He nodded, relieved.
She reached for the ignition. “We’ll reverse then. Drive out the way we came in, peel off on the first back road we come to that leads north, stick to cover as much as possible. Get some distance from good ol’ Al and Jerry and regroup.”
He didn’t answer as she carefully backed the truck away from the precipice and out of the leafy cover. The ascent back up to the road was much less terrifying than the descent, but the tires fought for traction in places.
When they eventually rattled and banged onto the paved surface, there was still no sign of the shooters’ return. She kept her speed slower but maintained a brisk clip nonetheless.
He replayed their morning, the trip to the stables, the ambush. He’d been on alert during their drive from Kevin’s and he’d seen no sign that they were followed.
Mackenzie glanced at him. “You’ve got that lip thing going on.”
“What thing?”
“You purse your lips when you’re thinking.”
He blinked. “I do?”
“Yes. Spill it.”
He would have to work on his steely airman persona if she could read him so easily. “Bullseye’s guys. The ambush. How did they know where we’d be? Cordelia or Kevin must have tipped them off.”
“Cordelia maybe. She’s a stranger to us, but I doubt she’d have had time, unless Kevin told her he was bringingguests. Why would Kevin help us in the first place if he was going to hand us over at the stables?”
“We’re worth more alive than dead?”
He clung to the dash as she hit a pothole and his skull smacked into the roof. Was the woman actually aiming for them? He considered offering to drive again, but he acknowledged that they were still alive, undiscovered, and the truck was intact, so he checked himself.
“They could be working together for a bounty, or Cordelia might have spotted us as we headed down that last stretch of road. She could have called and alerted Al and Jerry so they could arrive for the ambush.”
Mackenzie frowned. “In other circumstances, I’d agree, but she was furious when she drove away. Even you could see that, right?”
“What do you mean ‘even I could see that’? I’m a sensitive guy.”
She laughed. “Don’t I know it. One round of tickling and you collapse. Very sensitive, indeed.”
He found himself chuckling too, and aside from his throbbing shoulder, aching head, and tense gut, it actually felt good. Her hair that had come loose from the ponytail blew around her face in the breeze from the open window. Even tired, banged up, and on the run, she was undeniably attractive. He’d dated plenty of strong women who could put him in his place, but he hadn’t found one with the combination of strength and faith and ... What was it? The indefinable something that intrigued him about Mackenzie. He squirmed on the seat and rubbed his chin. “Still visit Aaron’s Landing?”
She stiffened and he couldn’t quite figure out why he’d brought it up. So much for sensitive.
“Not for a while,” she said after a moment. “It’s still the best fishing hole ever. Trout as big as my arm. Aaron used to say the fish congregated there on a weekly basis to commemorate the hilarious day he fell in.”
“I remember. It was a knee-slapper moment except that he took our bag of lunch in with him.” That felt good too. Just for one small tick of the clock to revisit a happy memory of the three of them. Just a trio of friends enjoying a summer day, innocent of the future grief that would forever mark them. “You caught more fish than any of us, yet you never ate a single one, did you?” A fact he’d teased her about relentlessly. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I dunno. They just look so beautiful with their iridescent scales and all. They fight with everything in them to breathe and get back to the water. I just can’t bring myself to kill them.” She shrugged. “Silly.”
“Not silly.”
She yanked a look at him. “No?”
“Life is precious. Not silly to remember that.”
She smiled, a lovely, warm, radiant smile that erased the defiant lines around her mouth. “I suppose a guy who jumps in to rescue a floundering deer and then a drowning lady on the very same day would understand something like that.”
“Yes, he would.”
“Rescue is your life?”
“It’s my job.” Her pack shifted on the seat, and he set it straight again. “But I’m glad I was around at the right place and time, for the deer, and for you.”Why all thehonesty,Gid? Why now?He had the sense that the moments with Mackenzie were about to expire.
