She gave him a narrowed glance. “Nice.”
“I’m kidding. That’s actually a very mature outlook.”
“I told you I’m not a kid.”
“It has nothing to do with age. I know forty year old women who’re not mature enough to have that outlook.”
She smiled at him and nudged his elbow. “You’re a pretty smart kid.” Then she winced.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, my shoulder hurts.”
“How’s everything else feel?”
She moved her neck around. “My neck is kinda stiff.”
“We’re going to have to stay here for the night now.” He could see Emily shivering. “Are you cold?”
She nodded. “A little.”
Zack dug into the backpack, took out the small plastic packet and unfolded the solar blanket. “Here.” He wrapped the blanket around her. “These are very warm.”
She took hold of the corners and pulled it tight around her shoulders. “Thanks.” She inched a little closer to him so they were basically touching.
He could feel her shivering slightly, so he put his arm around her and rubbed her opposite shoulder. “Let’s get your blood flowing a little bit.”
“You’re a nice guy, Zack.”
“I try.” He smiled broadly.
“No, really. This situation could be a lot worse. If I have to be running for my life, I really can’t think of a better guy to be running with.”
He smiled, then jokingly rubbed her head. “You’re a good kid.”
She nudged her foot into his. “You goof.”
“Yeah, well, all things considered, you’re a pretty cool chick yourself. The next time I have to be stuck out in the wilderness running from an armed psychopath, you’ll be the first person I call.”
“No, please don’t. I’m not giving you my number for that.”
“Okay, I get it. You don’t want to go on a date with me.”
She shook her head. “Not that kind of a date.”
“What, you don’t like this? This is how I spend all my dates. You’re a lucky girl.”
“Thanks, but no thanks. I never want to see the woods again, ever.”
Zack laughed a little and looked up to the sky as a couple meteors streaked the night. “Look up.”
Emily caught the last remaining fire of a meteor. “Wow.”
She tried to lean back against the rock, but looked like she couldn’t get comfortable with her tender back.
“Here, c’mere.” He slid back and leaned against the wall. With open arms, he invited her to lean into him so she could look up comfortably. She needed a softer surface. “You can’t have that shoulder wound resting on cold wet rock.”
She hesitated for a few long seconds, then, with a slight shrug, she sank into him and rested her head on his chest. Zack wrapped his arms around her to keep the blanket tight, and to give himself a little more warmth as the cold crept in a bit heavier. He also tried to convince himself he wasn’t liking the feeling of her in his arms, or the smell of her, but he was.
Something here just felt so right. Maybe it was that perfect mix of pheromones and human chemistry. He wished this were a different time and place. He wished that he and his friends had just run across Emily and her friends in an innocent moment of chance.
He could only imagine what Rick would be saying right now. It would be something along the lines that she was too young and various other things to be thinking the way he was. But eighteen or not, he was into her.
They sat back in silence, watching the random streaks of light rip across the sky and burn out one by one. Then Emily said, “I’m sorry about your brother. How old was he?”
“He would’ve been twenty-five this year.”
“What was his name?”
“Jake.”
“What happened?” She turned her head to look at him. “I’m sorry if I’m prying. We don’t have to talk about this.”
“No, it’s okay I don’t mind.” Another meteor streaked by. “Jake was a hardcore alcoholic. One night after leaving a local bar, he hit a tree. But the sad part is that by that time, no one was even surprised. We all saw it coming. We just couldn’t stop it.”
“Sometimes that makes it even sadder, when you can’t help but want to.”
Zack nodded. “We all tried. He threw away his life looking for the answers at the bottom of a bottle. He could have had it all. You should have seen him play hockey. He was great. He was drafted by the Los Angeles Kings in the first round of the NHL draft.”
“Wow,” Emily said. “That’s amazing.”
“Yeah, people were calling him the next great American player when he was eighteen. He went to Canada to play major juniors, and at some point, it all went wrong. Maybe it was the pressure, maybe it was something else, but he started drinking. By the time we found out, he was missing games, he got suspended from his team, and cut. Then he got clean, tried again the next year, and got hurt and hooked on prescription meds. It was just an ugly snowball down an ugly mountain. My father kicked his ass one night, forced him into rehab. He got straight, started working for my Uncle Jack, but within another two years, Jake was drunk again every night.”
“I’m so sorry, Zack. I can hear in your voice how much you loved him.”
He sighed. “He was my hero. Growing up, I wanted to be just like him. It’s always hard when heroes fall.”
A few more streaks of light zoomed by, they just watched the show.
Chapter 17
Emily felt Zack’s lips press against hers and the thrill was amazing. She pulled his weight down on top of her as the lounge chair sank lower into the soft sand of the beach. She heard Ren whisper, “Go for it, Em, he’s a hottie.” She wrapped her arms tight around his muscled back and softly he bit her bottom lip. That was when she woke up.
Startled at first, her eyes searched the darkness, then a peaceful calm came over her in spite of the still dire circumstances. His arms were still wrapped around her and the feeling was reassuring.
“You okay?” Zack asked.
“Fine, I just woke up and forgot where I was for a moment.” She sat up. “How long was I out?”
“A couple hours or so.”
“Did you want to sleep?”
He sighed. “Maybe just for a while. Are you sure you can stay awake?” He laid down on the rock next to her, using the backpack for a pillow.
“I’ll be okay. I had a good nap.” She leaned against the stones to her right and sighed. She watched Zack struggling to get the backpack into a workable position, but he didn’t seem to find a happy spot. Grabbing the backpack, she pulled it away from him and guided his head into her thigh. He was hesitant at first, but then he eased down into her lap.
She felt a little bit of excitement with his head on her. But she liked the feeling of being close to him. She liked his touch. There was something electric about it that quickened her heart and she didn’t want to lose that feeling she woke up with. That dream was one of the most vivid ones she’d ever had, it felt so real, and so right.
Emily believed everything we needed to know about our lives and futures was in our dreams. Maybe it was hokey and silly, but her dreams had always been powerful at just the right time in life. In a way, as much as that dream was about Zack, it was also about Ren.
A few years ago, she visited one of those carnival psychics. It seemed like kind of a joke, and it was, for the most part. But the woman said something to her that seemed to stick. She said never ignore the intuition inside you. It’s there for a reason. And ever since, Emily had trusted that inner voice. Sometimes it came out in dreams and other times it just came out as a passing thought. Her Grandma Sundstrom always said that little voice was the voice of God that was inside all of us. She was a very religious woman. She never got to meet her Grandpa Sundstrom. He died when she was very young. He was a fisherman and his boat was lost one morning somewhere in the Atlantic.
They were much more interesting than her dad’s p
arents, who both came here from Germany. They were nice people, but her Grandpa Bontrager was an engineer who designed scientific equipment like mass spectrometers and boring things like that. He was not much for conversation. Her Grandma Bontrager was pretty cool but made the most disgusting foods. Emily didn’t care for German cuisine at all. Thankfully, neither did her father, so it wasn’t something she had to live with except on those rare holidays.
She just sat there for a long while thinking about her family and her life. It was such a strange turn of fate to be here and in this. Looking up, she watched a few streaks of light rip across the sky. The heavens looked so amazingly grand. Everything felt so insignificant looking up there at all those worlds. Astronomy never really interested her very much, but she could totally see why people loved it. The stars were mesmerizing. Sitting there watching them in Zack’s arms earlier was one of the more wonderful memories of her life. It was so simple and felt so right. The fact that such a nice memory could exist within such a grand chaotic scheme seemed almost impossible to rectify in her mind. It was almost as if one of the two parts had to be a dream. How could such dichotomy exist?
The low rumble of an engine became audible. Emily halted her breathing to hone in on it. Off in the distance, she saw lights dancing off the treetops that lined the open pasture.
“Zack,” she said quietly.
He woke up promptly. “I hear it.” He grabbed the backpack and the canteens. “C’mon.”
Emily got up quickly, but realized how sore she was from the fall as every single step brought pain in her ribs and left knee. Her shoulder wasn’t feeling great either, but that didn’t bother her too much. After a few steps, things started to loosen up and become easier to move.
The noise of the ATV chugged softly like a drone, but drew incrementally closer by the second. The lights bobbed out from the trees and into the open pasture just as they rounded the backside of the hill.
“C’mon, we have to climb up.” Zack pulled himself up a ledge, but she wasn’t quite tall enough to reach. He turned around once at the top and dangled his hand to her. She took hold and stepped up the wall.
They climbed the top of the cliff and walked carefully over the spine of the ridge as it snaked up another fifty feet to a small plateau. “Down,” Zack said, as they both got flat on their stomachs and watched over the edge of the ridge as the ATV searched the pasture area.
“Oh no,” Zack said.
“What?”
“The blanket.” He looked at her.
Emily’s eyes grew wide. She knew she’d left it behind.
“He sees that and we’re dead meat.” He got up into a crouch. “I have to go back.”
Emily wanted to say no, but she understood it was a chance they had to take. If Harry found the blanket, he’d know they were in the area and he could corner them up here like a caged hunt.
“Stay down.” Zack crawled away.
***
Zack dropped off the edge and hurried around the corner to look out over the pasture. He saw the ATV, the lights softly bobbed up and down as it traversed the far meadow. The lights weren’t reaching him yet, but they would be soon.
He took a deep breath and took off towards the ledge where they’d rested. Ducking behind a tall boulder, he scanned the scene. The lights were too close for comfort, but he had to go for it.
Zack slithered between the tall rocks, hoping he wasn’t visible. He arrived at the ledge and squatted down. He reached up, but didn’t feel the silver blanket. He stood slightly and looked, but it was gone.
He rose upright fully, frantically looking, but he didn’t see it. Then he saw it. Somehow, it had blown out away from the safety of the ridge a hundred feet into the field. “Oh—boy, this is not a positive development.” He took a deep breath.
Zack contemplated what to do, but he knew what he had to do. He had to get that blanket at all costs, and if he was seen, then he had to draw Harry away. With his best resolve, he took off towards the blanket at a full sprint. He bent and took hold of it. The lights hit him.
The engine of the ATV surged and Zack took off in a full sprint across the pasture, away from the ridge where Emily was. Drawing this madman away from her was his top priority right now.
The ATV stopped, and Zack knew what was coming, so he bolted to the right out of the light path. He heard the crack of the gun, but the darkness cloaked him and the shots were wild.
The ATV surged towards him again. Zack didn’t let up, his legs were flying so fast he hardly felt them on the ground. There was a line of woods—thick woods—another couple hundred yards away and approaching fast.
The lights once again found him and focused on him. He heard the cracking of the gun. He cut hard to the right out of the light again, then hard back to the left as the light adjusted. But pretty soon it would be all over him and there’d be no escaping it. He had to get to that tree line and fast.
With every ounce of power he had left in his legs, he pushed forward. His lungs were burning, his heart was pounding. The crack-crack of the gun echoed in the night just as Zack got to the woods and plunged into the pitch-blackness of the trees. He kept going, cutting up the ridge towards the highest point.
Leaping over the peak, he dove and landed hard. He scrambled, turned, and looked back at the field. The ATV slowly trolled parallel to the ridge, back and forth. Zack’s breathing finally started to slow, the blood rushing through his ears faded.
He looked across the pasture to the other ridge where Emily was. A sudden searing pain from his side hit him. His hand touched the slick wetness and the coppery smell of blood became clear. He’d been shot.
He pulled up his shirt and carefully touched the wound. The bullet had punched in and out of the skin along his waist above his jeans. In terms of a bullet wound, it was only a scratch, but it was bleeding. He took off his T-shirt and tied it around his waist to stop the bleeding. He zipped his jacket back on and surveyed the scene again. The ATV was all the way around the far north side of the ridge now. Harry had to be guessing which way he’d run.
There was probably time to run back across the pasture to Emily. He didn’t want to take the chance right now. But it would be easier to do now rather than in the daylight. Once daylight broke, they’d never see him coming.
Wincing from the pain in his side, he stood up and headed back down the hill. He heard the ATV coming around the other side behind the ridge. If his guess was right that gave him a good four minutes to get back across the meadow, get Emily, and get them into the other woods line on the opposite side. That was more than enough time.
Back down on level ground, he started sprinting across the pasture. The pain in his waist burned with every twist of his body, but he put it out of his head and made his way back to the other ridge.
“Emily,” he yelled up to her. In a few seconds she appeared, standing above him. “C’mon, get the supplies—we have to go now.”
She tossed the backpack down with canteens tied to it. He slipped it on and helped her down from the ledge. “We have to run.”
She nodded and they headed off as quickly as possible to the opposite side of the range.
The ATV engine started to growl. Zack knew he was probably turning around to head back this way, satisfied that Zack was still in those woods, perhaps. But they kept heading to the opposite side, the west side of the open valley floor. He knew from a survival standpoint this was the last possible place you’d want to go because this led into the taller hills, and eventually dangerous cliffs, but they had no choice right now. They had to put ground on this man and they couldn’t keep walking the expected route. He was heading them off at every step and he probably knew they were trying to get to Samson.
Zack had another idea, but he didn’t know if it was viable. Maybe if he saw it with his own eyes he could make a call. For now that just had to chug on through the night until daybreak.
Chapter 18
They came to a steep section. It was still too dark to contin
ue without risking a fall. The moonlight wasn’t casting enough glow to show the degree of the slope since it was behind them now. But Zack could tell they were overlooking a valley.
“We’re going to have to stop here.”
Emily sank down to the hard dirt with a groan. He eased down next to her, sucking a hard breath as the pain of bending hit him.
“Are you all right?” Emily asked
He nodded and zipped off his jacket to check the wound, turning so the moonlight would hit it.
Emily gasped. “Oh, that’s nasty, what happened?”
“He shot me. No big deal.” He could see the diameter of her eyes grow as she took a quick breath.
“No big deal? Are you crazy? My God, Zack, this is nuts. You could’ve been killed. We can’t keep going like this.”
He turned his T-shirt over, and put the clean side over the wound and retied it. It was clotting, but still oozing. “What do you suggest we do?”
Emily looked up. The moon hit her face and he saw the tears brewing in her eyes. “Hey.” He touched her shoulder. “Don’t cry. I’m fine, really.”
She forced an uneasy smile. “This time. But we’re a mess. I nearly fell to my death and you’ve nearly been shot and killed.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. You didn’t nearly fall to your death, you just fell. And this is a scratch.”
“A scratch that was two inches away from being a disaster.”
He sighed. “Well, what can we do?”
She shook her head in rapid bursts. “I should turn myself over to him. It’s the only way.”
“It’s a stupid, risky idea.”
“I can convince him that I’ll cooperate. He wants me. I have the only thing we can negotiate. I can give up to him.”
“That’s not an option.”
Emily was emphatic. “It might be the only hope. I can’t have your death on my conscience. He’s already killed my friends, and your friends, the ATV couple, and I don’t want another death…I don’t want your death…If I can save you, I feel like I have to.”
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