CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Larsen rolled over toward the rock side of the trail, dragging packs around him for protection even as he scooted backward toward the safety of the bend. He didn’t return fire. There was no wild shooting. He just kept moving on his belly as Vienna tried to find a target. He scraped Raine’s pack back and forth over the trail to kick up dirt and dust as he fishtailed his legs, kicking rocks and debris into the air as he scrambled for the safety of the bend.
Vienna took her time, concentrating on his motion, and then rapidly firing three bullets at his scissoring legs. She knew one bullet splintered rock, but there was a distinct possibility that one or both of the others scored. When the dust and dirt settled, there appeared to be splashes of blood on the trail.
“I’m going to hunt you down,” Larsen called. There was no anger in his voice, only a quiet menace. A promise. “I will hunt you to the ends of the earth. There is nowhere that you can go that I won’t find you. And your little friends? I’ll kill every single one of them. The woman you call mother? She’s dead.”
Vienna remained silent, waiting to see what he would do or say next. He had both Stella’s and Raine’s packs. She couldn’t leave him out there to keep the helicopter from coming to get Raine or to get to her mother.
She shifted position slightly and instantly splinters of rock showered down on her head as he fired at her. She didn’t have tons of ammunition and no clear shot at him, so she scooted all the way back and rested against the other side of the thick rock wall rising between them. There was blood on her arms and one cheek from the splinters of granite.
“Wallin’s going to be really angry with you, isn’t he?” she asked. She needed to give the other women as big a head start as possible. Hopefully when Shabina told them to go, they did exactly what she’d said. The moment she could, she would go after the women and retrieve the rest of the ammunition she had in her backpack.
“I’m a dead man,” he agreed, his tone amicable, as if they were friends discussing the weather. “My one hope is to kill all of you and hope he’s appeased.”
“I can’t wait for you to look in Raine’s backpack. It’s the larger of the two.” She matched his tone. Just as amicable. Friends talking on a hot afternoon with a body turning the river below them red. “She’s the one you shot, in case it matters to you. It might not now, but look in her pack and tell me if it matters when you see who she is and what you’re now in possession of.”
Vienna wiped the small beads of sweat from her face and concentrated on listening. There was no way he could move back up the trail without her hearing him, even though the river sounded like thunder, as if it were yelling to the world that she had killed a man.
She heard the rustle of what she presumed was Larsen searching Raine’s backpack. Then he erupted into a string of low curses. There was some satisfaction in knowing he wasn’t quite as happy with himself as he’d been a few minutes earlier.
“What is she? A damned government agent? If I touch any of these little locked cases, I have the feeling they might explode in my face.”
“Probably. Raine is like that. As for what she is, I don’t actually know. Only that they send helicopters for her, and the moment she was shot I sent her people the message she told me to give them if anything ever happened to her. They will be coming, Larsen. And they will hunt you to the ends of the earth. It won’t matter if you get me, or every single one of my friends. It won’t matter if you get my mother. It definitely won’t matter if Wallin thinks you’re the best security man he has, because they will hunt you and never stop until you’re dead.”
“Well, you’re just painting a rosy picture of my future.”
She smiled in spite of the fear gripping her. If he had gotten angry and gone ballistic, she wouldn’t be so afraid, but he was too calm in the situation. She feared that meant he knew what he was doing. He’d faced combat. He was good in the terrain. He knew and had weapons she didn’t. Wallin had sent him along with Axel to teach him how to survive.
“Sorry, but then you painted a similar picture of mine. I’d ask how bad your wounds are—after all, I’m a nurse—but I get the feeling you’re not so bad at putting on a field dressing.”
“It isn’t my first time,” he admitted.
She glanced at her watch. If she could just keep him there a little longer, it would give the women time to get Raine to the rendezvous point with the helicopter. Search and Rescue wouldn’t risk coming in with an active shooter, but Raine’s people would. And Sam’s people would. Nothing would stop Sam from coming after Stella. Nothing. And if Larsen managed to kill Stella, he would have another powerful enemy hunting him to the ends of the earth.
She thought about whether Zale would hunt Larsen if he managed to kill her. She considered the odds. Yeah. Larsen was going to kill her. At least the odds were high in his favor.
“Are you married, Larsen?”
“No. I tried it once. Didn’t have whatever it took to keep it going.”
Vienna gave that consideration. He sounded sincere enough. He also sounded a little farther away. Not a lot. Just a little.
“Have you ever really loved someone? A woman, I mean. Someone you wanted to keep.”
“If I wanted to keep a woman, I would keep her.”
There was that same firm decisiveness in his tone that he had used when telling her he was going to kill her. The voice was also a distance away. He was on the move.
She stretched her legs out slowly, moving her injured ankle around. It was swollen, confined in her hiking boot. She hoped that would give it enough stability to support her when she took off after the other women. She wanted to ensure she could cover them as best she could when they brought in the helicopter.
With infinite care, she rose to her feet. The ankle was very painful, enough that she bent over for a moment, breathing deeply to acclimate herself to it. She couldn’t think about anything but getting Raine help. There was no room for anything else in her mind. A rock rolled down the trail in front of her, not behind her, and her heart accelerated. She once more covered the grip in a two-handed fist, ready in case an enemy emerged. All the while she concentrated on listening in case Larsen was coming up behind her. Had there been a third enemy she hadn’t realized?