in a relationship and wanted to know what was going to happen with Noah. If she died before they made love, it’d be tragic.
Slogging through the forest, she followed his instructions. He was a good leader, and she really trusted him. Not because he was her boss or because he knew his way around these forests. Her trust was a deep connection. In her heart of hearts, she knew that she’d follow this man to the end of the world. He would always be on her side and would never hurt her.
When he said run, she did her best to comply. When he told her to climb, she forced her aching muscles to hike up a steep hillside. She wished that he’d tell her to sit but understood why that order never came. If she relaxed, she doubted that she could force herself to get up.
They halted at the top of a chiseled rock cliff that was twenty-five feet above a two-lane gravel road. She wasn’t sure if their position was positive or negative. The road might lead to safety. Or it might help the bad guys find them. Noah pointed to the left and said something that she didn’t quite hear. She nodded anyway.
“Gennie, do you see it?”
She looked in the direction where he was pointing. “A picnic table and a trash can,” she said.
“And a mile marker, it’s like a map.”
“Got it,” she said. “We’re not lost. Someone can find us.”
He directed her a few steps back into the shelter of the trees, whipped off his rain jacket and spread it on the ground. “Lie down.”
Gratefully, she lowered herself and sat with her legs stretched out in front of her. Blood seeped from cuts and scrapes. Her wounds looked awful, but she didn’t feel much of anything. The cold made her even more numb than usual. Even her shoulder was less painful.
Noah knelt beside her. “Lay back and let me bandage you up.”
She braced herself on her arms. “I don’t want to be flat on my back. What if I have to run again? How will I get up?”
“We’ll cross that bridge if we come to it,” he said. “You need treatment. I don’t want you to go into shock.”
From triage training in the field, she knew the emergency treatment for shock was to have the head lower than the feet and to keep the patient warm. She really was cold, frozen to the bone. Maybe he was right about shock. “Do we have blankets?”
“I’ll take care of you.”
She couldn’t tell what he was doing, but she saw his knife blade glistening in the rain. Making bandages? “Are you cutting up my cargo pants?”
“They’re already ruined,” he said.
But she liked these pants. And she didn’t want more rain on her bare legs. Gennie knew that she should have been more concerned about the men who were shooting at them, should have been frightened. She could have died in the rapids.
But she wasn’t scared.
As she watched Noah in the rain, her vision blurred. His hair was plastered to his head like a sleek sea otter. His flannel shirt was wet, clinging to his muscular arms. He had said that he’d take care of her. She’d heard those words before from other men, but she’d never believed them. Noah was different.
“What are we going to do next?” she asked.
He finished with her legs and lay beside her with his face close to hers. “I’ve got an idea.”
A drop of rain slid down his cheek to his chin, and she wiped it away. Her hand lingered on his face. “Tell me.”
“I’ve spent half my life in this part of the mountains. I know people who can be trusted. I’ll make a call.”
“Who are you calling?”
“A guy who’s a retired doctor.”
“What if he turns us in?”
“That’s not the worst thing that could happen,” he said. “If we’re in custody, you’ll get medical attention.”
She wanted to object. Had he forgotten that this was an inside job? The inside man could be a cop. She didn’t like this plan, not one bit. They could be handing themselves over to the very people who were trying to frame Noah. “I don’t need a doctor. I’m feeling stronger after lying here. We can run.”
He already had his phone in his hand. He’d been carrying it in a pocket inside his jacket where it wouldn’t sustain too much water damage.
“I can’t believe it works,” she said.
“I paid extra for this protective case. If the phone is okay after the battering it took, I should send a testimonial.”
He made the call. She heard him describe the area where they would wait by the picnic table and trash can. Then he lay beside her, snuggled her against him to protect her from the rain. Neither of them was warm, but when they pressed together, she was comforted. Her body began to thaw.
“It’ll be about half an hour,” he said.
“I trust you, Noah.”
A smile lit his face. “Does that mean we’re in a relationship?”
“Oh, yes. And it’s going to get much better.”
He gave her a squeeze. “Being that we’ve got men in a Hummer shooting at us and we were almost killed in creek flood, it couldn’t get much worse.”
But it could. What she experienced today was a walk in the park compared to the wartime detonation of explosives. She knew from her experience with Warrick that a bad relationship could kill you.
* * *
GENNIE WAKENED GRADUALLY, unsure if she was really alive or if this was part of an extended dream. She remembered being carried through a forest and riding in a car. Shivering, she recalled a terrible wet cold that permeated every cell in her body.
Now, she was blissfully warm. A comforter rested softly upon her. She wiggled into the folds and exhaled a contented groan. Without op
ening her eyes, she asked, “Where am I?”
“You’re safe.”
She wasn’t surprised to hear Noah’s resonant voice. His presence completed her idea of the perfect way to wake up. Slowly, she opened her eyes and saw him sitting in a chair beside the bed. “Shouldn’t you be under the covers with me?”
“That’s blunt, Gennie.”
“If you want, I can be subtle. We can dance around each other and perform the rituals of courtship for several months. You know, dinner and dancing and movies. You can bring me flowers. I can bake you a pie. But why waste time? We both know where this is headed.”
“We do,” he said. “And I’m down with it.”
She sat up in the bed and checked out her surroundings. The bedroom was as pink and frilly as the interior of a little girl’s doll house. “You really have to tell me where we are.”
“My old friend, Doc Lester, came to our rescue and brought us back here to his place. He patched up the cuts on your legs and checked your vitals. You lost a lot of blood, but you ought to be okay.”
He handed her a glass of water. She drank half in one chug and gestured to the room. “Your doctor friend has strange taste.”
“This is his daughter’s room. She’s away at college.”
“I hope her major isn’t fashion.” Gennie assumed that the daughter was the owner of the flannel nightgown with a rosebud pattern that she was wearing. She hiked up the long hem and swung her injured legs over the edge of the bed. “What’s the plan?”
“For now, we stay hidden. Doc’s house is a half mile away from his nearest neighbor. Nobody knows we’re here.”
Keeping their whereabouts secret was wise. “Can’t you use your phone? We should let Anna Rose know that Murano’s men were after us.”
“I never talked to you about Murano.”
“You didn’t need to,” she said. “I recognized one of them from when we were at MIME and at the fund-raiser. With all Murano’s money, I wasn’t surprised by the Hummer, but I thought they’d be armed with M16s. Lucky for us they stuck with handguns.”
