Did she have a choice?
And wasn’t Zach scared, too? Trying to read his mind, sense his emotional state, wouldn’t do either of them any good. Again, she averted her gaze, listening, watching for the shooters as she caught her breath.
Zach gently touched her chin and turned her to face him. “Are you okay?”
It hurt when he touched her like that, all gentle and caring. She didn’t want that from him, or for him to see that she was absolutely not okay. But he probably already knew. “I don’t know how to answer that.”
He studied her, his blue-eyed gaze seeming to soak up every inch of her face. For a split second, she worried about her appearance. But she’d long ago given up the smoky eye shadow, snow plum blush and deep mauve lipstick she used to put on for him. Her self-consciousness fell away as she realized he hadn’t donned the helmet after her refusal to wear it, and that gave her ample opportunity to take him in up close and personal. That smattering of day-old stubble across his strong jaw. A few crow’s-feet that hadn’t yet emerged around his intense blue eyes when she’d last been this close to him. Protection practically spilled off him. That and something she couldn’t read behind his gaze. But maybe she shouldn’t even try.
Still...what was he thinking?
“We need to get moving.” He hesitated, then asked, “Can you lead us the long way around to the snowmobiles so we can get out of here? That is, if they haven’t already disabled the machines so we couldn’t do just that.”
“I can try. But what about Rich? I still need to find him. I can’t leave without him.”
She hadn’t wanted to entertain the possibility that Rich was already dead. She wouldn’t let her thoughts go there, but the hope she’d held on to was quickly slipping away.
“We’ll find him, don’t worry. But don’t forget he’s ex-military. He’s trained to survive. My priority is getting you to safety.” Zach suddenly stiffened and angled his head. He ducked low and peered around the tree. “Time to go.”
Zach stood and clambered around as he pressed his back against the tree. “I’m going to hold them off. You keep hidden behind the trees as you run and try get as far away as you can. Just keep going.”
“What? I thought you wanted us to make our way back to the snowmobiles? I’m not leaving you. I don’t want to find Rich only to have to come back and find you.”
“You won’t have to find me. I’ll be right behind you. I’m just giving you a head start.”
Zach aimed and fired off his weapon, the sound ricocheting through her head, ringing in her ears. Okay, well, maybe she could put some distance between them.
He fired another round, and then another in rapid succession. She wished for her own weapon, the one she’d left at home. She could help Zach. He would run out of ammo soon.
“Go, Olivia. I’ll find you. I can’t hold them off forever. Don’t make me waste these bullets.”
Just as she would have turned from him, he grabbed her collar and pulled her face close to his. His chest rose and fell, and the intensity in his eyes as he appeared to drink her in stole her breath away. “Be careful out there, Olivia. Don’t take any chances. I promise I’ll find you.”
For a split second, in the midst of lethal danger, her mind flooded with memories of kissing him. Her senses tingled. Her breaths came quicker, but not from the danger. Then he pushed away. “Go!”
She scrambled from him, keeping to the trees as he fired. She had to make this count and try to hide as she escaped.
Deep inside she felt like she was running from much more than bullets. She was running from past hurts she’d wanted to forget—she was running from Zachary Long.
Was there any way out of this situation, any possibility of survival that didn’t include Zach doing the thing he loved, the thing he’d left her for—serving and protecting? Risking his life for her. She should be glad she had a police officer, a detective, here to help her through this. But she couldn’t bring herself to be glad for it.
He loved the danger. The thrill of it ran through his blood since he came from a family of police officers, but Olivia had lost too much already with the death of her own police officer father when she was just eighteen. And she wasn’t willing to go through that again.
A bullet whizzed too closely and hit a tree to her right. She ducked, then crouched as she moved between a copse of Douglas firs and ponderosa pines. Would Zach be able to hold them off? And even if he did, then what?
What about him? How was he going to survive and find her? And just where should she go? Questions barraged her when she wanted tunnel vision, to focus on a single goal.
Running for her life. Escaping.
She pressed on, plowing through waist-deep snow, gripping branches for support in her push to escape, to get far from the assailants. All the while, she never stopped searching the woods for any sign of Rich.
There was none.
It was as if he’d simply disappeared from that snowmobile.
She believed he hadn’t fallen into the hands of these guys after them or else why were they after her and Zach if they had the person they’d come for? Could she be wrong about all of it?
Finally, exhaustion slowed her efforts. Her sluggish legs burning, Olivia leaned against a tree. She would wait for Zach here while she caught her breath. Rest her muscles, slow the hammer in her heart.
He would never find her if she didn’t stop. As her breathing calmed, she had the chance to get her bearings. A few feet from where she stood the ground dropped away into a deep fissure—a crack at least seventy feet deep or more. She knew about it from her summer hikes, but in the winter hidden dangers grew more treacherous. Snow and ice covered the fissure, hiding it in places.
She would definitely need to wait here for Zach, if for no other reason than to warn him and keep him from plummeting to his death in the crevice. She wasn’t sure if it was wrong but she wished that fate on the shooters.
A brutal storm moved in quickly. Could her predicament get any worse? Still, a raging snowstorm, possibly with blizzard-force winds, would also be a problem for the bad guys. They’d need shelter, too, and they couldn’t follow Zach and Olivia’s footprints.
A new cause for panic settled in her chest. Zach hadn’t caught up with her yet. In a snowstorm, would he be able to find her? Here she was hoping the storm would hide her tracks from the shooters, but if Zach hadn’t found her by then, he never would.
A twig snapped. Someone approached—had they seen her? Once again she found herself asking if she would see friend or foe. She’d long ago lost her knife in the scramble down to the brook. She grabbed a big branch she could use for a weapon and waited, the element of surprise her only advantage.
A figured moved past. She recognized Zach’s thick head of wheat hair as he stumbled forward into the deep snow around the group of Douglas firs where she’d been hiding. He’d followed her tracks, just as they would. But she was more than glad to see him.
“Zach!”
Bending next to him, she grabbed his arm and assisted him up and out of the thick white powder. Then Olivia threw her arms around him. “Zach, I was afraid you wouldn’t find me before the snow covered my tracks.”
She quickly dropped her arms and looked him up and down. “Are you hurt?”
He shook his head, too out of breath to answer her. Then finally, “They’re not too far behind so we need to keep moving. If we’re fortunate, we’ll get a blizzard.”
Zach had been counting on her to lead the way since she’d had many summers to explore the area before she’d made the vacation home permanent. With Rich’s sudden appearance, and just as sudden disappearance, and then the shooters, she’d been slow