Page 31 of Mountain Target

We’re both going to die, and nobody will find Ren.

“Beau.” Her throat was raw, as if she’d been screaming, and she realized she must have been screaming, she just hadn’t heard herself. “Let me go! You have to let me go!”

“Stop,” he begged, his voice a pained whisper as well. “Please, Valentina.”

“You have to find Ren.”

“I’m. Not. Letting. Go.”

His body jerked, and she realized they weren’t sliding anymore. He must have found something to hold on to with his other arm.

The next thing she noticed was that nothing was moving anymore. The roller coaster had gone still.

Beau’s fingers wrapped even tighter around her wrist, the hold bruising.

“I’ve got you,” he said through gritted teeth.

He heaved once, twice, in a display of jaw-dropping power, and the next thing she knew she was in his arms. Her body dug into his solid embrace, burrowing as close to him as she could, not caring if she looked weak, knowing only that the sound of his heart, hard and heavy, eased the desperate flutter in hers.

“Valentina. Stay with me,” he said. There was steel in his voice—steel and reassurance. “Are you okay?”

“We’re okay.”

She forced her chapped lips open, pushing air through her sore throat.

“Ren.”

“We’re going to find her.”

She pushed herself out of his arms and forced herself to look at the world around them. Not at the hole—she didn’t dare look at that quite yet—but everywhere else around them.

The relative normalcy surprised her. Some rocks had tumbled, tearing down shrubs and plants as they went, and several trees lay on their side, uprooted, but nothing much had changed.

The worst damage seemed to be the chasm that had opened up right under her feet. It looked as if a giant hand had dug in and opened up the earth’s crust, searching for something. She pulled in a sharp breath, couldn’t resist looking down into the darkness to where she could just about make out the bottom with the dim light from her head lamp. If Beau hadn’t been there … if he hadn’t managed to grab on to her wrist …

“Are you okay?” he asked, and though his voice was steady, his hand searched for hers in the dark.

She tested her shoulder, didn’t sense any serious damage.

“Just … surprised … I felt like everything moved. But everything is the same.”

“This wasn’t a large earthquake,” he said quietly. “Or we’re far from the epicenter.”

Something about the stoic way he spoke of the earthquake caught her attention—as if he’d been expecting this.

Her eyes narrowed.

Nobody’s that stoic.

“You’re not surprised,” she said, stopping in her tracks. “You knew about this already …”

Beau sighed. His free hand went up to his hair.

“The last couple weeks we’ve been working with some scientists who claimed something like this … no, not like this … something worse than this was going to happen.”

He looked down at his phone, cursed out loud.

“The network’s down. Come on, let’s go find Ren.”