Chapter Eight
STRANDED
The place was their usual whenever they came through Paisley. Not often, but enough that the girl behind the counter recognized them immediately.
Brenda. Ponytail. Too much eyeliner. Same as always.
“Hi! My grandma finally took a day off,” the gum-popping blonde behind the desk said brightly as she handed over a key card.
“Tell her thanks again for the cookies she sent over last Easter,” Whip said.
Brenda gasped dramatically. “Oh my God, weren’t those to die for?”
“Best cookies in the county,” Whip agreed.
Axel made a sound in his throat, already taking the key card from Whip before the conversation turned into a ten-minute discussion about baked goods.
He barely remembered the damn cookies.
Whip probably remembered what kind they were.
Delivery date. Who ate the most. Hell, what everybody had been wearing too.
“Freak.”
“Me?” Whip asked on a laugh as they stepped back outside into the wet evening air.
“Don’t give her hope,” he muttered.
Whip squinted at him. “Are you serious? Brenda’s like twenty.”
“Exactly.”
Axel shoved the key card into the lock harder than necessary and stalked into the room first.
“You’re ridiculous.”
“Am not.”
Whip dropped his bag onto one of the queen beds and wandered toward the single-serve coffee maker near the television.
The room was decent.
Not fancy.
But clean, warm, and dry, which honestly felt luxurious after the day they’d had.
Axel placed his Glock on the nightstand and glanced around the room. “Looks like they cleaned the carpet.”
“No. It’s new.”
Axel pointed at the cream-colored shag. “No, this was here last time. It’s just clean.”
“Nope. Last carpet was dark brown. This one’s sand.”
Axel watched Whip stop mid-scan and narrow his eyes at him.
“Ass,” Whip muttered.
Worth it.
He’d needed to get Whip talking again. Arguing pointless things usually did the trick.
“What else changed?”
“Blinds are new,” Whip muttered after another sweep of the room. “Coffee maker too.”
Axel’s mouth twitched. He reclined back against the nearest bed with his hands behind his head. Whip stopped speaking, but Axel could see him silently cataloging the room like a human inventory sheet.
“Possible truck sighting.” Whip frowned.
“What?”
It took a second to catch up.
“Alert on the phones.” Whip waved his cell toward him.
Axel pulled his own phone from his pocket.
Sure enough, he’d missed the text.
“We going after him?” Axel sat upright.
Whip was already reaching for the county maps spread across the table. “Let’s look at the routes first and figure out where he might be heading.”
“You think he stopped somewhere?”
“I think even Cutter’s not dumb enough to tear around ranch roads when a bigger storm is set to roll in tonight.”
Axel dropped into the chair beside the motel table while Whip spread the county maps across the scratched wood surface.
Rain rattled steadily against the windows.
The heater kicked on again with an ugly metallic hum.
Whip dragged one hand through his damp hair while studying the text alert on his phone.
Axel watched the way the strands slid back into place.
“Truck was spotted here twenty minutes ago.” Whip tapped a road south of Paisley. “Near County Twelve.”
Axel jerked and leaned forward.
“Thought they already searched all this.” He frowned.
“They did.” Whip tapped farther south on the map. “But the truck was spotted here.”
Axel narrowed his eyes. “Near Frank Delaney’s uncle’s hunting cabin.”
“Yeah.”
Axel stared at the road layout another second. The sheriff had already checked that earlier in the day.
But with back roads, storm cover, and familiar territory, a pattern emerged.
“Cutter’s doubling back.”
“Looks that way.”
Yeah. Cutter would think he was smarter than everybody else.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Axel asked.
“I’m thinking that cabin’s worth another look.”
Outside, wind shoved the rain hard enough against the motel windows to make the glass creak faintly.
Axel looked towards the window.
Priorities.
“I’m hungry.”
Whip snorted softly.
“You’re always hungry.”
He shrugged and couldn’t find fault with the truth.
“Jack’s is still open. He has those chili fries,” Whip suggested.
“Jack’s is at the other end of Paisley.”
“So? Or, we can get gas-station hot dogs,” Whip said.
“Absolutely not.”
He had standards.
“But you’re okay with chips? Don’t think I didn’t know what you were getting at the gas station.”
“That’s different. Potatoes are a food group.”
Whip’s mouth twitched.
“You’re high maintenance for a former Green Beret.”
Axel shoved to his feet. “Yeah, well, unlike you, I prefer my food not to rotate beneath heat lamps for fourteen hours.”
Whip snorted and grabbed his jacket off the chair.
“Princess.”
Axel flipped him off and grabbed his Glock off the nightstand.
“We stopping by Jack’s on the way there or back?” Whip asked.
Axel stopped halfway through zipping his jacket. “You seriously want chili fries?”
“We skipped dinner.”
“We had jerky at the station.”
Whip stared at him.
Axel frowned. “What?”
“That’s not food.”
“It absolutely is.”
Whip grabbed the truck keys off the nightstand. “You eat like a divorced construction worker.”
Axel pointed toward him. “That feels personal.”
“It’s accurate.”
The night sky looked heavier now, dark clouds rolling in from the west.
Axel glanced at his weather app. The bigger storm was still about twenty minutes away.
Whip locked the motel room and headed toward the SUV.
Axel watched him move through the night a second longer.
Broad shoulders beneath damp flannel. That easy stride that drew the eyes of everyone. With his head dipped against the wind, blond strands lifted.
It was Whip.
The same man he’d spent half his damn life chasing through football fields, military bases, deployment rotations, bars, marshal offices, and now muddy Oregon ranch country.
He shook himself.
“You getting in or planning to stare at me all night?” Whip called.
Axel jerked his attention away instantly. “You wish.”
Whip’s mouth twitched.
The heater blasted warm air through the SUV a minute later while headlights cut across the storm-dark highway outside Paisley.
County Twelve lay somewhere beyond the rain and black timber ahead of them.
Cutter was probably dry.
That alone pissed him off.
Twenty minutes later, headlights carved through the dark and mud sucked at the tires every time the SUV drifted too close to the shoulder.
From the passenger seat, Axel tore into his own double cheeseburger from Jack’s and watched black timber slide past beyond the rain-streaked windows.
Whip adjusted his grip on the wheel as the SUV bounced through another rut.
Axel braced his free hand against the dash. “Oregon roads are bullshit.”
Whip snorted softly. “You’ve lived here your whole life.”
“Exactly. I’ve had years to build informed opinions.”
Axel stole another chili fry from the carton balanced between them and shoved it into his mouth.
Whip’s mouth twitched faintly as he wadded up his burger wrapper one-handed and tossed it toward the floorboards.
Rain hammered the windshield hard enough that the wipers barely kept up.
Axel shot a glance at Whip.
“You’re driving like somebody’s grandma.”
“Visibility’s garbage.”
“You’re still driving slow.”
“You’re impatient.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Axel finished the last bite of his burger and leaned his head back against the seat. “I’m tired.”
“That too.”
The SUV bounced again.
Axel grabbed the oh-shit handle above the door.
Fuckin’ reflex is all that was.
Whip’s grin flashed quick and mean in the dashboard glow.
“Thought the roads were the problem.”
“Shut up.”
Lightning flashed hard enough to turn the trees white, and a deep crack echoed somewhere ahead of them.
Whip’s grin vanished instantly.
“Shit.”
Whip slammed on the brakes when a massive pine tore loose from the hillside and crashed across County Twelve barely thirty feet ahead of them.
The SUV fishtailed sideways in mud.
Branches exploded across the road with a sound like gunfire while the entire vehicle rocked violently before stopping crooked across the shoulder, the back end in the ditch.
Silence hit for half a second.
Then the world came roaring back.
Whip killed the headlights automatically.
“Everybody good?” Whip asked.
“You ask that like there’s more than two people in here.”
Adrenaline still punched hard beneath Axel’s ribs while he stared at the pine sprawled across the road.
“That’s a big tree,” Whip murmured.
“No shit.”
Whip grabbed a flashlight from the console.
“Come on.”
Axel looked at the wall of rain another second. “You know normal people would stay inside the vehicle right now.”
“Good thing you’re not normal.” Whip shoved the door open and climbed out.
“This is bullshit,” Axel muttered, and followed him anyway.
Freezing water slipped beneath the collar of his jacket and ran down his spine.
Mud swallowed his boots within three steps.
The fucking tree was massive. It blocked the whole damned road.
Way too thick to move. Even for him.
There was no way to drive around it unless they wanted to roll the SUV halfway down the embankment.
Whip swept his flashlight toward the hillside while rainwater streamed off both of them.
“We’re stuck here for a while.”
“Yeah, Genius.”
Perfect. Just fucking perfect.
Axel looked uphill automatically. He needed to get them out of the fucking weather and off of this road, somewhere, anywhere safe.
Dark timber swayed, and thick mud continued sliding downhill. A gust of wind ripped through branches overhead.
Uphill, roots groaned beneath shifting earth.
“Get back inside!”
His words were swallowed by a crack splitting the storm.
“Whip!” he shouted as the ground shifted.
He saw the tree tipping downhill and moved—grabbing Whip hard around the chest and hauling him backward.
Another pine tore loose from the hillside.
Both of them slammed sideways against the SUV.
Axel turned them, putting his own back to the storm and crowding Whip against the SUV.
Mud splashed up his legs as Whip pressed hard against him, chest to chest.
The impact knocked freezing rainwater down the front of Axel’s shirt.
Lightning flashed again.
For one stunned second, he couldn’t move when Whip’s breath hit warm against his mouth.
He fisted the front of Whip’s soaked jacket and kept him close.
Way too fucking close.
Whip went still beneath him, hands locked tight around his neck.
Axel suddenly couldn’t tell if the roaring in his ears belonged to the storm or himself.
His attention dropped before he could stop it.
Whip’s mouth.
Rain running down his throat.
The hard rise and fall of his breathing.
Fuck.
Another crack thundered through the woods.
He jerked to his senses.
Fear was all that was.
His hands slid hard down Whip’s sides automatically, checking for injuries before his brain caught up with what he was doing.
Still too close.
Still holding him.
Still not letting go.