“Wait,” Liz Harding yelled as she raced after Jenna. Their deal had been that Jenna would stay back until the cops cleared the scene.
Jenna pretended to not hear her as she sloshed through the mud and thin coat of ice. The sleet had stopped and the skies were clearing, but she didn’t even notice. She skidded to a stop beside Andre, knelt in the mud, and pulled her knife to cut the duct tape that bound his wrists and ankles. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” He had his neck arched, watching past her to the action going on at the other side of the clearing. “You shouldn’t be here. I don’t know what the range—”
She shut him up with a kiss. “I’m damned tired of people telling me what I should and should not be doing.”
The vest was nylon. She wasn’t about to mess with the bomb or its ignition device, but she needed Andre out of it. She patted the back of the vest. No obvious wires.
Andre twisted around before she could slice the vest. “Jenna, don’t. Let the—”
“I thought you were dead,” she told him.
“We both might be if you—”
“I don’t care. Can’t you see that?”
Liz arrived with the bomb squad guy—one of the staties—and between them, they trundled a small containment unit, basically a cement mixer on wheels, designed to hold explosives safely.
The sound of an engine revving screamed through the clearing. Everyone turned to look in the direction of the ATV.
“They’re heading over the edge,” a man’s voice came through the radio. “I’ve lost sight of them. Repeat I’ve lost sight of the target.”
“Anyone have eyes on Caine?” Oshiro cut in.
No one responded.
“Morgan,” Andre said. “Forget Caine. Where’s Morgan? Did she go over?” He started to climb to his feet, but Liz pulled him back down.
“Let us get you out of this first.” She turned to the bomb tech. “Best hurry.”
Jenna stood, staring in the direction the ATV had vanished, standing in front of Andre as if she could somehow magically block the signal from the dead man’s switch and the bomb. Hang in there, Morgan, she prayed.
The tech assessed the situation and then did what Jenna was going to do anyway—he slit the vest up the back just as a loud crash boomed through the night, followed by the sound of an engine whining, then dying.
As soon as he was free, Andre stood, grabbed Jenna’s hand, and they sprinted across the clearing to the cliff.
Lights from the other officers shone through the thick bramble of branches and dead trees that had been bulldozed over the edge to make room for the loggers’ equipment. Ridges of granite jutted up through the dead wood, creating a nightmare of desolation.
The manhunt had now turned into a search and rescue. Officers’ voices overlapped on the radio as they scrambled down and called out their findings. There was no way to climb down the steep granite cliff from the top, not without ropes and technical gear. Jenna and Andre prowled along the edge back into the trees until they found a shallow path that led down.
“I’ve got the ATV and Caine,” a voice came over the radio. “He’s KIA.”
“You certain?” Oshiro asked.
“Definite. ATV crushed him. He’s gone.”
“The girl, find the girl,” Liz ordered, her voice cracking through the night.
The path Jenna and Andre found was slick with mud and steeper than it had first appeared. As they scrambled down it, tripping over hidden tree roots and sliding in the mud, the voices on the radio kept coming.
“Wait. Shine the light—yes, pink, I see a pink coat.”
“Can you reach the girl?”
Andre stopped, gripping Jenna’s hand as they listened. The night felt heavy as the silence lengthened.
“She’ll be all right,” she told him, surprising herself by how much she wanted that to be true. “It’s Morgan. She’s like a cat with nine lives.”
He said nothing, merely pulled her to him and hugged her hard.
“I’ve got her. She’s—oh my God. The trees tore right through her. She’s impaled on a branch.”
“Is she alive?”
“She’s cold, so cold. Like a block of ice. But…how the hell…she held on. Somehow the kid hung on. I have the detonator, deactivating it.” His voice faded for a long moment, then returned. “I have a pulse. It’s faint, but it’s there. She’s alive.”
Chapter 30
WHEN YOU FALL so fast and hard, all you can do is learn to fly.
The words kept coming, swift as swallows, elegant as eagles soaring on the wind, gentle as a breeze, harsh and hammering as a hurricane.