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When she heard him wheezing, she stopped to wait.
Out of breath when he reached her, he coughed and huffed several times. Without speaking, he pointed out Anderson Campbell’s darkened cottage across a small clearing.
Using the farmer’s house as a landmark, Tess steered them south past it, then led them up a tree-lined hill into a dark clump of woods. Once under the thick cover of trees, fallen branches and debris blocked their path, forcing her to slow. Determined, she kept slogging through the terrain.
Mark followed her, this time only a few steps behind.
In a silent, trance-like state, she attempted to erase ghastly images of Sergey. She also prayed Mark could keep moving long enough for them to find a safe place to hide.
They had no choice but to keep hiking through the woods.
Chapter Seven
In the Woods
In the dark woods, Tess trekked, leading them for over thirty minutes without stopping. The earth absorbed their footsteps, and as they distanced themselves from the farm, sounds of livestock faded. Clusters of cumulus clouds sped across the sky, allowing intervals of moonlight to light their way through endless hills, which swelled and receded. Tess kept the lead and pressed forward at a rapid but sustainable pace. She dodged tree branches and autumnal debris underfoot and took care to skirt open clearings which might expose their location.
Hoping they’d eluded their captors, Tess enjoyed a moment of optimism, until she realized how far Mark lagged. Breathing hard, she stopped to rest and leaned over her knees to wait.
When he finally appeared, weariness lined his face, and he wheezed every few breaths.
“Hey, you don’t sound good.” She reached out to touch his arm, and her forehead creased as she studied him.
“Pain is weakness leaving the body.” Grunting, Mark bent over and mumbled something unintelligible.
“No need to act tough for me. The bastard pummeled you.”
“I’ve got one or two broken ribs, and my left lung is bruised, possibly aspirating. Helvete.” He leaned his head back and stared into the dark sky.
Given her cracked cheekbone and battered shoulder, she had to admit her resiliency was flagging. She bit her lower lip and ignored her exhausted legs. When they fled, she only thought to run, and everything else dropped away. As reality set in, she worried the combination of their injuries, fatigue, and lack of shelter from the cold jeopardized their chances of reaching the highway alive. Lacking a magic wand to transport them home, she prayed grit alone could power them through this trek.
Grateful for the brief respite, she shook her legs out and stretched her arms. Loud Technicolor static buzzed inside her brain, and a thousand emotions, all indecipherable, churned in tandem. For now, she and Mark had survived, and a quiet sigh slipped past her lips.
Restless, nervous energy burned through her, and she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. They couldn’t afford to stop for long, but she forced herself to give Mark a reasonable break. “Can you keep going?”
“Not gonna quit now.” He straightened his spine and coughed. “What about you?”
“Never.” Still wired from their escape, she inhaled, but her emotions swerved between terror and elation. If her luck hadn’t been so terrible, she’d laugh. Enduring a terrorist attack and running for her life was the perfect way to cap off the soul-sucking year she’d spent grieving Kyle’s death. Work and nonstop travel failed to heal her loss, and avoiding romantic connection only amplified her loneliness. The raw truth Mark spoke resonated deep in her bones. Wherever you go, loneliness follows you.
She watched as he shuffled around the hidden grove of trees where they’d stopped. In these dark hours, Mark had raised her spirits after their ordeal, and inspired sprouts of hope the wretched situation didn’t warrant. Unable to discern whether it was primal instinct or lust which drove her, she abandoned caution.
Acting on pure impulse, she stepped closer and placed her hands on top of his shoulders, where they curved in a smooth line to his neck. In the frigid air, she felt him radiating warmth and grasped his shirt. Using her hands to span his solid broad shoulders, she slid them over the inverted triangle of his torso as it tapered to his waist in chiseled lines. For a transitory moment, she found safety and clutched him tight.
In response, he wound his arms around her and stroked the back of her head.
“Thank you,” she whispered. His warm hands enclosed the gentle arc of her aching back, and long-dormant parts of her began to thaw. Relishing the peaceful moment, she unwound several degrees.
“You’re the one I want to thank. Sergey would have killed me.” He patted her back.
“We saved each other.” The enormity of the sacrifice he had offered took her breath away.
He kept his arms tight around her.
The momentary solace allowed her a sliver of time to absorb what they’d just endured. “Sergey would have …” She couldn’t utter the word out loud. Instead, she covered her mouth and gasped in uneven bursts as visions of alternate, horrific outcomes for each of them flashed through her mind. Resting her head against his chest, she clenched her eyes shut, determined not to cry.
“Sh. Vi kommer til å overleve.” Mark pulled her closer and rested his chin atop her head. “We’re going to survive. You’ve been so strong.”
“I wanted to stop Sergey, not kill him.” Recalling the feeling of thrusting her weight behind the pitchfork as she plunged it into the gunman disturbed her. Nor could she erase the gruesome sound of metal puncturing flesh, which kept replaying in her mind. She broke away from Mark and searched her hands for telltale bloodstains, like Lady Macbeth. Despite careful examination, she found her skin remained milky white.
