Page 78 of Thunder Pass

“Wait.” He grabbed her arm. “Let me go first.”

“No. She’s my sister. You can stand guard. If that man comes back, just shout.”

“If that man comes back, I’m going to jump him,” he corrected. “Okay. Fine. Just be careful and yell if you need me.”

Even though it went against every instinct to let her walk into the unknown like this, he let her tiptoe across the clearing and squeeze her body into that crevice. As a last gesture before she disappeared, she looked back at him and blew him a kiss. Then she was gone.

Stand guard. Of course he would stand guard. He’d stand better guard than any human being ever had in history. If that man came back, Gunnar would pounce on him like a panther dropping from a tree. He wouldn’t have time to breathe, let alone get his hands on his weapon.

He settled down to wait, making himself still and invisible, and mentally replaying key sparring moves that his father had taught him. It had been a while since he’d needed those moves. But they were still there, instilled by hours of practice. No matter what, he could thank his father for that.

37

It was so dark in the cave that it took time for Ruth’s eyes to adjust. Visceral memories from the time she’d spent in the potato cellar shook her body. Poor Sarah—she’d gone through that too. Either this imprisonment had brought all the trauma back, or those experiences had given her the tools to get through this. Or maybe both. If she was here.

“Sarah?” she said in a whisper, scanning the cave for signs of life. It wasn’t a cave so much as a crack in the rock with a dirt floor, but it was dry and relatively warm, sheltered from the outside weather. Was there even space here for a human being?

There must be—that man had been in here, and it sure wasn’t for the spelunking.

She kept going, through another tight squeeze between two rock walls. “Sarah?”

And finally, a response. “Hello?”

A light flared at the other end of the passageway. Sarah scrambled to her feet, holding a flashlight in one hand. Thank God she hadn’t been completely in the dark.

“Sarah!” Ruth flew across the space, nearly bonking her head on the roof of the cave. “Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“No, but you have to get me out of here. I have to find that fucking idiot and rip his face off.”

Ruth let out a shocked hoot of laughter. She’d never heard Sarah curse before. At least her fighting spirit hadn’t been squashed here in this cave.

“How is he keeping you here?”

Sarah lifted her wrist, which had rope wrapped around it about a dozen times. The end of the rope was tied around a large, immoveable boulder. “I tried gnawing it with my teeth, but I didn’t get very far. If only I had a knife.”

Ruth reached into her rucksack and pulled out her Bowie knife. “You know I don’t go anywhere without this, not since we left the compound.”

“You’re the best sister in the world. Now let me out!”

Ruth sawed at the rope, one strand at a time, until it fell away from Sarah’s wrist. The girl unwrapped the rest of the loops herself, then flung it across the cave at the rock wall. “Take that!” she screeched. “You fucking evil bastard!”

“Okay, let it all out, but maybe not too loud. Gunnar’s standing guard outside. We should get out of here as quick as we can.”

“Let’s go.” Sarah wiped her hands on her pants. “If I have to pee in that stupid jar one more time…” She kicked at a lidded jar. It went rolling across the cave floor, then shattered against a rock, releasing the smell of urine into the air.

Ruth was grateful to see her so filled with spunk instead of despair. “Now we really better go. It was bad enough in here before it smelled like pee.”

She grabbed Sarah’s hand and led her toward the crack she’d squeezed through. “Just so you know, we’re going to be asking you a bunch of questions,” she told her sister. “We’re trying to figure out what’s going on in Thunder Pass, and the whole town of Firelight Ridge is blocked off, people can’t go in or out, and Luke has a whole militia doing his bidding. It’s like they’re planning for war.”

“What’s-his-name, the man who grabbed me, he said he didn’t want me to get caught in the line of fire.”

A shout sounded from outside the cave. “Come on!” Ruth grabbed Sarah’s hand and they wriggled through the crack, one by one, then dashed out of the cave.

Outside, Gunnar was in full hands-on battle against the man they’d seen come out of the cave. It didn’t seem like a fair fight, because the man had a military-style knife in one hand and that rifle strapped to his back. He was older, around forty, with a shaved head and a strong build, though with the beginnings of a beer belly. The two men paced around each other in a fighting stance, Gunnar so focused on this opponent that he didn’t even glance their way.

“Stay back,” he said tensely.

“That’s the man who kidnapped me!” Sarah cried out. “Get him, Gunnar!”

---