Hero (Alpha Mountain 1)

Chapter

Nineteen

INDI

* * *

I was going to die. The hand about my neck gripped so tight it was crushing my trachea. Spots danced in my eyes, and I knew this was it. I had seconds. I wriggled and squirmed, trying to shift. Tully had power and gravity on his side, but I was unstable, like a fucking turtle with my huge pack on my back, I arched sideways and tipped. I wasn’t usually two feet wide, but the pack was jammed full, the tent poles wedged in vertically braced my back.

I fell onto my shoulder and hip, Tully’s hand slipping away. Coughing and sputtering, I wriggled my arms out of the straps as much as pushed the guy off me. I had a moment to move as he hadn’t expected me to fall out of the way. Neither had I.

My maneuvering had me dropping lower, enough so that I was able to bring my knee up. It slid up his thigh and hit his balls. Not full-on, but he groaned and dropped like dead weight.

I panted, gasping, then crying out as I shimmied out from beneath him.

I was sweaty, covered in brambles and grass and dirt as I crawled away then popped to my feet. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw he rolled onto his hands and knees and was panting.

Shit. I hadn’t hit him as hard as Steven Hosanski at summer camp in ninth grade when he’d gotten too handsy. Buck had told me what to do, and it had worked like a charm then and maybe now.

I wasn’t beneath him any longer. But I was still on a damned mountain. I could run, but as soon as he recovered, he’d chase. Turning around, I took off at a sprint down the slope, aiming for the creek I could see in the distance. Small cottonwoods and shrubs lined it, smartly placed for their roots to absorb the water.

“Indigo!” he shouted after a minute or two, and I knew my head start was up.

I couldn’t run like this forever. I was out of breath now. A painful stitch in my side made me wince. Heavy footfall behind me prepped me for his approach. Panic fueled extra adrenaline, which had me pushing harder.

A weight thumped in the pocket of my thin sweatshirt. The temperature had been cool when we’d packed up our tents this morning, and with the thousand-foot gain in altitude, it hadn’t warmed up much. Now, I was sweating like I was in a Finnish spa. But the thing in my pocket?

My multipurpose tool I’d had out to pull a hook from a trout’s mouth. One of the boys had caught one from the high lake. While he’d wanted to eat it for breakfast, it had been catch and release only, so I’d used the pliers to work the hook free from the fish’s mouth before putting him back.

I yanked it from my pocket as I ran, flipping it open into the knife.

“You’re a dead woman,” Tully shouted as I came to the creek edge. With the steep incline, it had forged deep ravines in the landscape. The deep, heavy rushing water over a nearby waterfall drowned out his fast approach. “You’ll see your brother in hell!”

He caught me a second later, and I stumbled. We fell onto the hard ground. I hit a rock with my shoulder, and he plowed hip first into a boulder at the edge of the ravine.

I gripped the knife and, using every bit of energy I had left, jabbed him with the blade. I felt it hit his stomach then thrust inward.

His hands came up to grab my head, to ram it into the ground, but his eyes widened when his brain caught up that I’d stabbed him.

I screamed when he fell on me again. The wet stickiness of blood poured onto me. Tully’s evil gaze bored into mine.

“You bitch,” he panted.

I pushed him off again, but this time, he wasn’t budging.

It must have been his inward drive to see me dead that pushed him. Gave him his own personal burst of adrenaline.

“If I die, you go with me,” he snarled, trying to grab my tool from my hand.

“No!” I screamed, scrambling with him.

“Indi!”

Someone shouted my name.

“Here!” I yelled. “Help!”

“Indi!”

My name came again, and then Ford was there. Was that Ford? Was I dying, or was it really him?

He was wild, panting, frantic. He grabbed Tully and lifted him off me as if he were a rag doll, then threw him onto the ground.

“Indi?” Ford’s anxious gaze flicked to me and the blood that covered my shirt.

“I’m okay,” I panted.

Ford’s attention flicked back to Tully. “You framed David Buchanan. Had him murdered to cover your own tracks.”

“Fuck you.” Tully was curled into himself, as he tried to get up, hands against his wound. His shirt was covered in blood as well as his fingers.