My lungs burned with every breath, fire spreading through my chest as I hauled myself up another rock face. The river raged below me, white water crashing against boulders that had probably been there since before humans walked this land.
Travis hadn’t been kidding about the staircase of rocks. Every ten feet forward felt like climbing ten feet straight up.
The sun had risen maybe an hour ago, which meant I’d been running, climbing, and scrambling through this wilderness for at least five or six hours. My legs screamed at me to stop, muscles trembling with exhaustion I’d never felt before.
Even during physical therapy after the accident, during those brutal sessions where I’d pushed my scarred legs until tears streamed down my face, I hadn’t felt anything like this.
I wedged my foot into a crevice and pulled myself higher, my fingers raw and bleeding from gripping rough granite. The burgundy silk dress—Oliver’s elegant “possession”—clung to me in sodden, filthy strips. Mud caked the fabric, mixed with sweatand river water until the deep red looked more like dried blood. I’d torn off the lower half somewhere around hour three, when it kept catching on branches and threatening to send me tumbling into the gorge below.
Good. Let Oliver see his precious silk reduced to rags. Let him see what his prey could do.
I paused on a narrow ledge, pressing my back against the cliff face as I caught my breath. My Converses—thank God for small rebellions—had held up better than any heel ever could have. The rubber soles gripped the wet rock, found purchase where stilettos would have sent me plummeting. Oliver had expected me to be hobbled, helpless.
He’d underestimated me.
The mud I’d smeared on every inch of exposed skin had dried and cracked, making me look like some creature from a horror movie. My arms, my face, my neck—even the ruined dress was coated in it, brown and gray streaking the burgundy. If Coop was right about thermal imaging, I probably looked like part of the landscape now instead of a warm body running through the cold.
Coop.
My chest tightened at the thought of him, and not from exertion. I could still feel his hands on my shoulders, his mouth fierce against mine in that final kiss. The way his voice had cracked when he’d whispered, “Run like hell.”
He’d gone back to the compound after I disappeared into the trees. Back into the lion’s den to buy me time, to throw the hunters off my trail. Unarmed. Alone.
Had Oliver figured out he was helping me escape? Had the others turned on him?
No. I couldn’t let myself spiral into the darkest possibility. He’d told me to run, and I’d run. Just like he asked.
I started climbing again, forcing my trembling legs to obey. The river gorge was beautiful in a savage way—towering pines clinging to impossible angles, mist rising from the churning water, mountains stretching toward a sky so blue it hurt to look at. Montana wilderness at its most unforgiving.
A bird burst from the undergrowth to my left, and I froze, heart hammering against my ribs. Just a bird. Not a hunter. Not Oliver’s men crashing through the trees behind me.
I’d been checking over my shoulder every few minutes since I started, ears straining for sounds of pursuit. The forest was full of noises that could be anything—branches cracking, animals moving, wind rustling through pine needles. Every sound made my pulse spike, flooding my exhausted body with another surge of adrenaline I couldn’t afford to waste.
The scars on my legs throbbed with every step, phantom pain mixing with real agony as muscles I’d damaged in the accident protested this abuse. I could almost feel the twisted metal cutting into me again, could almost hear the rescue crews’ voices as they tried to pry me from the wreckage?—
Stop it.
I shook my head hard, banishing the flashback. This wasn’t the same. I wasn’t trapped in a crushed car, helpless and bleeding while time ran out. I was moving. Fighting. Every step forward was a step closer to survival.
But the terror felt the same. That primal, animal fear of being hunted, of being prey.
What if I’d gone the wrong way? The river curved and twisted through the mountains, and in the darkness, I could have missed a turn somewhere. Travis had said to follow it upstream, to look for a bridge crossing a gravel road. But what if the bridge had washed out years ago? What if it didn’t exist anymore?
My foot slipped on wet rock, and I went down hard. My palms slammed into granite, skin tearing open on the roughsurface. Pain lanced up my wrists, and for a moment I just lay there, gasping, feeling the cold stone beneath my cheek.
Get up.
I couldn’t.
Get up, Mia.
The voice in my head sounded like Coop. Fierce. Determined. Absolutely certain that I could do this.
I pushed myself to my knees, then to my feet. Blood welled from my scraped palms, mixing with the mud already caked there. My ankle twinged—not sprained, but close—and I tested it carefully before putting my full weight on it.
Keep moving. That was all I had to do. One foot in front of the other until I reached that road.Run like hell.
Travis had said someone would be there. Someone from Warrior Security, waiting to get me to safety. But how long ago had that call been? Hours. It had been hours, and I had no way of knowing if they’d made it, if they were still waiting, if something had gone wrong on their end too.
