Not If I Save You First by Ally Carter (14)

“I want you to get away.”

At first, Maddie wasn’t sure that Logan was talking to her. He could have been talking to himself, after all. He used to do that when they were kids. He’d mumble under his breath during tests at school or while they were eating snacks on the stairs or even while they huddled together in a tent on the lawn of the White House, pretending like they were on safari.

Maddie was used to the sound of Logan’s voice, low and under his breath when he didn’t think anyone was listening.

But Maddie was always listening.

“Maddie? Listen, I want you to get away.”

“Shh,” she warned, but she didn’t look back at the man with the gun. And the knife. And the mysterious vendetta or cause.

“I’m going to undo the cuffs,” Logan said. He gestured to the pocket where he’d placed the key. After the kiss.

Maddie absolutely did not let herself think about the kiss.

“He won’t be expecting it. When I jump him, you can—”

“I’m not leaving you.”

“You’ve got to leave me, Maddie.” Logan risked a glance behind her. “He’ll hurt you.”

They couldn’t stop.

It was getting too dark and the rain wasn’t rain anymore. Ice was falling from the sky and collecting on the ground, covering fallen logs and the layer of leaves that blanketed the forest floor. Rocks were slick and sharp beneath their feet.

Maddie absolutely did not have time to stop and tell Logan he was an idiot.

But she really, really wanted to.

Mostly, she wanted him to feel as awful as she did.

“I’ve been hurt before, Logan. I’m getting pretty good at it.”

But before she could turn and saunter off into the forest, point made, Logan took her hands in his. “They need me alive, Mad. They don’t need you. They will hurt you.”

“You need me,” she said.

She watched the words wash over him, sink in. She saw how badly he wanted to shrug and argue, say that he didn’t need a stupid girl to help him.

Which just showed how badly the opposite was true.

“You don’t get it, Mad—” he said instead.

“No. You don’t get it.”

“Maddie—” Logan started, but Maddie was already turning around.

Shouting, “Mr. Kidnapper Man?”

She could practically hear Stefan’s groan, but he still asked “What?”

“I need to go,” she told him.

His gruff laugh cut through the air. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“No.” Maddie crossed her legs. She bobbed up and down in the age-old way of two-year-olds everywhere. “I mean I need to go go.”

Maddie never had the chance to learn Russian, but she knew a curse word when she heard one, no matter the language.

Loosely translated, it meant girls are so annoying.

On this, at least, he and Logan seemed to have found common ground.

“Fine,” the man spat out after a moment. “We break.”

They’d reached the side of the hill where the vegetation was thicker and the wind wasn’t as strong. Maddie moved toward the thick bushes that were quickly turning white with ice.

“Stop!” the man yelled. Reluctantly, Maddie turned.

She actually rolled her eyes.

“Um … I’m mad at him”—she pointed at Logan—“and I don’t know you, so I’m gonna need a little privacy.”

The man looked at Logan again, as if he needed someone to explain stupid American females to him, but Logan only shrugged.

“Look,” Maddie said, “I get it. You’re a bad guy. You might not have any qualms about killing people, but I bet even you have the decency to let a sixteen-year-old girl pee in peace.”

“Maddie …” Logan warned, but Maddie wasn’t in the mood to listen.

Instead, she stepped closer to the man with the gun.

Stefan was strong. Athletic. Young. And he moved with such sure, easy grace that Maddie might have been impressed under any other circumstances. But these circumstances were far from normal.

In a flash, the knife was in his hand and he was moving toward her. Maddie saw Logan register the movement, but Stefan was too fast and too strong. When he grabbed her bound wrists and thrust the knife toward her, she didn’t fight it. Even as Logan screamed “No!”

In the next moment Maddie’s wrists were free. Blood was rushing back to her cold hands and they started to tingle and burn; she moved her fingers just to prove that she still could.

Logan, on the other hand, stood staring.

The man jerked his head toward the bushes and kept his knife on Logan.

“If you run, just remember: There are parts of him I do not need at all.”

Pushing through the thick brush, Maddie heard her name. She spun back to look at Logan, who looked like maybe he’d never see her again.

“I’m not worth it,” he told her.

She smiled. “I know.”

Then she turned and pushed through the trees. Ice clung to branches, weighing them down and covering the forest in shiny, frosty sequins. It was like the whole world had been bedazzled, and Maddie could at least appreciate that aspect of it.

She was just starting to push aside a particularly shiny limb when something bolted out in front of her.

No.

Someone.

And Maddie didn’t think about anything else.

She screamed.

When Logan heard the scream, he thought that it was over.

He just wasn’t exactly sure what “it” was.

Maybe this long, terrible trek to an even more terrible fate. Maybe the fear that had been growing inside of him for hours.

But, no, Logan realized. What was over was the charade he was playing that Maddie wasn’t the most important thing in the world to him right then—the idea that she hadn’t been that for ages.

He didn’t look at the man with the gun for permission. He didn’t think about himself. He just burst through the dense trees and bushes, sliding over the slick ground, not caring about the ice.

It was a scream of shock and terror and it didn’t matter to Logan what might happen to him. All he knew was that the bravest girl in the world sounded terrified.

And it was all his fault.

“Maddie!” he shouted, but he didn’t hear anything back.

It was almost night, and the only light was that of a quickly fading dusk.

“Maddie!”

“It’s okay.”

When Logan heard her voice, he stopped and bent at the waist, hands on knees. He thought his heart might beat out of his chest.

“Maddie, where—”

“It’s okay,” a voice yelled. “It’s just me.”

The man who pushed through the brush wasn’t as tall as the kidnapper, but he wore a thick coat and a wide-brimmed hat that kept the sleet at bay. He smiled at them, like maybe he’d been looking for them for hours.

But he hadn’t. Logan could tell.

“Sorry to scare you folks. I just wasn’t expecting to see anyone else out here. I can tell I’m not the only one.”

Logan felt Stefan’s eyes on him, saw the subtle shake of his head.

Then Logan noticed the firearm in a holster at the other man’s waist.

“Which begs the question, what are you folks doing out here?” the man asked.

Logan saw Maddie standing just past the man’s shoulder. He could actually see her thinking, planning.

“Nature hike,” she said, and Logan felt Stefan coming up behind him. He felt the gun at his back.

“What are you doing here?” Stefan asked.

“Oh, just checking on things before the storm settles in and makes itself at home,” the man said. He was dressed like a forest ranger. It made sense that some people would be posted in this vast wilderness, but Logan had never imagined they might cross paths with one.

“I think you folks are a long way from where you’re supposed to be,” the man said. “No one should be out here on a night like this.”

There was some kind of war waging within Stefan—Logan could feel it.

Logan had pulled the sleeves of his jacket down to protect his freezing hands, and that, coupled with the dim and fading light, meant that the ranger probably had no idea that Logan’s hands were bound. Maddie was running around, apparently free.

Did this man know that he’d just stumbled upon the kidnapping of the century? Had some kind of alarm been raised? Was every ranger within a hundred miles out looking for the first son right then?

Or was this simply sheer dumb luck?

“Are you lost?” The ranger looked right at Stefan. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Yes,” Stefan said. “I do.”

But he wasn’t talking about the route they were taking, the best tricks for staying warm and dry.

Stefan’s voice had taken on an otherworldly quality as he said it, as if he’d been pulled back into some deep sleep.

Then he raised his gun.

He fired.

Once.

Twice.

And the ranger fell.

“No!” Maddie yelled, rushing toward the man. She clawed at his body, trying to turn him over, pull his face out of the ice and the mud. Trying to help him.

But he was too big and Maddie was too small, too cold. And Stefan was already there, ripping her away from the man and slinging her across the ice-covered floor of the woods.

She scampered back, crawling away. As if it were possible to escape, but whatever hope she might have had died when Stefan grabbed Maddie by the arm and jerked her to her feet.

When he pushed her toward Logan, she didn’t say a word. She just threw her arms around Logan’s waist and held him tight.

They held each other as if it might possibly be the last thing they’d ever do.

He didn’t think a thing about it when she slid her hands beneath his jacket except to register that her hands felt warmer than they should, that they felt right. That maybe it was all worth it just to have this moment.

“I was so scared,” he told her. “When you screamed, I …”

But Logan trailed off when he felt her slide something beneath the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back, where the tail of his coat would hide it.

He pulled back and looked down into her eyes.

And he knew.

He risked a quick glance at the ranger’s body on the ground.

The empty holster.

Logan wasn’t sure whether he should be happy that they had a gun now or mad because this was almost as disappointing as the kiss.