Chapter Forty-Seven
Morgan knelt on the edge of the embankment. A rush of panic lent her body renewed strength. Holding on to a tree, she leaned over the edge. “Lance?”
She shifted her weight, trying to get a better view through the foliage. Beneath her knees, the ground crumbled. Another fat section broke away and tumbled down the slope. Morgan scrambled for solid footing.
Where is he?
Feet first, she stepped down and planted her boot on a tree root. Her finger slipped from their grip on the tree. When she found a new handhold on a rock, she left a smear of blood behind. She used snow to wipe the blood away, then pulled the sleeve of her sweater over the cut. She didn’t want to leave that obvious a trail, but she was too cold, too numb to feel the cut on her palm. She moved carefully, making sure each new hand- and foothold was secure before releasing the previous grip. She wouldn’t be able to help Lance if she fell too, and having her hands cuffed together made the descent awkward.
It seemed to take forever to work her way into the gully.
She was near the bottom when she spotted his black-clad form and bright-blond hair on the snow. He lay still at the base of the slope, a few inches from the meandering stream.
If he’d tumbled farther, he would have drowned.
He has to be all right.
As if answering her thoughts, he stirred. His head lifted and turned as he scanned the stream bed.
She slid down the remaining few feet of bank and dropped to her knees beside him. She tried to run her hands over his body to assess his injuries, but she couldn’t feel anything. Her hands and feet felt like heavy blocks of ice. She slid her hands over his legs. Her fingers came away from his calf wet with fresh blood. She parted a slash in his pants. A deep gash ran through his calf. Blood ran from the wound. But she doubted the cut was the reason he hadn’t risen. “Where else are you hurt?”
“Ribs, leg,” he said though blue-white lips. “Help me up.”
“Are you sure?”
He hoisted his body into a sitting position, his face went gray, and the skin of his face stretched tight as a drum. Despite the cold, his injuries clearly weren’t numb. “We have to keep moving.”
“We need to stop that bleeding.” She got her shoulder under his arm. The handcuffs got in the way. With his feet under him, he walked two steps and doubled over, his hands pressing against his ribs.
“Broken?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe not.”
“Hold on. We’re leaving a blood trail in the snow.” But what could she use to stop the bleeding? They had no supplies. Nothing. Her belt or his bootlace weren’t any good without a bandage of some sort. She must have something she could tie around his leg . . . There was only one thing she could think of.
She snaked her freezing hands into the neck of her sweater and slipped her bra straps down her shoulders. Unhooking the straps with frozen fingers was harder, but she fumbled through it. She gave Lance her back. “Unhook my bra.”
Lance made a choking sound. “What?”
“It’s the only thing I can think of to use as a bandage.”
“Smart.” His fingers slid up the back of her sweater. With the shoulder straps already unhooked, her bra fell to her waist, and she tugged it out from under her sweater.
“This is going to hurt. You might want to sit down.” She folded it in half.
“Getting up was too hard.” He grabbed a tree limb and held tight.
She pressed the folded bra against the wound, then used the straps to tie it in place. Not secure enough. She took off her belt and wrapped it around his calf. It held, and the light padding of her bra absorbed the blood.
“That’s the best I can do,” she said.
“I’m impressed.” Lance took a step forward. His face creased with pain, but he was no longer dripping blood. “We need to assess our options.”
“We have options?” Walking next to him, Morgan brought her arms close to her body, her hands under her chin. Snowflakes dotted the sleeves of her wool sweater. Her brain was frozen. She could barely think.
“We can continue to follow the water. Once we reach the lake, at least we’ll have a clear direction and distance to travel. But thanks to my fall, we’re moving very slowly now.”
Morgan glanced behind her at the clear lines of footprints in the snow. “And he’s going to catch us.”
She picked up a tree limb and dragged it behind them, trying to obscure their tracks. In real life, it didn’t work as well as it did in the movies.
Lance squinted over his shoulder. “We know he’s a hunter. He’s experienced in the woods. He’ll have provisions, and he has time on his side.”
“We can move faster if you lean on me,” she offered.
“I’m too heavy, and you’re already exhausted. One of us needs to be able to break away and run if necessary.” Holding his ribs, he frowned at his leg. “That’s not going to be me now.”
“You would never leave me, and I would never leave you, so I rule that one out.”
He sighed. “You’re going to have to have an open mind. When I said we had options, I never said any of them were good options.”
“What’s option number two?” she asked.
His sideways glance told her she was going to like this choice even less than the last.
“You leave me and run for help,” he said.
The choking sound that came out of her mouth was part exhaustion, part horror. The thought of their lives being dependent on her being able to run far or fast under good conditions was terrifying. She’d been raised in the city. Her family hadn’t moved to Scarlet Falls until after her father had been killed in the line of duty. She’d been in high school. The woods were not her natural habitat, and in this cold, she felt like a baby giraffe taking its first steps. Every inch of her shook. She was barely putting one foot in front of the other. At any second she could face-plant in the snow.
“How far would I get?” she asked. “Even injured, you’d probably get farther than I would.”
He shook his head. How badly was he hurt?
“We’re back to me not leaving you out here.”
“I’m not helpless,” he said.
“What kind of long gun does the sheriff’s department carry?” She side-eyed him. “This is no insult to your masculinity, but you don’t stand a chance against an AR-15.”
“Look, if only one of us is going to get out of this, it has to be you. I don’t have three kids at home. Your girls have already lost their father. I will not allow them to lose their mother too.”
And there it was. Lance’s very nature. He was so different from her late husband in almost every way. John had been tall and thin, with a lighthearted and easygoing personality. Lance was athletic, heavily muscled, and intense to his core. But the two men she had fallen in love with had one essential quality in common. Deep in their hearts, they were both heroes. John had given his life for his country, and Lance was prepared to die for her and her girls right here and now.
But she couldn’t accept the thought of letting him sacrifice himself for her. “We have to think of something else.”
But what?
“We need to outthink the sheriff. We need a plan.” She grasped for an idea.
What had King said?
It’s all about knowing your prey and being able to predict its movements.
More numb than cold, she tripped over her own boot. As she righted herself, her knees buckled. She grabbed a tree to stay upright.
If you get out of this alive, you will start exercising. But future promises weren’t going to help her now.
“We need to do something he doesn’t expect,” she said. “We need to use his own behavioral patterns to predict his movements. What is his end goal?”
Lance turned back to the path. His leg was bleeding again. “The only thing that King wants is us to be dead.”
A twig cracked. Lance shoved Morgan into the bushes. “Hide.”
She fell on her hands and knees, crawling under the branches of a blue spruce.