Chapter 21
Steph
The personal beacon buzzed against her palm.
Steph angled the screen away from the crevice opening and read the message. “Not good,” she muttered.
“What’s happening?” Jack leaned close to her, his voice next to her ear.
“They’re still coming, but there was a delay. The lead vehicle slid off the road about ten miles outside of Irma. They need to wait for a replacement that can tow the trailer with the snowmobiles.”
She checked the time stamp and compared it to her watch. She was right about the signals being delayed. “This was sent over half an hour ago.”
“Half an hour? And we’re just now receiving it. Because of the GPS?”
“I think so. We need to move. Find a place where the GPS signal gets through better. They need to be able to pinpoint us.”
“Staying put is safer.” Jack’s voice was low and even. “A delay in the signal isn’t a crisis. When they get close enough, they’ll know we’re in the area. Worst case, we get a delayed message asking for our position and we give it.”
She considered that. He wasn’t wrong, yet she also understood the interference could be an issue.
This big of a delay, and the GPS was only marginally better than no device at all.
The signal would bounce, degrade, or simply not transmit cleanly.
The rescuers would get something, whether that something was accurate enough to matter was a different question.
“But what if they need to reach us quickly? What if something changes and we need to react immediately and the message doesn’t come through in time?”
Jack didn’t answer right away. She could see him working through it. The set of his jaw said he wanted to push back, that he had more arguments ready if she needed them.
“I trust you to know what’s best out here,” he said finally. “We’ll do it your way.”
The words settled somewhere in her chest. He meant what he said. Jack trusted her, and knowing that sent warmth through her entire body.
She’d spent months building a version of him that made sense to her. That version had been easier to manage. She could point to it and call it a problem without examining what was underneath the irritation.
This version was considerably harder to dismiss.
He sat beside her in the rock crevice without complaint, steady and calm, not once suggesting that following a snowmobile track into the dark forest had been as much her idea as his.
He shared things he clearly didn’t share easily.
He kept his head when the spotlight swept toward them and the temperature dropped and the snow increased and everything in the situation said panic was the reasonable response.
He kissed her in a way that was soft and sweet and promising.
Jack Swisher was so much more than the version she’d built.
Deep down, she’d known that weeks ago. When he’d rescued her on the sidewalk, when she ran into him at the gear swap, when he worked without complaint at the Jingle Run, simply because she needed help.
She’d been learning who he was, the kind of man he really was, for weeks, but didn’t want to admit it. Not even to herself.
Especially not to herself.
Jocelyn noticed. She’d dropped hints at their Thanksgiving meal. She knew then that Jack wasn’t the boogeyman Steph had invented. Maybe she even knew there could be something between Steph and him that Steph refused to acknowledge.
They might have something, she could maybe admit that to herself now, but Steph needed to know Jack outside of this. Outside the cold and the dark and the men on machines somewhere in the trees. That was a conversation for another day, assuming they got out of here to have it.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“There’s another rock formation, west of here . . . I think.”
“You think?”
“It was dark when we found this place.” She shifted, and her knee made its feelings known against the rock. “Getting here was more instinct than knowledge. I’d been here before, but not in the dark and not coming from that direction.”
She looked out through the crevice, reading what she could see of the terrain.
The snow was falling, and the wind was blowing.
That could be good for them. It could also be bad.
“I remember another set of rocks near a gulley. Not as tight as this, but enough cover. The gulley gives us an exit if we need to move fast. And the GPS will get a cleaner signal once we’re out in the open. ”
“How far is the gulley from the rocks?”
“Twenty feet. Maybe less.”
He nodded, taking that in. “A little more room to move around would make my feet happy. But then again, I can’t say I hate being next to you like this.”
Steph snickered and silently agreed. She definitely hadn’t hated it either. Especially the kiss. It was wonderful and perfect and exactly how it should’ve been.
“I have a map in my pack that covers this area. If we keep it under the blanket, and you cover the flashlight with your hands, it should be safe to check it.”
“Too risky.”
“I want to show you the route,” she insisted. “In case we get separated.”
“We won’t get separated.” He said it without any hesitation at all. “I’m sticking to you like glue.”
Her heart did something she chose not to examine.
“Okay. Stick as close to the rocks as we can so we don’t leave tracks.
From this crevice, we’ll go right. Then angle around the edge of the stone.
Once we reach the edge of it, we’ll be in an open area.
If it was light, we’d see the next formation.
I doubt we’ll see much with the dark and snow. ”
“If they’re still out there, lack of visibility is good.”
“True. Good to keep them from seeing us, but might make it hard for us to find exactly where we need to go and the best route to get there.” She hesitated. “I might be wrong.”
“Wrong? I doubt it.”
He leaned toward her. The kiss was quick and soft. Nothing like the first one, and still something she felt all the way down to her cold, tingling feet.
“Ready?” Jack asked as he pulled away.
“As I’ll ever be.” Steph recognized there was a quiver to her tone. What if Jack was right and the best choice was to stay put? Maybe they should wait until the area was secure, even if it was still several hours from now, and even if they couldn’t know what was happening in closer to real time.
She carefully folded up the blanket and tucked it in the outside pocket of her pack before handing him his pack and grabbing hers. The crevice left no room to put them on properly. “Your legs are going to be a mess when you stand up,” she told him.
“Oh, I know,” he agreed.
Jack eased himself out first, moving carefully, keeping his back against the rock face.
“All clear,” he said, poking his head back in and offering his hand. She took it, and he pulled her clear of the crevice. For a moment, they both stood against the rock, moving their legs up and down.
Steph grimaced. Her feet were full of pins and needles from the ankles down. Her knees were slow and reluctant, and her right hip flexor made itself loudly known. She took a few careful steps, and the feeling started coming back, unpleasant and necessary in equal measure.
Jack was doing the same beside her, taking short experimental steps along the rock face, working circulation back into his legs.
“Wow,” he whispered. “I’m a mess.”
“Same,” she agreed as she scanned the area.
Even in the limited light, it was easy to see several inches of new snow had fallen while they hid. More than she expected. It lay unmarked and deep across the open ground. Beautiful under any other circumstances. Right now, it was just an obstacle.
“Deep snow works a little in our favor,” she said quietly. “Hard to tell human tracks from animals at first glance.”
“Stick to the rocks where we can.”
“As long as they last.”
They settled their packs and moved out, staying close to the rock face and using it for cover when they were able.
The tree line along the gulley was visible in the distance but only just. The open snow between the outcropping and the second rock formation could be a problem. She smiled, realizing she’d been right about where they were.
The problem was that once they left the rocks they were using for cover, they needed to cross a hundred yards of open ground. Maybe a little more.
“How are your feet?” she asked as they huddled next to a rock.
“Not great,” Jack admitted. “Better, but . . . yeah. Not great. You?”
“About the same. I would suggest we wait here until we get more feeling, but— ”
“But it’s too risky. We need to move.”
“We need to be smart about it. The wind has formed drifts. It’s going to be deep in places and bare in others.”
“Ready?” He reached for her hand.
They were hobbling more than walking, her hand in his, both of them leaning slightly into each other as their legs slowly came back online.
Every step was a negotiation with a body that had been crammed into a cold rock crevice for far too long.
They kept moving, and gradually the hobble became something more like tottering.
Jack took a step and ended up thigh deep in a pocket of snow.
The engine sound came before he could get himself loose.
He muttered a string of words she’d never heard from him as he yanked his leg out.
Steph’s heart rate responded to the danger.
The machine was close, not the faint circling sound they’d been tracking all night, rising and fading through the trees.
This sounded like it was heading straight for them and getting closer fast, the pitch climbing hard as it accelerated, pushing through the timber with no attempt at quiet.
“We’ve got to move.” She grabbed his arm.
They ran. Or tried to as she hit a pocket of snow and sank in. Tears of frustration threatened to overwhelm her as Jack wrapped his arm around her waist and yanked her loose.
Moving again, every step demanded everything she had. She punched through the crust and sank and wrenched her leg free and punched through again. Jack was fighting the same snow, the same resistance, holding each other and moving as best as they could.
A second engine joined the first.
She kept her eyes fixed on the rocks ahead.
The gulley beyond. She could see both clearly now, and she focused on them and kept driving forward, lifting her knees high through the snow the way she’d trained herself to do in deep conditions, the way she’d done on training runs exactly like this one, yet nothing like this one.
Snow poofed up ahead and to their right, followed by the crack of a gunshot. Too close. Not a warning.
Jack’s grip on her hand locked down.
These men were shooting at them. Not to scare them. To stop them. She understood at that moment, with complete and cold certainty, that they had decided two witnesses in the snow were a problem that needed a permanent solution.
Something in her legs found a reserve she hadn’t known was left. She drove her knees higher and wrenched her feet free faster and kept pushing, lungs burning from the cold and the effort. Beside her, Jack matched her stride for stride and didn’t let go.
Another shot. This one pinged against the rock cropping they were aiming for.
The sound of the snowmobiles changed. She glanced over her shoulder as the lead machine came out of the tree line.
The terrain finally cooperated, and they got out of the heavy snow and reached a windblown spot where the ground was almost bare, allowing an all-out sprint .
. . or as much of one as their still-aching feet and legs allowed.
“The rocks.” She pointed ahead without breaking stride. “Right there. Go.”
Their hands were still locked together.
A third shot rang out. Snow kicked up hard to her right, close enough that she pulled Jack left on instinct, changing their line. He went with her instantly without question.
The rocks were close. Thirty feet. Twenty.
The engines screamed behind them, the headlights finding them, leaving them completely exposed.
Another shot split the air.
Her legs kept moving. The rocks were right there. Ten feet.
She hit the edge of the formation and pulled Jack in behind her.