Panic squeezed around her heart as the last dregs of unconsciousness bled away. She’d almost made it to the shore when… When something had hit her from behind. No. They were going the wrong way. He was pulling her toward the reservoir, but Murray needed her. He was still caught in the fire. She had to get him out. Adrenaline spiked in her blood, and she tried twisting out of the man’s grip. “Take me back. I have to go back.”
Strong hands locked down on her ankles, punishing. Enough to leave marks. Rough wood dropped out from underneath her backside, and her lower back hit the edge of a stair. “You can’t save him.”
Dragging. He was dragging her down a dock, loose sand and boards skinning her upper body raw. The realization sent another surge of pain down her back. Her whimper at the impact failed to get his attention, and Aslen fought harder. She’d planned to soak her jacket and T-shirt in reservoir water in hopes of giving Murray something to soak his clothing and stave off the chance of burns. At the very least keep the smoke from slowly suffocating him, but he was still out there—struggling for his life—while this stranger dragged her farther away from the man she needed to save. Her fingernails caught on the dried, swollen wood and ripped free. She tugged at her feet, trying todislodge his hold, but exhaustion from this morning’s fire and the hit to the head had done more damage than she’d estimated.
Howhadshe hit her head? She couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. Aslen managed to turn onto her stomach and clawed for the stairs. “I have to try. Please. Let me go. I can’t leave him.”
“You’re not going anywhere, Ranger Woods.” He jerked her entire body to the edge of the dock.
She hit the wood harder than expected and lost the last remnants of air in her lungs. A slip of shade provided by the rocking boat swaying a few feet away offered a sliver of relief, and for a brief moment, Aslen wanted nothing more than to fall back into unconsciousness as her body temperature ate up the coolness coming off Blue Springs Reservoir.
Her head protested every move against the rotting wood, but a warning rang loud and clear. How did he know her name?
Oh. The tag pinned to her uniform. Except…she wasn’t wearing her uniform shirt, and she’d left her ID in Murray’s truck. Her tongue felt two sizes too big for her mouth. What was happening to her? Why couldn’t she focus? Fight back? Run? “How do you… How do you know my name?”
“Did you really think I would go through all this trouble and not get what I came for?” His knees popped as he crouched beside her, unwinding the rope holding the midsize boat to the dock. Blond hair cut across deep forehead lines. Four of them to be exact, with little branches striking out on their own toward his temples. Natural, with some darker lowlights. Kind of like Danny’s, if Aslen didn’t know her best friend relied on her hairdresser every six weeks. A neat beard cut close to his mouth while a hardness she wasn’t sure she’d ever encountered entered those glacial-blue eyes. The blue plaid of his shirt only added to the washed-out emotional shield locked across his expression. Callused hands collected her wrists, grabbing for the section of rope he’d unbound from the boat. “From what I hear, you’vebeen sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong. Telling your law enforcement division all about me. I was warned you might come sniffing around the campground, so I put a couple safety measures in place. One of which is keeping your partner busy as we speak. The other should keep whatever backup you called for busy for a while.”
The RV. The explosion.Those families would’ve been in the blast radius. The other campground visitors wouldn’t have stood a chance. Had they gotten clear? How many more people had been killed for one man’s escape?
“Why are you doing this? Why kill that woman?” Emotion clogged her throat. Was this… Was this what Murray had to deal with on a daily basis as a police officer in Salt Lake City? Was this why it’d been so easy for him to leave that life behind and follow her to Zion? How? How did he make it through a single day without the nightmares of his work haunting him every time he closed his eyes? Aslen pulled at her wrists, but her captor had already tightened the strands to the point numbness pricked at her fingertips. It was him. The man they’d been looking for, the arsonist who’d started the fire that’d literally blown up in her face. The unconscious haze was clearing. Slower than she needed, but her survival instincts finally kicked into place.
“Let’s just say I learned who she really was.” A breath eased out of him as if he hadn’t spent the past few minutes dragging her across the park. “You know, we really need to be better at taking people at face value. We give them chance after chance with their apologies and promises to change, and yet they still find the best ways to hurt those closest to them, but I couldn’t stand by and watch her get hurt anymore.”
Her? He moved to secure her ankles, and understanding hit as hard as whatever she’d taken to the back of the head.
“Wait. No.” Aslen tried to pull her wrists apart, to add some kind of give to the rope grating through the first layer of skin,but the fibers refused to budge. She kicked her feet, but he was so much stronger than her. Holding her without a mere hint of effort. He dodged her attack, letting loose a warning growl, before planting her calves against the dock. Hard. “Please, you don’t have to do this.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, and as much as I wish you hadn’t been dragged into this, I can’t have you coming after us when this is finished. Problem is, I can’t just toss you in the fire like I did with dear old Mom this morning. Otherwise, your law enforcement friend might start connecting the pieces before we have a chance to get the hell out of this place.” He stood to his full height then, a god of violence among mere mortals trying to keep everyone and everything in this park safe. “So, I’m going to leave you in the middle of the lake. Should give me enough of a head start to help her disappear while they try to find you, don’t you think?”
Blood drained from her face and neck as the world tipped on its axis. He’d lifted her as though she weighed nothing and hauled her legs over the lip of the boat.
No. No, no, no, no. She wasn’t going to die like this. Her heel connected with the boat’s windshield as she scrambled to free herself from his hold.
It wasn’t enough. She wasn’t enough. Her abductor manhandled her onto the narrow slip of space between the galley and driver’s seat, the rough texture of the nonslip coating along the boat’s floor biting into her bare skin as effectively as a cheese grater.
“Help!” Her plea went unanswered as she tried to stand. Where were the other boat owners? Where were the smiling families seeking relief from the summer heat? Where was Murray? Smoke tendriled higher where the fire burned the hottest over the few trees she spotted from her prone position. He was in there. Battling to survive, and she’d just left him in apointless attempt to pay back everything he’d done for her. But the truth was, she couldn’t ever pay him back.
The boat’s engine rumbled through her frame, and the first jerk set them into motion across the reservoir.
Her heart shattered at the thought of what she’d said to him this morning. How she’d negotiated to leave him behind. But the truth was, she needed him. More than her next breath. She needed him to keep showing up, to keep scowling at her, to keep protecting her.
The roar of the boat’s engine failed to drown out the screaming in her head. The bow arched up out of the water as her abductor increased their speed, the cool wind doing nothing to calm her racing nerves. She was going to die out here. Never getting the chance to tell Murray how she truly felt.
Aslen pressed her heels into the floor, angling her head up over her shoulder in search of something—anything—she might use as a weapon, but the boat had been cleared of fishing gear and tools. Probably stored in the seats ringing the back of the boat. Fear welled up inside her chest, threatened to overwhelm her.
No.She thought of everything Murray had taught her, had tried to drill into her over the years. About protecting herself for those times he wasn’t there for her. She would fight. Until her final breath. Keeping her eyes on the driver, she inched back toward those seats.
The boat jerked to a stop, rocking her forward, and she lost every inch of distance. The engine died. Then those callused hands she hated so much were on her again, hauling her upright, maneuvering her to the back of the boat. “I really wish it didn’t have to be this way, Ranger Woods, but I’ll do whatever it takes to protect my family.”
The water blurred in her vision as the arsonist threw her overboard.
Chapter Sixteen
Her scream pulverized through the last of his adrenaline. Leaving him defeated and outright terrified.
Murray’s legs ached with every step as he raced down the small dock shooting into the reservoir. His lungs threatened to burst as he gulped down humidity-laden bouts of air. The midsize boat peeling away from the aged wood shot spurs of water behind it.
He was too late. She was gone. The arsonist had taken her.
