He drew himself up taller. “I’m ordering you to go back with me.”
“Or what? You’re only my boss during work hours. And if that’s how you’re going to act, I don’t want to work for you anyway.”
His shoulders sagged. “Please come with me? I’m not asking as your boss. I’m asking as your friend.”
Were they friends? Sometimes it didn’t feel that way, and yet who else would be out here with her in the freezing darkness? “I can’t,” she said. “I can’t leave Jackson out here in the cold. What if he’s lost, or hurt? What if someone is still after him?”
She couldn’t see Scott’s expression clearly in the darkness, but he shifted from foot to foot, as if physically wrestling with the problem. Then he hooked his thumbs beneath the front straps of his pack. “Then let’s get going and see where this trail leads.”
Slogging along in full dark now, the thin beams from their headlamps scarcely penetrating the gloom, they did their best to stay on either side of the trail. The only sounds were the crunch of boots on snow and their own labored breathing. Were they getting any closer to Jackson—or only headed farther away from safety?
A sharp whistle pierced the air, and a rush of wind brushed past Lily’s cheek. Bark flew from the trunk of a tree. Then she was on the ground, flat on her stomach in the snow with Scott on top of her. He was big and heavy, crushing the breath out of her. She raised her head to yell at him to get off of her, but he shoved her back into the snow. He spoke softly, his mouth next to her ear. “Stay down! That was a gunshot.”
Chapter Thirteen
Lily froze, heart pounding painfully. Someone was shooting at them?
“Turn off your headlamp,” Scott whispered, and his own light went out.
“I can’t move,” she said.
Scott slid off of her to lie beside her. He was breathing hard, and he kept one hand firmly on her back, as if prepared to shove her down once more. “Turn it off now,” he whispered.
She did so. “Why is someone shooting at us?” she asked, keeping her voice low.
“I don’t know. But they came too close to hitting us for me to think it was a random shot. They could have a night vision scope or goggles or something.”
She started to ask him how he knew that, then remembered he had been in the military. “What are we going to do?” she asked. “We can’t just lie here and wait for him to find us.”
“We’re going to have to crawl.” He turned his head to one side, then pointed in that direction. “Over that way. The tree cover is more dense.”
The trees were growing so close together they had to squeeze through them, negotiating an obstacle course of tree roots, trunks, rocks and thick snow. By the time they reached the massive trunk of a fallen lodgepole pine, she was sodden with melted snow and shivering from the cold. “When I give the word, vault over this log and flatten yourself behind it,” Scott said.
“Okay.” She tensed, waiting. After what seemed like an eternity, but was probably only a few seconds, he said, “Now!”
She pulled herself up onto the log, while he pushed from behind. On the other side, she flattened herself to the ground, pushing up under the tree for a few inches. Scott landed just past her and did the same.
She strained her ears to hear the sound of anyone approaching, but her head was too full of her own ragged breathing and the pounding of her heartbeat. “I don’t hear anyone,” Scott said after a long moment.
“I don’t either.” Then a terrifying thought made her raise her head. “Where are the dogs?”
Scott shoved her down once more. “Stay down!”
“Where are the dogs?” she asked again. “If whoever that was shot Shelby or Hunter…”
“They both ran off when the gunshot was fired,” he said. “It probably terrified them.”
The shot had terrified her. But now she was just angry. “If he hurt my dog…”
“I know,” Scott said. “Don’t think about that now.”
She lay with her face to the ground, shivering hard now, colder than she had ever been in her life. “He won’t have to shoot us,” she muttered. “We’ll freeze to death, lying here.”
“Shhh. Someone’s coming.”
Panic squeezed at her, and she had to bite her lip hard enough to taste blood in order to keep from crying out. Something was definitely shuffling toward them, but it didn’t sound like a person exactly. More like an animal. Or a couple of animals.
Shelby, then Hunter, climbed over the fallen tree and began licking their faces, tails wagging. Lily pulled Shelby down beside her and held the squirming dog tightly, imagining at any moment that another bullet would come their way.
