“You can roll?”
“Yep.”
“You done grade five rapids?”
She winced. “No.”
“You’ll be good,” he said unconvincingly. “Now, how do we get to the kayaks and launch them under his nose?”
The shooting started up again. “Fuck. My chopper.”My life.Just when she was getting something good going.
“Might be fixable.”
More gunfire. Potshots. He was being selective. “You think?”
“You insured?”
“Enough to repay my loans, but I’ll be left with nothing.” She rubbed her face. “I’ll look forward to worrying about that when we’re out of here.”
“So we tweak the plan. I’ll lead him away while you get the kayaks to the river. I double back. Then we’re gone.”
“We’d be crazy to launch here. The river meanders for the first kilometer—he’d be faster on foot and have plenty of opportunity for potshots. And if he gets back and finds the kayaks gone, he’ll assume we’ve launched from the hut and come looking.”
“Got a plan B?”
“There’s another entry point downstream, a Y-junction, where a big tributary joins the Awatapu. He can’t cross either river without a boat, not with the dogs, and swimming that vortex would be suicide. He’d be trapped on an arrowhead of land with rapids on two sides. He’d have to backtrack up the tributary for a couple of hours to reach a wading point. If we launch at the junction, we’ll be out of his scope in minutes—and we’ll get a head start.”
“How far away is it—this arrowhead?”
“There’s a shortcut over a saddle.” She pointed west, not that it was any help in the thick foliage. “He can’t be two places at once, and he’d be more likely to watch for us up here.”
The firing stopped. She swallowed, resetting her hearing. Shane paced along one side of the chopper, nodding in satisfaction as he swapped magazines again.
She shuffled closer to Cody. “Okay, so you get the kayaks while I lead him into the bush. I’ll lose him, circle ’round and meet you at the arrowhead.”
“Too dangerous for you. I’m playing decoy.”
“It’s my territory. I know it better. And...you’d handle carrying two loaded kayaks better than me.” She pointed to his watch. “If I don’t arrive by 1800, go without me. That’ll give you a little over two hours of safe paddling. You need to be far downstream by nightfall.”
No answer.
“Cody?”
His jaw tightened. “I’m not leaving you.”
And here we go with the macho bullshit.“Like you said, the priority is to raise the alarm.”
More silence.
“A few minutes ago you were happy for me to lift off without you,” she whispered. “What’s different about this scenario?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’d be happy leaving me if I was a guy, right?”
He blinked, jerking his head back. “Actually, no.” His voice clanged with genuine offense.
“O-kay,” she said. That intense look on his face... Something bigger than chauvinism was preying on that cool demeanor. A touch of PTSD? Guilt? “But we don’t have a choice. If we stick together, he’ll take out both of us.”
