Chapter 4 #2
But that momentum is stopped, like our progress, when we clear the hill. What was just a calm stream two days ago is now a churning mass of brown water, debris spinning in its current. My truck is on the other side, and there's no way to walk around—not for miles.
"Shit," she mutters. She’s not hiding her frustration from me. That feels like progress too.
"We could fell a tree," I suggest, nodding toward a slim pine. "Make our own bridge. I've got a hatchet in my pack."
After a moment, she nods and digs through my gear, producing the hatchet.
She approaches the tree, studying it, the Glock still in her other hand.
Her first swing is tentative, barely biting into the bark.
The second is harder, but at the wrong angle, causing the blade to glance off.
By the fifth swing, frustration creases her brow.
"I could do it," I say quietly. "If you untie me."
She freezes mid-swing. Her eyes lock with mine. I can almost hear her thoughts. She looks at the rushing water, then back at me. Both of us are threats to her escaping, and she’s trying to decide which one’s bigger.
"Try anything, and I'll shoot you," she says finally, lowering the hatchet.
"Fair enough."
She unties my wrists, her fingers brushing against my skin. The rope falls away, and I flex my hands, blood rushing back into my fingertips.
I take the hatchet from her. I circle the pine, finding the right spot, and begin.
She doesn't seem offended that I offered to take over.
These are my woods, and I am a big guy after all.
But she has no idea just how unnaturally strong and fast I am—so much so that I have to hide it.
I don't want to give her another reason to doubt me again.
I swing the hatchet, strong and true, but less than half of what I'm capable of.
A few minutes later, I make the final notch.
The tree groans, then falls perfectly across the rushing water.
For a moment, we stand together, looking at our makeshift bridge. That glorious smile flickers across Naomi's face again. Our eyes meet, and there's a shared moment of triumph.
Then her expression hardens. She levels the gun at me.
"Put the hatchet down."
I feel its weight in my hand. I'm not surprised by her fear of me holding this possible weapon. No. I'm more surprised I never even considered using it against her.
I drop the hatchet.
She quickly retrieves it, sliding it back into the pack. "You first,” she says.
I nod but don't say anything.
I set my boots on the fallen tree to test it. It's solid enough. I walk across steadily, one foot in front of the other, the water churning beneath me.
When I reach the other side, I turn back. Naomi follows, burdened with the pack and both weapons. She's halfway when her foot slips. Her arms pinwheel, and she loses her pistol into the rushing water below. She's going down.
I lunge forward, grabbing her arm. For a moment, she dangles, half over the raging water, her eyes wide with surprise. Then I pull, hauling her to safety beside me on solid ground.
She stares at me, water plastering her hair to her face. "Thank you," she says, sounding genuinely puzzled.
"You're welcome."
She looks around for the gun. "I think it washed away."
“Still have my rifle,” I offer. The rifle I could have easily taken when she was off balance in my arms.
She nods, her look distant. She takes my rifle off her shoulder and holds it, not quite pointing it at me. “I’ve spent too much of the last few days handcuffed and shackled. So I know how awful that can be. I won’t tie you up again, but you have to stay ahead of me. Understood?”
“Yes, ma’am. My truck is this way," I tell her, pointing through the trees. I start walking ahead of her as instructed.
“Where was the van taking you?” I ask.
I stay ahead, but risk taking looks back at her. Her eyes are on her feet as she finds her footing in the soggy terrain. “I don’t know.”
"How did you get away?"
"Prison transport crashed," she says after a pause. "We were heading through the mountains. The driver must have taken a curve too fast in the rain. Van rolled. The other guard and the driver didn't make it. I got out, found the keys, and unlocked my restraints."
"You just walked away from a crash? No pursuit?"
"I didn't say that. I'm sure they're after me now."
Something doesn't add up. A prison transport with only two guards, taking a dangerous mountain road in a storm? That's not standard procedure. Not for a high-value prisoner. And a crash that kills everyone but leaves her able to walk away?
She's not making this up. I can tell. But she's not telling me everything either. Or maybe she doesn't know how strange that is. Either way, it's convenient.
“Where were you coming from?”
She looks up at me, and the hesitation is back. But she says, “Terre Haute.”
“Indiana? Ain’t that a men’s jail?”
“I was in ad-seg. Solitary confinement.”
A female prisoner so dangerous that they housed her in a men’s max security prison?
“What are you charged with?” Better than asking her what she did. Odds are she’d deny it. If prisons only housed people who said they were guilty, they’d be empty.
She shakes her head. “The less you know, the safer you are."
Well, that’s strange. That’s the first time the woman pointing the gun at me and threatening to kill me is concerned with my safety.
“You’re law enforcement.” I make it a statement, not a question. People put their guard up when asked questions. My statement makes what I say an opinion. And people can’t help but correct or confirm other people’s views.
I hear her stop moving and I risk turning around. Her face has returned to that hard, distrusting place where she doesn’t believe that I’m just a hunter in the Montana woods. I’m not, but I need to understand why she doesn’t.
“Why do you say that?”
“The way you handled your weapon. The fact that you called it a weapon instead of a gun. You clocked how I moved. I clocked how you did.”
Her jaw clenches while she shakes her head subtly. “No.”
“You’re not military, though.”
“No.” She’s still shaking her head slowly. “CIA.”
Now that is interesting. “Are you trying to escape? Sounds like it was an accident. Why not turn yourself in?”
“Why do you want to know?” An accusation is hidden in her question. But I’m past the point of trying to prove to her that I’m not part of whatever she fears I might be. I need to know what that is.
“You’re saying you’re going to take my truck once we get there. I need to know if I’m going to be left alive when you do.”
“Of course.”
“How do I know that?” I risk taking a step toward her. She tenses and raises the weapon slightly. “You’ve done nothing but threaten to kill me since you found me.”
“Look, I don’t want to hurt you. I just need to get away.” Of course, she’s an escaped inmate. But there’s more here.
"You running from something or toward something?" I ask.
Her eyes widen just enough that I know I've hit a target. "Both," she says, quieter this time.
“What?”
“I can’t tell you.”
"Can't or won't?"
"Both.” She sighs. “Look, it’s just safer for you if you don’t know.”
"I'm way past safe, darlin'." The endearment slips out before I can catch it. I expect her to raise her weapon. Anytime I’ve been friendly or familiar, she’s reacted by putting her guard up. But she doesn’t this time.
She worries her bottom lip, and despite everything, I have the unbidden thought that I wish I could do that for her.
“Look, I just need to get back to civilization.”
“Why? You’re better off escaping deeper into those woods.”
I can see the torment in her face. “There’s something I need to do.”
“What do you need to do?”
She shakes her head. “The less you know, the better.”
“So they can’t ask me?”
Her face has transformed into an open, transparent expression. She’s lost. And the weight she has to bear is too much for her alone.
“You won’t believe me. No one has. But what I need to do is more important than me.” Her face turns hard again, and her eyes narrow. “But it’s also more important than you. I just need your truck, and I promise you I will let you go. But if you try to escape or disarm me, I will kill you.”
A slight tremor when she says the word kill betrays her. If she can barely say it, she can’t do it. That speech wasn’t just for my benefit. She’s trying to convince herself that she can do it. Maybe what she needs to do is so important that she can pull that trigger.
Maybe.
And maybe this is where the answers I can get out of her end. But she’s not going to kill me. I know that now.
And I won’t kill her. I think I knew that the minute I laid eyes on her.
She’s in trouble. Far deeper than just the law.
I go to speak but then stop, every nerve in my body firing at once at the air that’s been sucked away and replaced with electricity. That familiar prickle crawls up my spine. My hand instinctively reaches for a weapon that isn't there.
"What's wrong?" Naomi asks, her voice tense.
Then I hear it—the low, rumbling growl. Branches crack in the underbrush to our right. I turn slowly, keeping my movements calm despite the adrenaline flooding my system.
The grizzly emerges from the tree line, its massive form dwarfing everything around it. It rises on its hind legs, towering over us. And unlike before, when I had the drop on it, it has the drop on us.
Naomi gasps, taking a step backward. I can see the panic flashing in her eyes, the instinct to run.
"Don't move!" I bark, my voice commanding enough to freeze her in place. "If you run, it'll chase. You'll never outrun it."
The bear drops to all fours and lets out a roar that seems to shake the very air around us. It begins to advance.
"Naomi! Give me the rifle!"
She hesitates, the rifle trembling in her hand as her eyes dart between the charging bear and me.
"Trust me!"
The bear is thirty yards away. Twenty. Ten.
Something changes in her expression, and resolve gives way to surrender. She yanks the rifle from her shoulder and throws it to me.
I don't hold back like I did with the hatchet. At full, fluid, inhuman speed, I catch the rifle, chamber a round, flip off the safety, bring the stock to my shoulder, and squeeze the trigger.
The rifle bucks against my shoulder. The sound cracks through the forest like thunder. The bear's massive body lurches, then collapses mid-stride, momentum carrying its lifeless form forward. It skids to a halt barely five feet from where we stand, dust and pine needles billowing around us.
Perfect shot. Center of the skull. Instantaneous death.
Silence falls heavy in the clearing, broken only by Naomi's rapid breathing. I lower the rifle slowly, already feeling the weight of her stare. When I turn to face her, I see what I expect to see as realization dawns in those captivating eyes.
No ordinary hunter makes that shot. No civilian moves at that speed. No normal person shifts from passive to lethal in the space of a heartbeat.
She just revealed some of her secrets.
And now so have I.
Her eyes dart from the bear to me, then to the rifle in my hands. She now understands that the most dangerous predator in these woods isn't the one bleeding out at our feet. Her question hangs between us, unasked but impossible to miss.
Who are you, really?
Instead of waiting for her to find the words, I extend my arms, offering her back the rifle. Handle first, barrel pointed down and away.
She hesitates, fingers twitching slightly before wrapping around the weapon. Our hands brush, and I feel that same electricity that sparked in our look while she fed me. Something I've no right to feel.
"I was never going to hurt you," she murmurs quietly.
"I know," I say. Maybe I didn't know it when I first met her, but I know it now.
Our eyes lock. Something passes between us at that moment.
Recognition, maybe.
For one beat of my heart that I no longer recognize, no space exists between Naomi and me. We're not captor and captive. We’re two people, exiled in the rain-soaked woods, haunted by different secrets, but understanding what that means.
Until the moment shatters like glass.
"FREEZE! DON'T FUCKING MOVE!"