And even though he’d wished for just this event—exactly what they needed to escape their pursuers once and for all—it was happening too damn soon.
Breakup was starting and they were still smack dab in the middle of the water.
***
Would this lake never end?
Leo wiped cold water from her eyes and peered ahead at a shore that didn’t get any closer, no matter how far they went, how hard they ran.
And all the while, the ice popped and groaned and sagged beneath them. It felt like tiptoeing across a waking monster’s back.
Breath coming out in visible puffs, she swiped a hand across her eyes to clear them and stared hard at the landscape—or into it. Was it a landscape if you were part of it? She shook her head, narrowed her eyes, and peered through the falling raindrops to the layered, patchwork scenery with its ever-changing lights and darks and misty reflections. It was beautiful. Awesome, even in the pouring rain. Her next sinus-clearing breath smelled of mineral earth and pine, with something rotting underneath.
She glanced back and came to a sudden stop, blinking at the figure that had grown small in the last few minutes. What was wrong with Elias? He’d stopped and stood sagging against his pole while he drained his canteen. The posture was so different from how he’d been up until now that it set off an alarm bell in her brain.
Stomping back over ice she’d already checked and traversed seemed like tempting fate, but she did it anyway because something was going on with the yeti and it freaked her out.
Maybe she was imagining it, given that she didn’t really know him from Adam.
Although, in a weird way she couldn’t explain, that felt like a lie. The past twenty-four hours had forged a link between them. An understanding. Hell, maybe more. Maybe even something like attraction, though that was irrelevant in the current situation.
But why was he bent forward like that? Was his pack too heavy? Probably. He’d been hauling it for hours.
Guilt shot through her. After adding her weight to his load for a portion of the trip, the man was probably close to collapsing.
He should rest. They both should. She looked up at the sky. Was it even day still? Impossible to tell with the rain pouring over them. Were their pursuers getting close?
She was sure of very little right now. Could see next to nothing, could barely feel her fingers and toes. And while adrenaline had worked for a while, she was definitely running on empty. There was only so much more her body could handle.
But seeing Elias flagging did more to pierce a hole in her composure than anything that had happened since they’d teamed up.
And it was her fault. He’d taken up her slack. Hardening her resolve, she picked up her pace.
The dog gave a high-pitched whine, ears going straight, head tilting at a cute puppy-dog angle.
A smile pulled at Leo’s lips. “What’s going—”
The earth growled.
She stopped, mouth open, her last word unspoken.
What the hell was that? She panted, head tilting in unconscious imitation of the dog, who’d adopted a low, tense stance, like she was about to attack, or—
“Run!” Elias’s shout hit her a split second before another noise rent the air, so loud she couldn’t locate the source, could only feel the rumbling beneath her feet. She’d lived through earthquakes before and this was immeasurably worse. A mix of thunder and heavy artillery and the world ripping open.
The ice boomed beneath her feet and she set off, willing it to stay in one piece.
Please don’t break yet.
A series of pops like rapid gunfire sent her skidding to the side, eyes searching wildly for Elias and Bo, who’d been there seconds earlier. In flashes, she took in sky, mist-wrapped trees, Elias’s moving silhouette. Her feet slipped out from under her. Water, dark and churning, licked at the ice she’d been standing on seconds before. Faster than she could fathom, her body slithered down what was now a slide. Pure instinct made her dig her boots in and claw hard with numb fingers. With dizzying swiftness, the ice seesawed back, sent her careening up, then down again, tumbling toward the roiling water, at the mercy of the elements and fate, like a die being thrown over and over.
Beyond the terrible grind of ice against ice, she heard one sound, ringing clear as a bell above the hellish din—Elias calling her name. Those two syllables centered Leo, gave her a sense of direction and a goal. One second her muscles loosened, the next they tensed, and using the ice’s rhythmic sway to guide her, arms reaching, straining, she pounced. One hand caught the top edge of the piece, her body hitting it with an audible exhale. The other hand found purchase and she heaved up, teetered on the rim, threw her legs over it, and leapt just as it sank.
Stance wide, arms out, she eyed the ice around her. It was a bigger, steadier piece. She hoped.
“Leo, go!”
She didn’t wait, just sprinted hard until her lungs hurt, her vision darkened, and the only thing—theonlything—was not falling in. Not getting pulled under.
