Gideon seemed to mull it over as he grabbed his own phone. “I can’t make an outgoing call. Can you?”
She forced herself to check. “No.”
“Texts won’t send either, but someone managed to get through to you.” He watched as she pushed the playback button and held the phone between them so he could hear too.
Her heart pounded as he pressed close. Aaron’s phone ... his number.
The message was staticky and garbled, indecipherable the first time, so she pressed the button again. “Is that a woman or a man?”
“Not sure, maybe even a teen, but I can’t understand what’s being said. Only the last two words.”
His breath hitched in her ear as the message replayed.
“Trust me.”
Gideon frowned as he got to his feet. “Trust who?”
Mackenzie was dizzied. “How did someone get his cell? And why would they call us?”
“If Aaron was dealing for Bullseye, it’s possible he got Aaron’s phone somehow. Cloned it, maybe.”
She stared at her phone as if it could provide some answers. “It definitely wasn’t Bullseye in the message.” She groaned. “Why can’t we get a signal now when we got one two seconds ago? Phones are completely maddening.”
“Agreed. Maybe when we reach higher ground.” He was scanning the scattered debris under his boots.
“Has the plan changed?” she said.
“Only that we’ll have to move slower and more carefully and stay in the trees as much as possible. We’ll parallel the trail but keep out of the open.” He checked his watch. “It’ll be close, because in another hour we have to be clear of this valley.”
“Which way?”
He pointed to the steep, densely wooded slope, and her body sagged.
“Straight up and no roads?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She bit back a sigh and took off her pack to shake away the debris that had snagged on the fabric as he bent to retrieve something.
“Hold up,” he said.
Before she realized what he was planning, he’d scooped a handful of mud and smeared it on her face, then his own.
The cold goop was clammy and smelled of moldering things. It was all she could do to resist a shudder as she glared at him.
“I hope that was a real important survival tactic, buddy,” she snapped through clenched teeth.
He smiled and removed the rain poncho from under his jacket. “Same issue as with this. Shine. It’s one of the things that gives people away when they’re trying to hide. Movement, position, shape, shadow, shine ... et cetera, basically anything that stands out to the enemy.” He fingered the slippery poncho. “Shine where it shouldn’t be is like a beacon to point them right to us. Nothing shinier than a beautiful woman.”
She blinked. Did he just say she was beautiful? She laughed nervously. “You probably say that to all the girls after you smear them with mud.”
“Only when it’s true,” he said. Was he blushing under his mud face paint? “Um, anyway, so it’s, you know, important to work the camouflage as much as we can, now that they’re hunting us from the air too.”
“Okay. I accept that, but you didn’t have to look so happy about sliming me.”
His grin was full of the mischief of a high school boy. “Gotta get the entertainment where you can, you know?”
“Right.” They’d restored the easy balance between them, but the word still rang in her ears.Beautiful.It made no sense that he’d say it, or that it would quiver like an arrow in her heart. She was unraveling, that wasit. The call from Aaron’s phone had shaken her, left her off-balance.
