Page 20 of Holiday Hostage
Tarron raised one eyebrow at me, then glanced at Payton. “Let me know if she wakes up. I don’t like that she’s been out this long. Might mean brain damage.”
“She’s fine.” I willed the words to be true.
I’d wanted Tarron to wake her up in the fort, but now I was grateful she slept through the exhaustive task of trekking through the snow with monsters on our tails.
“What’s this place you know about?” I jogged close enough to Reed to ask without our voices carrying.
He stared ahead, his steps long and fluid. “Old ranger station I used to visit with my old man. We hunted and fished out here several times.”
I grunted. “Didn’t know that.”
“Not like I know your life story either.” He slowed and peered behind us. “The snow is deeper this way. We’ll be leaving tracks. Tarron, can you circle around and clean those up a bit?”
The snowmobiles wouldn’t have made it up the steep path Reed took.
He did his best to guide us across long stretches of rock when possible, but the thick snow stuck to everything, making every step harder.
“The ranger station is abandoned, that’s why Dad liked it so much. Loads of wildlife to hunt and no one to tell us no.” Reed chuckled, but the sound had a darkness to it that I understood even if I had no knowledge of that part of his life.
We all had our dark parts, the pieces we didn’t share.
I respected his right to privacy the same way he’d always respected mine.
“No sign of pursuit.” Tarron stopped behind us, binoculars pinned to his eyes. “Any chance they know about this place? They knew about the fort?”
“Nah.” Reed blew off the question with some of his usual casualness. “This place is off the beaten path.” He scrambled onto a low ledge and held out a hand to help me up. “You’ll love it.”
We were in the middle of the wilderness, the only other people around wanted to kill us, and Reed was treating this whole thing like the adventure of a lifetime.
I grasped his wrist and let him pull the bulk of mine and Payton’s weight onto the rocks.
We were high above our starting point, and the glory of Alaska stretched in every direction.
It was a landscape of untouched beauty marred only by the reason we were here.
6
TARRON
“Storm’s coming.” I pushed ahead, my steps slowing.
The thigh-deep snow sucked all the energy from me. I panted, the icy, thin air doing little to help with my fatigue.
Sweat threatened, and I forced a deep breath as I stopped to check the gray storm clouds touching the horizon.
Reed followed my line of sight, his lips spreading in a grin. “Excellent. It’ll cover our tracks.”
I scowled at him, and he laughed.
“Sorry, Tarron. You did great work covering our tracks. The storm is additional support. Think of it as an airstrike prepped and ready even though we’re on the ground taking care of business.”
Maverick kept going, though Reed and I had stopped.
He had to be exhausted, we all were, but he’d carried Payton the entire way.
Every time we suggested he let one of us help, he looked almost feral as he denied our assistance.
We’d stopped asking.
