He fired. She shrieked once and ducked, bracing for the impact of the bullet.
Wade yanked her down behind a short, fat tree. Panic kicked into overdrive. No matter how well versed she was in mountain survival, she was really out of her element now. Her body had been pushed to the edge of endurance, and fear sent her teeth chattering in a way that had nothing to do with cold.
Bullets zinged off the trunk, two in a row, pop, pop. Snow from the branches spewed in chunks. She grabbed Wade’s parka and pressed closer. A sense of their life and death stakes tangled up with a bizarre mess of want and fear until she desperately needed to hang on to the one familiar person in a world flipped upside down. The deputy dropped to his stomach and took aim again.
“Chewie?” she whispered, looking around frantically, then calling louder, “Chewie?”
Zing. Another bullet ricocheted off a pile of rocks at the base of the mountain.
Wade shoved her to the ground and dropped on top of her with an “Ooof.” Anything that hit her would have to go through him. Except he didn’t flinch, so she hoped, prayed, he hadn’t been hit. The bullets kept popping, echoing around the narrow crevasse in the mountain. Snow and ice chunks battered down around them, clinking off Wade’s backpack.
His hand slid from her and to his waist. He pulled out a gun, an ominous black pistol. He held it up, but for some reason, he didn’t shoot. Not that she intended to question anything he did right now, because he was the one keeping them alive and she was the one who’d screwed up again and again.
Faster and faster the mountain rumbled, until she realized.
Deputy Smith wasn’t trying to shoot them. He was trying to start an avalanche and collapse the walls on top of them.
***
Wade was running out of options fast.
The bastard lying belly down on a stretch of ice kept shooting at them, and while Wade had a clear shot, more gunfire could risk setting off an avalanche, since he had the foothills and overhang above him. A few more yards and they would have been in clear open space—clean pickings for the gunman. But he also could have gotten off a shot of his own. Wade gripped the barrel of his 9 mm. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it, but if the man came closer, he wouldn’t have any choice. He just prayed the snowy overhang would hold until the chopper arrived.
“Come on, come on, come on,” he mumbled softly.
He kept his body between Sunny and the bullets. Snow and chunks of ice thudded and stabbed downward, faster, thicker. He hunched around her, tighter. Adrenaline seared his veins until he could almost feel his near-frozen toes thawing.
“Wade”—Sunny gripped his jacket—“any ideas? What do you need me to do? We can’t just stay here like sitting ducks.”
“I agree.” Another shot echoed. An icicle stabbed into the earth an inch away from his head. Shit. He rolled to his side, tucking Sunny behind him. A second fell. Fire flamed through his shoulder. He fought the urge to shout, to roll to his side and clutch the wound. “Now would be a good time to say if you know of any secret caves.”
“Sorry.” Her breath caressed his neck. “It’s flatland ahead and nothing that I know of back the way we came.”
He needed to decide fast. Wait until the other guy ran out of bullets. Or shoot back. The flat terrain ahead of them that appeared so starkly majestic at other times looked damn barren, open, and dangerous right now, empty except for the crouching gunman.
And a tiny speck on the horizon.
His heart rate ramped. A chopper. His. Theirs.
The rotors growled louder, closer, until the gunman’s head popped up. He bolted out and tore off running, long strides lumbering through the snow too fast and far away to catch even if he could, which he couldn’t—not with Sunny to look after.
Wade jumped to his feet, dragging Sunny up with him. Ignoring the blazing pain from his shoulder. “We need to book it.”
Still, he kept his eyes glued to the guy even while racing to the open area. The beacon in his boot would direct the helicopter even without radio contact. Rotor wash stirred up a hurricane of snow around them.
“My dog!” she screamed. “Chewie!”
Chewie leaped from behind a tree, loping across the ice toward them.
“We won’t leave him,” he shouted back.
The chopper engine grew louder, the winds swirling harder. The helicopter sprayed bullets into snow near the deputy. The rifle fire stopped abruptly. A curse whispered on the wind as the guy bolted to his feet and sprinted away. Part of Wade burned to chase the bastard down and pound the shit out of him. But getting Sunny the hell out of here had to take priority. They would deal with the gunman later.
Wade grabbed her hand and ran harder, trudging through the snow toward the clearing. The helicopter hovered overhead. He pumped his hand, signaling for them to drop a line, which was faster than waiting around for a landing.>Above all, Brett was a survivor.
Communicating with Misty had offered the perfect means to install keylogger software into her computer, which in turn spiderwebbed into the community’s mainframe. The inside contact would be sure they couldn’t run the kind of advanced scan needed to detect the program.
Every keystroke made on their computers was logged and sent in daily emails to Brett. No one slipped anything past the keylogger. Printouts were made and checked for cooperation, for dissent. There was no room for mistakes.