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He grabbed her hand with his, keeping his eye out for the shooter. “We’re going to have to split up. Stay down and crawl toward the river. I think it’s only one of them, or we’d already be in a lot more trouble.”

Bree nodded and began crawling in the direction she needed to go.

Tanner doubled back toward where the gunfire had come from, ignoring the pain in his arm. He could move it, and it wasn’t bleeding too much, so treating it would have to wait. Hopefully the rain had muffled the gunshot enough that it wouldn’t bring the shooter’s buddies into the area.

Tanner kept low and moved in a zigzagging motion, trying to make himself as hard a target to hit as possible.

But he was also moving blind, since he didn’t know exactly where the shooter was.

Tanner let out a curse when another shot rang out. Near the water. Near Bree. The bastard had somehow circled back behind him.

He gave up all pretense of hiding or weaving and bolted toward where he’d sent Bree.

“Bree, stay down!” He yelled the words, hoping to redirect the danger back to himself. At least then it wouldn’t be pointed at her.

He spotted the shooter at the very edge of the riverbank’s cliff. The shooter was facing to the side, away from Tanner, gun pointed at something ahead of him on the ground. It didn’t take a genius to figure out it was Bree in front of him, staying low the way Tanner had told her.

The guy was going to shoot her.

Tanner forced every ounce of energy into his legs and rushed as fast as he could toward the man with the gun, praying he’d reach the shooter in time.

Chapter Seventeen

A shot rang out over her head and Bree realized she was going to die.

It wasn’t the first time she’d felt that way today. There’d been half a dozen times as they’d run like fiends through the wilderness that she was pretty sure she would either fall over and crack her spine, have a massive coronary from the exertion or step on some creature who decided it didn’t like being stepped on and would make its displeasure known by poisoning her.

But this guy staring down the gun at her definitely left little doubt in her mind that she was, in fact, going to die.

“And here I thought I wasn’t going to get to do anything interesting,” the man said with a smirk.

At least that was what she thought he said, as it was nearly impossible to hear him over the storm and the river barreling below them. As he spoke, she got into a crouching position, trying to think of something to say, something she could barter with, but nothing came to her exhausted mind. She wiped the rain from her eyes and got a good look at the man for the first time.

“You. You’re the paramedic from the night of the fire.”

“Yep, and things could’ve gone much easier if you’d just left those two brats with me. That’s why we started the fire to begin with. To get them or Marilyn outside. But then that entire damn town showed up.”

She leaped to the side while he was talking, knowing it wasn’t going to be enough, that he’d still have an easy shot.

But the shot never came.

Instead, Bree watched, first relieved when Tanner crashed into the man, knocking them both to the side and the guy’s gun out of his hand, then in horror as the momentum kept them moving forward and over the side of the ravine.

“Tanner!” Bree screamed, scrambling forward to get to him. But both men had already fallen into the water below by the time she got there. The ridge wasn’t very high at this point, like Tanner had said—maybe fifteen feet. But how deep was the water? It was flowing pretty quickly, but she couldn’t tell how deep it was. In the rain it was difficult to see either man.

When Tanner’s head burst through the surface, Bree let out a sob of relief. He was alive. She looked along the ridge for a way to get down to him as he fought to make his way to the river’s edge. Every stroke seemed like a struggle for him. Unlike when they’d capsized in the raft, Tanner didn’t have on a life jacket. Waterlogged clothes and shoes were dragging him under.

She pushed herself to her feet. In the rain, she would’ve completely missed the guy’s gun if she hadn’t literally stepped on it. She knew only a little about handguns, based on what Tanner had taught her the last few months, but any weapon was better than nothing. She tried to keep an eye on him as she ran parallel to the river, looking for any way to get down.

Panic ate like acid through her gut when she finally had to take her eyes off Tanner to find a way down from the ridge. How was she ever going to find him again? She finally found an overhang of rocks and slid and jumped down them as fast as she could, ignoring the burning cuts on her palms as her skin tore on the jagged edges.

“Hang on, baby. Hang on.” She said the words over and over as she reached the riverbank and began sprinting back toward Tanner, cursing when she couldn’t get enough speed out of her body.

Thunder crackled heavily overhead, lightning immediately flashing in the storm-darkened sky. Vaguely she wondered if the storm would kill them both, even if she could get to Tanner.

The longer she ran, the more panicked she became. Had she somehow missed him? Had he not been able to make it over to the edge? There wasn’t any riverbank here, so she was forced to walk in the water. The air seemed to be sucked out of her lungs from the cold, and she was in only six inches of water. How could Tanner have survived completely immersed in the water?

She pressed forward, harder, drawing on energy from her innermost center. Tanner needed her. She had to get to him.