Damn it all. If only his phone hadn’t died, he’d call in. Hell, he’d give himself up if it made a difference.
But even that wouldn’t save lives. They’d kill them all in the end. Every man, woman, and child would be sacrificed to the greed of the people at the top. Greed or something darker. They’d never shared their motivation.
Worst of all, he’d sworn no more people would die on his watch, and yet here he was again, in the thick of violence and mayhem. The people back in town, the ones who’d attacked his cabin, this woman. Dead or dying or injured.
He stared at her, jaw hardened at what he had to do: get to Schink’s Station—as fast as was humanly possible—and take back the town.
And keep Leo alive in the process.
He stood, decided. “Got to do something about that head.” Bo’s warm body pressed up against his leg, ready to move.
Leo, however, sank back onto her pallet and shut her eyes. “Gimme a sec.”
“Be right back.” He grabbed his ice axe and a plastic bag from his pack and made his way to the cave entrance before turning to look at her. “Don’t do anything.”
A thin layer of glacial silt a few feet into the glacier cave’s entrance told him everything he needed to know about exterior conditions. It was worse than bad. He got down on hands and knees and crawled through the narrow opening, then stood outside.
If it were just sleet, they could risk moving, but that wasn’t the worst of it. A thin layer of ice had formed on everything, from the snow that was already on the ground to the rock face behind him. Even in the dark it shone, slick and deadly.
The wind, though, was what scared the crap out of him. It danced around him, whipped the tall treetops into a frenzy and picked up whatever precipitation hadn’t frozen to the nearest surface, blasting it back into his face like a sandstorm.
No way could he take Leo to get medical care in this weather. They’d have to stay here and give her a chance to rest, wait out the weather. If it cleared, they could take off in the morning.
He slid his way down to the frozen stream, squatted, and chopped at the water with his ice axe. It gave quickly, providing chunks for him to stuff in the bag.
Something cracked behind him.
He dropped the bag and swung around, rifle up and at the ready.
Nothing.
A quick search of the shadowed, ever-moving landscape showed no living creatures, but that didn’t mean someone—or something—wasn’t approaching. Rather than wait for a confrontation that couldn’t end well, he snatched the bag of ice and his tool, fought his way back up the rise to the rock wall, and sheltered there, eyes scanning every inch of his surroundings. A shape finally materialized from the woods. He squinted.
Bo. It was Bo.
Relief poured through him like hot whiskey. “Come on, girl.” The wind stole his whispered words and hurled them at the sky.
Still on edge, still wary, he made his slow, careful way along the rock face to the cave.
As he went back in, he stretched his near-frozen fingers against the cold. He was getting too old for this. To run, to hide, to fight the elements that would win out in the end, no matter what. How many times had he wished himself back at that crucial moment, when he’d been given the chance to choose between right and wrong, good or bad? Run or die.
In the cave, he dropped to his knees and eased Leo’s hood back as far as he could, shoving it under her head in a way that should have woken her up. The fact that it didn’t only underscored the seriousness of her condition.
She might not survive this.
Everything else evaporated.
With the kind of clarity that comes from a decade of living in near-complete isolation, he saw his mission in a way he hadn’t in forever.
“Leo,” he whispered. “You need to wake up.”
He had no idea who she was or why she was here, but he needed to get her to safety. Save the woman, the town, the world. Shouldn’t be too hard.
But first, she needed to wake the hell up.
Chapter 11
Leo opened her eyes to find the big man bent over her, calling her name over and over. “You can stop yelling now,” she croaked. “Elias.”
