Deadly Promises (Tracers #2.5)(52)

She drank, then handed back the bottle. The generator kicked on just then, flooding the mining site with dim light. A shout rang out. Then another.

“The jig is up,” Cav said, helping her to her feet. “Now we run like rabbits.”

She glanced over her shoulder as he took her hand and pulled her along behind him. Less than fifty yards away the camp came alive with soldiers scrambling, rifles at the ready, as the general yelled orders that needed no translation.

It was an all-out manhunt.

“Don’t look back,” Cavanaugh ordered as the dogs started baying and snarling. “It’ll only slow us down.”

He was right, so she forced herself to forget about the guns and the dogs. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other as Cavanaugh led her away from the mining road and into the thickness of the jungle.



“THE BAYING IS getting farther away, don’t you think?”

Cav leaned back against a thick tree trunk, boots braced on the ground against the steep downhill slope, and tried to listen past the blood pounding in his ears and his heavy breaths. They’d been on the run for at least an hour. The sound of the baying dogs was a powerful incentive to keep moving. This was only the second time he’d allowed them to stop and rest.

“I think so. Yeah. At the risk of another cliché, it sounds like they’re barking up the wrong tree.”

She smiled. It felt damn good. What felt even better was that the guards were searching down the mountain. As he’d also hoped, it appeared the dogs hadn’t been able to pick up their exit scent. When they tried to start the vehicles and gasoline sprayed all over the place, it would be even more difficult for the dogs, whose highly sensitive sense of smell would be bombarded.

“Once they figure out the dogs don’t have a trail, they’ll realize that we went up, not down.” He accepted the water bottle from her, drained it, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “But we bought at least an hour. Maybe two.”

Now all they had to do was get off this frickin’ mountain, meet up with the contact Wyatt was supposed to have arranged for them, then lay low until the extraction team—also arranged by Wyatt—showed up at the designated landing zone.

Yeah. That’s all.

“Let’s move.” He folded up his map and consulted the GPS. He hadn’t bothered with his cell phone because his research had told him they weren’t anywhere near a cell tower.

“There’s a village about ten miles southwest of here, and that’s where we’re headed.”

“Because?”

“Because we’re expected.”

“You really did have a plan.”

Yeah. He had a plan. Normally he’d have taken weeks to plot out a rescue op of this scope. He and Wyatt had had only hours to pull this together and hold it together with kite string and duct tape.

“You’re going to start trusting me one of these days.” He grinned back at her as he pushed away from the tree, relieved her of the backpack, and adjusted the straps to fit his shoulders.

When he reached for her hand again, she didn’t hesitate or complain. She just hopped to. Cav’s admiration for her kept rising.

The jungle was dense and dangerous underfoot, so he’d risked using the miner’s flashlights from his backpack. He’d figured correctly that the general wouldn’t question the lights, since the supposed purpose of his visit was to tour the dark mines. The fact that he’d had an extra in his pack hadn’t raised any eyebrows, either because batteries died or bulbs got broken.

This far away from the mining camp, the risk of using the headlights strapped around their foreheads outweighed the risk of falling and breaking a limb in this rough terrain. Cav might be able to carry Carrie out if she sprained or broke something, but she sure as hell couldn’t carry him—although, knowing her, she’d damn well try.

“Watch your step,” he warned. Every step over gnarled roots, tangled vines, and deadfall was a step toward life, just as every misstep could be tantamount to death.

They had ten grueling miles ahead of them. Ten miles that, in a perfect world, they would cover before sunrise. But this world wasn’t perfect. And this woman couldn’t possibly last until sunrise, as weak as she was.

It was inevitable that her body was going to fail her.

He just hoped to hell that he didn’t.





Nine

Carrie felt the shift before she understood what was happening. Like the pulse thrumming through her body, she could feel the mountain jungle transition from the deep, breeding gloom of night to a darkness fostered by shadows and shade.

The sun had risen. She couldn’t see it but she sensed that dawn had broken, even though daylight would never reach the floor of this dense, loamy forest.

She’d been moving on autopilot for hours, had lost feeling in her legs long ago. She made herself move because, if she stopped, she died. And she couldn’t die. Not after all she’d been through.

“Stay with me, Carrie.”

Cav’s voice was filled with concern and encouragement. She’d clung to the steady strength of it through the grueling trek down the mountain. Just as she’d clung to him to keep her balance, to keep her here in the moment, to keep her moving.

It would be so easy to just stop walking. Stop thinking. Stop wanting the pain to ease, just enough to make it bearable.