From behind his sunglasses, he looked her up and down and then pressed his lips together. “Honestly, I probably can’t. Not without making a sled or something. But given what I have available, I don’t think that’d be very comfortable.” He scratched at his short beard. “I mean, I could get you pretty far in a fireman’s carry, but that would be super unpleasant for you, and I’d have to leave my pack behind.”
Okay, then. At least he didn’t try to act like some macho superhero, blustering his way past her objections. His forthrightness was refreshing.
“How far to town?” she asked.
“About six miles.”
Six miles?She could feel herself collapsing like an old dog. Normally, she could spend hours running and jumping in the sand. Now she couldn’t imagine walking another hundred yards on flat-packed earth. “I don’t think there’s a chance in hell we’ll make it today.” It wasn’t even her bumps and bruises so much—though they didn’t help—but that she was dehydrated and undernourished and exhausted from not sleeping for more than twenty-four hours.
“Probably not,” he agreed, “but we should try to put as much distance between ourselves and those men as possible. My guess is they’re already free of the duct tape and are either closing in on us, or heading back to wherever they came from. Although, one of them probably isn’t moving any faster than you with that knee injury.”
She shivered despite the warm sun and waggled the empty water bottle. “Thank you for the water and food and everything. If you hadn’t come along, I’d probably be dead.”
“If I hadn’t come along, you wouldn’t have fallen off the cliff in the first place.”
“Maybe, but I was already on the edge of collapse.” She knew the feeling of hitting the wall, and she was well beyond. “And JJ and his bulldog were right behind me.”
“Well then, I’m glad I came along.” He squinted at her. “JJ is the one with green eyes?”
“Yes. The other guy is Harris.”
A little groove formed between his brows. “How’d you end up getting kidnapped in the first place?”
Maybe the details of Lindsey’s kidnapping were none of Todd’s business, but now that he was involved, he wanted to know what he’d gotten into. And maybe determine if JJ and Harris knew Pete.
Lindsey’s pretty brown eyes blinked slowly as if she could barely keep them open long enough to answer Todd’s question. “My friend, Megan, and I were hiking up to a cabin one of her clients loaned her for the week, and we got lost.” She scowled. “Such a rookie move. We stumbled onto private land and two armed guards found us and said they’d take us to someone who could help. That was JJ. Obviously, he didn’t help. Instead, he had them lock us up in separate cabins.” With a sigh, she said, “We should have tried to run before it ever got that far, but at first I thought maybe they were actually going to give us directions.”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Of course I could have. Or at least been more suspicious. As a woman, I’m always on my guard with men I don’t know, or when walking into an unknown situation. But we were desperate, unprepared to spend a night on the mountain, out of cell tower range, and had no idea how to get back to the trailhead. So we chose to trust.”
“Like you’re doing with me now.” He hadn’t thought about how much she risked by putting her life in his hands. Tall enough to look him in the eye when standing, she struck him as athletic and tough, but still no match for most men unless she had the advantage of a weapon or some training.
She nodded, her eyes wary, as if she’d forgotten for a minute that she didn’t know him any more than JJ and Harris. “Except, you’ve done nothing but protect me so far. I’ll take my chances with you over them any day.”
What more could he ask for? “They didn’t hold you at a compound with about a dozen cabins near the top of the hill, did they?”
She narrowed her eyes. “Yes.” The word came slowly and full of questions. “How did you know?”
Damn. What the hell had Pete gotten mixed up with? “I saw it on the map when I was planning today’s hike. It’s the only place I can think of in the direction you were coming from.”
“Oh. Yeah, it looked like some kind of scout camp for grownups, complete with shooting range.”
Of course. “What happened to your friend?” Todd was almost afraid to ask.
Lindsey flinched. “I don’t know.” She hugged her waist. “When I escaped, I tried to find her, but there were men with rifles everywhere. I figured it was better to go for help than try to defeat that kind of security on my own.”
“Good choice.”
“Feels like shit.”
“The hard decisions always do.” He knew better than most.
Lindsey stared at him for a moment, those beautiful eyes seeing through to his soul. Despite being covered in dirt, with her dark hair in a snarled ponytail, her lips chapped, she was arresting. His fingers twitched, already planning the bold strokes of pencil that would commit her essence to paper.
All irrelevant because she was in danger, and he would get her to safety and return to his mission. Period. The End.
To do so, he needed her trust, and the only way to earn it was to see her as just another rescue, nothing more. Helping people was the one thing he knew he was good at. And helping Lindsey was the only thing that might ease the ache of failing to protect his cousin from her son-of-a-bitch husband.
