Lethal Protector

by Kaylea Cross

  While he loved and admired her determination and inner strength, he hated to see her hurting, and worried she was doing long-term damage by insisting on continuing to ski with her leg the way it was now.

  He stopped and turned to face her, ignoring the way her lips thinned and her jaw flexed. “Stop,” he commanded her, unable to stand it any longer.

  “I can…keep going,” she insisted stubbornly.

  He reached out and wrapped a hand around her nape to bring her to a halt, her eyes raising to his inside her goggles. “Do you think I’ll see you as weak if I carry you? Is that the problem?”

  She averted her gaze. “No. I can do this.”

  “And I don’t want you in any more pain than you already are.” He released her to shift the straps of his ruck. Then he reached for her, intending to pull her onto his back, and he heard it.

  A shifting sound, then a low, ominous rumble overhead.

  Tala’s head snapped up, and when he followed her gaze, his heart seized.

  A wall of white was barreling down the cliff straight at them. Less than two-hundred-yards and closing, fast.

  “Move!” he shouted, grabbing her arm to fling her in front of him.

  She scrambled to get her skis in place, then began frantically using her poles to get momentum. Braxton was faster, helping her with a shove on the back just beneath her rifle harness.

  But he wasn’t fast enough.

  Before he’d gone a dozen strides, the wall of debris reached him. It picked him up, pushing upward like a rising wave. He had just enough time to throw his arm at Tala, catching her across the back to fling her out of the way.

  His last sight of her was falling forward, her skis coming loose as she plunged headfirst away from the debris flow. Then the wall closed over him. Engulfing him from all sides in a crushing embrace.

  He couldn’t see. Couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe as it trapped him, carrying him down the slope like a pebble caught in a raging river.

  It was like being caught in a frozen washing machine. Instinctively he fought to bring his arms up and cover his face and head.

  Rocks and branches slammed into him from all sides, punching the air from his lungs. Over and over he tumbled, losing all sense of direction, unable to escape.

  Endless seconds later, he slammed into what felt like a wall beneath him and plunged to an abrupt stop.

  He wasn’t sure if it knocked him out, but when he opened his eyes again, pain flashed through his back and ribs. He was trapped in freezing, pitch blackness, struggling to suck in air through the tiny pocket he’d created in front of his face with his hands.

  Through the panic flooding him, his brain kicked back into gear.

  Tala! She was alone, helpless if her prosthetic was broken, and might have been caught in the avalanche with him.

  Fight or flight kicked in, the need to get to her eating him alive. Get out. You have to get the fuck out. Tala needs you.

  He struggled to move his limbs, fighting the crushing wall of snow entombing him. Every move cost him. Using up the air he’d managed to save. Already he was light-headed, his precious oxygen supply rapidly dwindling to nothing.

  And the whole time he fought to get free, his mind screamed at him. Warning him that he was running out of time.

  If he couldn’t get out in the next minute, he wasn’t getting out at all.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Terror rocketed through Tala as she hit the snow, getting a face full of icy powder. She shoved up and rolled to her side to see what had happened, her gut clenching when she saw the huge pile of debris and nothing else. “Braxton!”

  She couldn’t see him. Only the river of snow, rock and tree matter still spilling down the hillside, piled up at least seven feet high across the trail. “No, no, no,” she breathed, desperate to find him, refusing to believe he could be dead.

  Her right ski had come off when he’d shoved her out of the way, and been swept up in the avalanche. She flung off the left one, now useless.

  Unable to walk without a foot at the end of her prosthetic, she flipped onto her knees and crawled as fast as she could to the huge pile of snow studded with rock and branches, frantically scanning for any sign of him.

  She couldn’t see anything. “Braxton!” Please let him be okay… She had to find him. Had to get him out before he suffocated.

  Her heart pounded so hard against her ribs it felt bruised as she searched for some sign, anything that might help her locate him beneath the rubble. She crawled partway up the debris mound and started digging with her hands, shoving big sweeps of snow and bits of branches aside with her arms when it didn’t seem to move fast enough. She could feel the seconds slipping past, time she didn’t have to waste.

  As she swept another armful off to the side, her gaze caught on something sticking out of the mound.

  A ski tip.

  She lunged over to it and frantically began digging the snow away from it. “Braxton, can you hear me?” she called out.

  No answer, only the wind swirling around her and her pulse hammering in her ears.

  She kept digging. The ski came loose. She yanked it out, tossed it behind her and hurriedly scooped the snow away from that same spot, praying she would be able to find him. It had to have been well over a minute since she’d started digging.

  Her hand touched something hard. A ski pole.

  Dammit, she had to be close to him. She pulled it free and resumed digging, every heartbeat feeling like an eternity. The pain in her leg was forgotten. There was no cold, no exhaustion, nothing but the icy terror gripping her that she wouldn’t be able to get to Braxton in time.

  Then she saw it. Faint movement in the snow just to the left of where she was digging.

  She sucked in a breath and plunged her arm deep into the snow there. Her hand met something firm. She grabbed it. Pulled.

  Her heart jumped when her fingers closed around the puffy material of a jacket. “Brax.”

  Tala dug as hard and fast as she could, desperation driving her. He didn’t have any air in there. Wouldn’t be able to breathe. Come on, come on, she ordered herself, pushing harder, faster.

  She uncovered part of his arm. Shoved her hand through the snow to grope around. She needed to uncover his face. Give him room to breathe.

  Sweat gathering along her spine as she fought to free him. His upper arm. Shoulder. Neck.

  He wasn’t moving.

  “Brax, come on,” she urged him as she uncovered the side of his face, her voice shredding. He couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t take that.

  She thought his hand moved slightly. Hope leaped inside her. “Brax, wake up. You have to wake up,” she ordered, fighting back tears. She kept working, moving fast but carefully now so as not to hurt him. Please, please…

  His other glove was cupped in front of his face. As if he’d tried to create an air pocket as the snow closed over him.

  Her chest hitched, scalding tears burning the backs of her eyes. She pulled his hand away from his face. Blood was trickling down it from a gash over his right eyebrow, and he had several scrapes on his cheeks. She kept digging, managed to remove the snow away from his head, still covered by his knit cap.

  Her breathing hitched when his eyelids fluttered. She seized his face in her hands, cupping it, careful not to move him in case he had a neck or spinal injury. “Wake up. I need you to open your eyes and look at me,” she begged.

  His eyelids flickered. Then his eyes cracked open, his gaze blurry as he slowly focused on her.

  “You’re okay,” she told him, though he probably wasn’t—how could he be after being buried in all this? “Just stay with me. Stay with me, we need to get you out of here.” Shit, what was she going to do?

  There was no cell reception here, they had no medical supplies other than basic things in his ruck—wherever that was now—and she could no longer ski down for help. How was she going to get him down the mountain safely? Maybe she could lash the skis together with somethi
ng and lay him down on them, then push him across the snow on her hands and knees.

  His gaze cleared a little more as he blinked up at her, a low groan coming from his throat. “Tal.”

  “Yes.” She leaned down and put her nose and forehead against his, then covered his face with kisses, not caring about the blood, just happy he was still alive. “Where does it hurt?”

  “My…back.”

  Her stomach dropped. “Your spine?”

  “Don’t know.” He moved a little, bringing his arms up.

  Yes! “That’s it, nice and slow,” she encouraged, shoving back her emotions. She needed to hold it together. Had to get him out and then find help somehow.

  She scooped more snow away from him and he started moving more. Finally, she was able to reach in and wrap her arms around his ribs. “I’m scared to move you.”

  He shook his head. “I can move.” His jaw clenched. She could feel the muscles in his arms and back bunching beneath his jacket as he struggled to get free while she kept pulling snow and branches away from him.

  After a few minutes, Braxton leaned to the side and managed to crawl out under his own power. She knelt beside him, holding her breath as she scanned him for injuries. His jacket was torn up in spots, and his ruck and pistol were nowhere to be seen.

  She pulled off her gloves and ran her frozen hands along his arms, spine and legs, checking them for more blood. They came away clean. But he could be bleeding under his clothes, or inside somewhere. “Do you hurt bad anywhere besides your back?”

  “I’m okay,” he managed.

  He definitely wasn’t okay. Might have internal damage they didn’t know about. But she couldn’t treat that and had nothing to wrap him in to keep him warm. “Just lie still. I—”

  She jerked, sucking in a sharp breath when a gunshot cracked through the icy air. The bullet hit meters to their left, kicking up a burst of snow where Braxton had just crawled out of.

  Tala dove on top of him, instinctively curling her arms around his head to shield him. He groaned and pushed her off him. “Go,” he commanded, shoving her behind him. “Get behind cover.”

  “I’m not leaving you.” She grabbed him by the wrist and pulled, intending to drag him to safety.

  Another shot rang out, pinging off a rock outcropping mere feet away.

  Braxton put his hands on her shoulders and pushed, his face taut. “Go!”

  Ignoring him, she glanced up. Saw the shooter standing above them on the ridge and her blood iced over. “He’s up there!”

  Braxton tried to grab her but she wrenched away and shrugged her harness from her shoulders, reaching for her rifle. The shooter was farther away than the fifty yards she was accurate at, but it didn’t matter.

  She was going to stop him right here and now.

  ****

  A few minutes after leaving the building site, Mason stopped his snowmobile beside Tate and waited for his friend to consult their map one more time. Repeated attempts to reach Braxton’s or Tala’s cell phones had failed, and now the GPS spotter wasn’t working either.

  He and Tate each had rucks full of food, blankets, clothing and medical supplies. They were also both armed, with a rifle and sidearm. Now it was just a matter of finding their friends.

  He tugged off his gloves and blew on his hands to warm them. Shit, it was cold. Dawn was here, giving them lots of daylight for the search, and the weather was finally improving some.

  The storm was slowly dying, but it had stalled over the area instead of moving on as the original forecast had predicted. The bitter wind still gusted around them but nothing like last night, and the snow had become a steady, gentle fall.

  Back at the building site, all the other volunteers were assembling with their equipment. Avery was coordinating the initial search effort. As soon as everyone headed out, she would head up with Tate’s neighbor, Curt, on other snowmobiles to a different trail in case Braxton and Tala were on that one instead.

  Tate rolled the map back up and tucked it inside his jacket. “Last ping from the GPS spotter put them seven miles from here. We’ll start there and work our way down.”

  Mason nodded, was about to answer, when the unmistakable sound of a rifle shot echoed in the distance. His head jerked up, then he looked sharply at Tate, and from the look in his friend’s eyes, Mason knew they were thinking the same thing.

  No fucking way it was a hunter or sport shooter out here in these conditions. And that meant the fugitive gang member might have found Tala and Braxton.

  Before he could say anything, another shot cracked through the air.

  Shit. “Northeast?” Mason said, trying to locate where the shots were coming from.

  Tate’s jaw clenched, his gaze now trained in that direction up the trail. “Yep.”

  Then came the distinctive, high-pitched pop of another weapon. He snapped his gaze back to Tate. “Hear that?” He’d recognize that sound anywhere.

  A .22. And hearing it now in answer to the other rifle made his guts clench.

  “Tala,” Tate blurted, and took off.

  Mason fired up his snowmobile and tore after him, their treads kicking up rooster tails of fresh powder behind them as they raced along the access trail that would get them up to the ridge where the shots seemed to be coming from. Until those shots, they’d been searching blind out here, hoping for a miracle.

  Now the miracle would be if Tala and Braxton were still alive when he and Tate reached them.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Dammit, he’d missed! The angle was all wrong, and the wind wasn’t helping. Neither was his wounded shoulder, and the snow kept trying to glue his eyelashes together.

  Jason clenched his jaw to keep it from shivering and painfully shrugged off the backpack full of cash and ammo he’d been carrying, setting it aside in the snow. He needed to reposition himself to get a better shot.

  Inching closer toward the edge of the cliff, he kept well away from the lip. He’d been damn lucky he hadn’t fallen to his death when the avalanche started.

  Somehow, the man and woman were both still alive down there. He couldn’t afford to let them live. He wanted this over and done with so he could get off this fucking mountain and find another way out.

  Leaning as much of his weight as he dared onto his front foot, he brought his rifle to his shoulder and took aim once more. Shock punched through him when he found the woman aiming right at him.

  Just as he went to pull the trigger, she fired.

  The bullet came within inches of hitting him in the hip, pinging off a rock right next to him. Instinct made him dive out of the way, landing on his belly in the snow.

  Almost instantly, he heard the crumbling sound again. He jerked his head up, stared in horror at the lip of the cliff as it began to shift and buckle.

  “Shit,” he breathed, scrambling away on his hands and knees until he could get to his feet. His gaze snagged on the backpack, precariously close to where the snowpack was crumbling away.

  His heart lurched. No!

  He lunged for it, skidding to his knees in the snow. The straps remained inches from his straining fingers. A different sort of fear shot through him. He needed what was in that backpack to get out of here. Couldn’t make it without it.

  Cursing mentally, he flopped to his belly and inched forward, his heart threatening to explode as the ground kept giving way. The abyss coming closer and closer.

  His wounded shoulder ached as he reached out, stretching as far as he could. Finally, his fingers brushed the straps. He curled them around it, scrambled to his feet and darted for more stable ground.

  The rumbling got louder, the ground undulating beneath his feet. He took three more running steps, then dove for solid ground on his belly, skidding across the snow with the backpack clutched tight in his fist.

  Shaking all over, he rolled to his side just in time to see another slide tumble down the cliff face behind him.

  BRAXTON FELT LIKE he’d been hit by a truck.


  He was dizzy, still trying to get his bearings when Tala wrenched away from him and flopped into a prone shooting stance with her rifle to her shoulder. Biting back a curse, he shot a hand out, intending to grab her and haul her behind whatever cover he could find, but it was too late.

  The pop of her shot punched through the air. He jerked his gaze upward just in time to see the shooter dive away from the bullet and disappear from view.

  “Missed him,” Tala muttered, anger clear in her voice. She kept her cheek pressed to the stock, watching, ready to take another shot.

  A cracking sound wrenched his attention back up to the cliff edge just as the lip began to give way again.

  Christ.

  He lunged forward to grab Tala by the back of her jacket, yanking her out of the way milliseconds before the plume of debris hit beside them.

  They hit the snow just as the deadly river of snow and rock rushed down the hill, mere feet behind them. He wrapped his arms around her and tucked her into his body as they rolled away from it, trying to shield her from anything poking out of the ground.

  Her rifle jammed into his chest, and her weight drove it in harder. He sucked in a breath and clamped his jaw tight, still rolling them.

  Pain shot through every single bruise and contusion on his back, chest and hips, but he didn’t let go. Didn’t stop. All that mattered was protecting Tala.

  After another few seconds they finally came to a stop on their sides, with Tala’s face shoved into his shoulder. The sliding sound of the snow behind them stopped.

  Tala shoved up onto an elbow to peer down at him. “You okay?” she asked worriedly, cradling the side of his face in the palm of her glove.

  “Yeah,” he muttered, even though everything throbbed and ached. He lifted his head to take a look behind them and blinked until his blurry vision sharpened. The mini avalanche had stopped but the shooter was probably still up there somewhere.

  They needed cover. Now.

  His back and shoulders felt like they’d been beaten with a hammer. He winced, woozy as hell. He didn’t think he had a concussion but his head was pounding. “Gotta move,” he told her.