Fucking hell!
If they’re using thermal imaging, we’re fucked. I need to get to Jade. I don’t bother with stealth, I run. I’m halfway down the slope when I hear her.
Not a scream. Crashing, branches snapping, feet pounding dirt, the unmistakable sound of someone running blind through dense woods.
The helicopter spooked her. She’s running.
I cut left, angling to intercept, reading the sound. Calculating her direction, distance, speed.
The surprising thing, she’s heading south, downhill, away from the position I left her in. Away from the direction I went.
Afraid.
I close the gap within two minutes. She bursts through a wall of ferns and I catch her around the waist before she gets past me.
Her breath squeaks out. The shotgun thumps to the ground.
“It’s me. It’s me.” I pin her arms and press my mouth against her ear. “Jade. Stop. It’s Ryker.”
Her body goes rigid with a startled cry before she collapses into me.
“The helicopter,” she pants. “There’s a helicopter.”
“I know, baby. I heard it.”
Her wide, scared gaze turns to me over her shoulder. “Are they bringing more hunters or helping them?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Tears slip over her lashes, streaking in the dirt on her face. “Oh god. Oh god,Ryker.”
The terror in her eyes eclipses what I saw in her before, as if she’s completely sedative-free now, running on another shot of adrenaline from an already drained body.
“Listen to me.” I turn her in my arms so I can capture her face in my hand. “Breathe. Slow, easy. You’rewithme now.”
She nods, but her fingers twist into my shirt. The shirt I took off a dead man to serve as camouflage when I take out his fellow hunters.
“You did the right thing by moving. But you don’t run from me, okay? You runtome.”
The shine coating her eyes gets thicker. When she nods, it’s choppier.
“I won’t leave you alone again.”
She bites at her lip, blows out a shaky exhale and I tuck her under my arm. Close enough to feel the shudders running through her small body. “Come on. We need cover.”
We move deeper into the old growth trees, away from the open ground, until I find what I’m looking for.
It’s a cluster of downed trees stacked against a rock outcropping. This is a natural blind with sight-lines in three directions and solid cover at our backs.
“This looks good.”
I position her behind the thickest trunk with the shotgun across her lap. “Stay low. Same rules. But I’m not going anywhere.”
I unsling the scoped rifle and settle prone on the fallen tree trunk beside her. “I can do what I need to do right here, sweetheart.”
CHAPTER 20
With a quick glance at the cell phone, I check the GPS app the organizers are using to track the hunters.
