Britt had done his best to do precisely as instructed.
It’d taken some tactical riding and half a dozen turns down tiny roads to shake the cop. And even after he’d assured himself they’d lost their tracker, he hadn’t let up. He’d pushed himself and the other riders harder, choosing an evenmoreobscure route north than the one he’d planned earlier.
It had been a grueling trip. Every muscle in his body ached from the effort of maneuvering Haint along the rough country roads.
Almost there,he assured himself.Almost to Hunter’s cabin.
Hunter was a stickler about keeping the place to himself, so this was the first time Britt had been invited to visit. He’d heard enough about it, though, to know it wasn’t hooked up to the electrical grid. There was no phone line. No gas line. No city water line. Hell, Hunter hadn’t even bought the place in his own name. He’d purchased it through a shell company owned by an LLC, so no one could ever track him there.
Every cell in Britt’s body focused on the miles that lay between him and promised salvation. Then his blood froze, and the air strangled in his lungs because…eyes.
Yellow, glowing eyes that reflected the beam of his headlight. They were close. Too close!
Damnit!
He smashed the levers on his grips with everything he had, and the big bike responded instantly. Haint’s tires gripped the pavement with an earsplitting screech of friction.
Britt managed to control the bike’s momentum for a couple of seconds. Then it became too much. Haint’s rear tire lost traction, swinging around until Britt and the monster motorcycle skidded perpendicular down the road.
“Damnit!” This time, he cursed aloud as he slammed his boot into the pavement and strained to keep Haint from falling sideways and skipping across the top of the roadway like a rock skipping across water.
The friction heated the sole of his boot. His thigh muscles burned from the immense effort it took to fight with physics.
One second stretched into two. Two became three. And just when he thought he might slam into the group of deer standing in the middle of the road, Haint rocked to an awkward stop.
Dust from the slide slipped beneath Britt’s helmet to fill his mouth. The smell of burned rubber and melted asphalt tunneled up his nose. He wasted no time flipping up his visor and staring hard at the animals that had nearly caused his demise.
Haint’s headlight shined into the trees on the side of the road. But the headlights on the two bikes motoring up behind him spotlighted the group of does and the fawns they’d birthed back in the spring.
He counted twelve deer in all, but it was the lead doe whose gaze locked with his. Her huge, dark eyes were unblinking as she chuffed and pawed the pavement.
“Right.” He nodded at the rebuke. “I was speeding. My bad.”
She bobbed her head as if accepting his apology and then leaped across the lane in one graceful bounce. Her crew was tight on her heels…er…hooves, prancing after her in graceful bounds.
“Y’okay?” Knox asked him after he and Hew had growled to a stop behind Britt and cut their engines.
Britt thumbed off Haint’s motor and the forest around them seemed to breathe in the sudden silence. “Yeah. I’m okay. But I think I might’ve shit out my own heart.”
“Pretty fancy riding.” Hew whistled his appreciation. “Thought you were gonna lay her down for sure.”
“Becky will kill me if I wreck this paint job. She mixed about a dozen colors before she got it right.” He patted his tank with its signature color and hand-enameled artwork.
Pulling in a long breath, he blew it out again just as slowly. Then, he repeated the process twice more.
As a spec-ops soldier, he’d learned how helpful breath work could be. From box breathing to resonance breathing, there was science to back up the anecdotal evidence that regulating oxygen intake activated the parasympathetic nervous system and helped to de-escalate and de-stress the body.
It was how he could mountain bike down a seventy-degree incline or go sandboarding in some of the most hostile environments on the planet without breaking a sweat.
Once the rush of blood no longer sounded in his ears, he could hear the distant rumble of thunder. He opened his mouth to tell the others they needed to get back at it to outpace the coming storm. Then he realized itwasn’tthunder and immediately cut his headlight.
“Direction?” Hew pivoted his head as he tried to locate the source of the sound. He, too, killed his bike’s lights.
“Southwest, I think.” Britt yanked off his helmet to get a better bead on the familiar noise. “Yeah.” He nodded once. “Definitely southwest. Flying low and slow. Hey, Knox?” he called to his brother. “You need to go dark.”
Knox switched off the headlight on his production bike, and they were instantly plunged into full-on blackness. The darkness was so complete Britt couldn’t see his hand in front of his face, much less the faces of those with him.
With the light no longer disturbing the peace of the countryside, the night animals resumed their chorus. Small, furry animals rustled the pine needles on the forest floor. A screech owl let loose with an eerie, even-pitched trill. But above it all was the mutedwomp-womp-wompof blades cutting through the dense air.
