Mount Mercy

Beckett raised her syringe. “Stand back,” she told the men. “He’ll come up fast.”

They backed off and I backed off with them... a little too far, so that I was standing almost behind one of them. All their focus was on Colt and making sure nothing happened to him. They weren’t expecting us to attack them... I hoped. And the cockpit of the helicopter faced away from us, so the pilot wouldn’t be able to see what was going on.

“One,” counted Beckett, aiming the syringe. I heard one of the men hold his breath. “Two….”

I stabbed the syringe of Haldol into one guy’s neck and pushed the plunger, then punched the other one as hard as I could in the face. They crumpled at the same time. Beckett gaped in shock... then threw down her syringe and ran into my arms. We hugged each other tight and I closed my eyes, breathing in her scent. I was never going to let her go again.

But then the darkness turned red as a bright light shone through my eyelids. I opened my eyes. A car was approaching, its headlights blazing through the trees.

Beckett cursed. “That’s the guys who set the bomb coming back.” She stared up at me. “We have to stop it!”

How? We didn’t know anything about bombs. But if we didn’t stop it, the whole town was going to be wiped out. “Fuck,” I muttered. “You know where it is?”

“Black van,” she said instantly. “It’s on a timer.”

The headlights were coming closer. Once those guys got there and woke up their friends, it was all over. “Come on!” I grabbed her hand, then winced: I’d forgotten how much my hands hurt. “You drive!”

We jumped into the pickup—lucky for us, when they’d turned on the headlights to light Colt’s operation, they’d left the keys in the ignition. Beckett carefully backed us up, then drove around the three unconscious men in the snow. Just as the other car arrived, we roared away towards the mountain.

62

Amy

THE ROAD to the mountain was slick with ice, but I pushed our speed up to fifty: we couldn’t afford to go slow. I kept doing the math in my head: how long since the bomb was set? How much time did we have left? However I worked it out, the answer kept coming out as not enough.

Both of us were white-faced and grimly silent. Corrigan was nursing his hands in front of the heater and, from the look on his face, they were hurting even more as they thawed..

As we came over a rise, Corrigan suddenly said, “Stop!”

I glanced across at him, disbelieving, but he was stony-faced. “Stop!” he said again.

I hit the brakes and we skidded to a stop in the middle of the road.

“We’d be safe here,” said Corrigan. “We’re high enough above the town.”

I looked down at the town. He was right.

“They had supplies back at the camp,” Corrigan said. “Food, shelter. By now, those guys will have woken up, taken the gold and gone. We could survive there until the roads are clear.”

I stared down at the town, then looked at him and shook my head, tears in my eyes.

He took my chin in his hand. “I want to save them,” he told me, his voice strained. “I need to save you.”

My stomach knotted. If we turned back now, I lost everyone and everything I knew. But I’d have him. Oh Jesus, don’t make me choose…. We stared into each other’s eyes, both of us fighting the same battle. And the longer we hesitated, the less time we had….

“Fuck it,” I snapped. “We’re doctors.” I stamped hard on the gas and we shot forward. Corrigan’s hand covered mine on the steering wheel and gently squeezed.

63

Colt

I SAT bolt upright, sucking in air like some kid waking up from a nightmare. Tucker, the guy who’d left to set the bomb, was standing over me with a syringe. The others were clustered behind him, looking terrified. “What happened?” I snapped.

“That Irish doctor showed up,” said Tucker. “They got the jump on us and took off.”

“They got the jump on you?” I snarled. He looked at his feet. Jesus, why was everyone except me so goddamn weak? “They’re going to try to defuse the bomb. We gotta go after them.”

I went to get up. Everyone rushed at me, pushing me back down to the snow. “Colt, you died,” said Tucker. “They had to bring you back! You need to rest.” He looked at the others. “Let us get you into the chopper and let’s go! Forget the mountain. We got the gold, we won!”

“It needs to be perfect!” I yelled. My voice shook the trees around us and he shrank back in fear. Why were they so worried about my health? My leg hurt like hell, but other than that I felt like a lion, every vein thrumming with life and power. “I’m not having the FBI on my back for another twenty years. Everyone’s got to think the gold is still there, under the rubble. And no one can know we are here. That’s the only way this works!”