Chapter 48
FORTY-EIGHT
D
arren charged after Willow through the woods, struggling to stay on his feet with the underbrush tangling around his lower legs. The toe of his boot caught on a fallen branch. He tripped.
The world spun for a moment. He threw out his left arm, caught himself on a tree trunk before he sprawled on his face, his pistol gripped tight in his right hand.
He was still drunk. Things were completely fucked, but this was about damage control as much as it was survival. He couldn’t leave any loose ends dangling now. Willow was supposed to be dead in her car at the bottom of the cliff.
Not only was she still very much alive, Tripp was involved now as well. Another problem for him to eliminate.
At least he was fairly sure Tripp wasn’t armed. If he had been, he would have taken cover and returned fire by now.
Darren lurched forward, scanning the dense forest for any movement that would give away their position.
Willow might have seen and recognized him through the window when he’d tried to run her off the road.
Even if she hadn’t, she would have a clear description of his truck. The cops would find him that way.
A bird shot out of the underbrush about thirty yards up ahead to the right, startled from its hiding spot. He aimed his weapon there and headed that way, not bothering to move quietly.
Tripp had nothing to defend himself with. Darren would take him out first, since he was the only possible threat. Then he would go after Willow.
Once they were dead he would burn the bodies, then dump anything left over offshore to get rid of any forensic evidence. It was too late to pull back now. He couldn’t stop what had been set into motion.
But as he closed in on his targets, he thought of his wife. His kids. About what would happen to them if he died should the people he was doing business with get wind of this and decided he was a liability. Or the shame it would bring them if he was caught and went to prison.
He hardened his resolve and kept going. It was either Willow and Tripp, or him. He had no choice but to finish this now.
The only way out of this was to make sure neither of them left these woods alive.
Tripp kept a solid hand on the center of Willow’s back as they ran, urging her to move faster in front of him. The shooter was somewhere behind them and to their left. He stayed close to her, keeping himself between her and a possible bullet.
He didn’t have a firearm to defend them with. Their only hope was to evade the shooter long enough to loop back around to his truck and get away before he caught up to them. The cops wouldn’t get up here in time to help them.
“Keep moving,” he whispered, the back of his neck tingling with the certainty that they were being hunted through these woods.
On the map he’d seen in Rafe’s office, he remembered there was a cache site close to here. Was that what the shooter was trying to protect? Had Willow interrupted him trying to move the contents, and that’s why he had tried to run her off the cliff?
Willow ducked under a large branch blocking their way. Her long hair snagged on the end of it. She smothered a yelp as her head snapped back, reaching up to yank her hair free.
Tripp stopped to help her, fumbling to untangle it while losing precious seconds. When he couldn’t get her free, he snapped the end of the dead branch off, leaving it dangling down her back. “Go, go.”
She darted left to go around the base of a rotten log. A shot rang out.
He grabbed her around the waist and tackled her to the ground, landing on top of her. Keeping her head covered with his arms, he twisted his upper body to look back. Caught a flash of blue denim moving through the screen of trees.
Shit, the bastard was way too fucking close.
He waited, every muscle pulled taut until the shooter had moved out of his field of vision, then urged Willow to her feet and started hurrying farther to the left.
Another shot echoed through the woods. Bark and bits of moss exploded from a tree as they ran past it.
Tripp grabbed her by the waist and yanked her to the right, skidding to his knees behind a stump and dragging her with him. She clutched his arm, breathing in sharp little bursts while he scanned their surroundings, looking for an escape route.
There wasn’t one.
The shooter had a lock on them. They couldn’t stay here, and the chance of them making it back to the road without being caught was fading. Every second, the asshole got closer.
Tripp clenched his jaw, decision made. Their only chance was to expose their position by breaking from this spot to put as much distance between them as possible, then hide Willow.
He grabbed her wrist, visually mapping out their path. The surrounding terrain was densely covered with trees, brush, and other obstacles. But that same density also made it the perfect spot for someone to camouflage himself.
Gearing up for a dangerous sprint, he shifted into a crouch, squeezing Willow’s forearm to alert her to get ready. She squeezed his shoulder in answer, hunkered rigidly beside him.
Tripp eased slightly to the right, peering around the wide stump for a moment, then focused on the route he’d chosen. His peripheral vision on the right limited his field of view, so he waited several heartbeats, tuning his ears to the slightest sound.
Nothing but faint birdsong echoed through the trees.
The quiet here amplified everything. As soon as they emerged from cover, they would be exposed, their every move creating sound that the shooter could pinpoint.
But there was no other way. They were sitting ducks here.
Tripp pulled Willow to her feet and broke into a run, moving as fast as he could over the short distance of open ground between them and a cluster of cedar trunks ahead.
No shots rang out, but he heard someone crashing through the brush behind them. He ran faster, pulling Willow with him. She struggled to keep up, nearly fell when he jumped over a fallen maple bough blocking the way.
Scrambling over it, she regained her footing and veered left with him as he led her deeper into the woods. He kept going, head down, determined to put distance between them and the man hunting them. Looking for a good place to hide her.
Behind them, the sound of the thrashing grew more distant. Tripp didn’t stop, taking Willow left and right through the trees. Then, up ahead, he spotted a natural gulley in the forest floor to the right, thickly covered by ferns and a big fallen log.
He raced for it, steering Willow around the far end of the log before pushing her down behind it. “Take cover,” he whispered close to her ear, loud as he dared. She immediately scrambled deeper under the gap beneath the log, the soft soil muffling her movements.
He dropped down next to her and began covering her with fallen boughs and branches, arranging thick green fern fronds over her to form a makeshift ghillie suit. It made some noise but not much.
His ears picked up at the sound of someone moving through the brush nearby. Knew he was almost out of time.
“Stay here. Keep your phone on silent,” he whispered to Willow, putting a finger to his lips when she opened her mouth to argue.
She looked up at him and grabbed his arm in protest. Several of the fern fronds he’d covered her with shifted. A shaft of deep golden light cutting through the trees illuminated the depths of her brown eyes.
He stared back at her for a moment. Mapping every detail of her face.
I love you, he told her silently. Holding the words back only because he didn’t want to scare her more by making her think he believed they were going to die out here.
He had hidden her as best he could. Now he had to draw the shooter away from her.
Willow shook her head, her eyes pleading with him.
His head whipped around when branches snapped ahead of them, way too close. Time’s up.
He pushed Willow deeper under the protection of the fallen tree, made sure she was well covered by the ferns before he grabbed a chunk of wood lying on the ground.
Choosing his spot carefully, he threw it into the brush to the right. The shooter raced toward it. The instant he did, Tripp took off in the opposite direction, bracing for a bullet.
But no shots rang out. He’d bought himself a chance and drawn the threat away from Willow.
Now he had to go after the shooter and find a way to end this threat.