Page 48 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

A small straightening of the spine. His hand moves from the shifter to the wheel. Both hands now. Ten and two. His eyes shift to the rearview mirror, then back to the road, then to the mirror again.

“What is it?”

“Truck behind us. Dark. Been there since the junction at mile marker nine. That’s about four miles.”

I don’t turn around. I look at the side mirror instead. A dark pickup, maybe fifty yards back, holding distance. Matching our speed.

“Could be coincidence,” Ryker says. But his voice has shifted into the operational register. “One road up the mountain. Limited options. He could just be going the same way.”

“But you don’t think so.”

“I don’t know yet. I’m going to test it. Hold on.”

He accelerates smoothly from fifty to sixty-five. The dark pickup falls back for three seconds, then accelerates to match. Ryker slows. The pickup slows. Ryker changes lanes on a short passing zone. The pickup changes lanes.

“That’s not coincidence,” he says.

He reaches for the satellite phone and dials Mason. It rings a few times. No answer. He tries again. Static. The signal is intermittent up here, the same way it was during the storm.

“We’re fifteen minutes from my cabin,” he says, running the calculation out loud. “Kane is there. We make the cabin, we’ve got backup and defensible ground. The road gets rougher in about two miles when it turns to Forest Service. If he’s in a standard pickup, the terrain works against him.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Then it works against both of us.”

A decision point approaches. The road forks. Left continues toward the Forest Service turnoff and the cabin. Right drops down to a county road that loops south toward Bridger and a sheriff’s substation, but adds ninety minutes.

Ryker takes the left fork without hesitation.

The dark truck takes the left fork too. Closer now. Thirty yards.

He accelerates again. The road is narrow and climbing, the switchbacks tight. Twenty-five yards. I can see more detail now. A heavy-duty pickup with a reinforced steel push bar on the front.

“Ryker. He’s got a push bar.”

“I see it.”

“If he hits us on a switchback we go over.”

“I know.”

The next switchback is a sharp left around a granite outcropping with a forty-foot drop on the right into a drainage full of deadfall and snow. Ryker takes it fast. The tires bite, the back end slides, the four-wheel drive catches.

Behind us the dark truck accelerates into the turn.

He hits us.

It’s a full-throttle impact. The push bar connects with our rear bumper at the apex of the switchback. The sound is enormous. Metal on metal. The truck lurches hard right. Ryker fights the wheel, every muscle straining. For one sickening second the right-side tires leave the ground and the drainage opens below us like a mouth.

Then the tires catch. He overcorrects left. We slam into the granite on the inside of the turn. Driver’s side. The airbag detonates in a white explosion of fabric and powder that fills the cab and shoves him back into the seat. The engine dies. The truck slides three feet and stops, wedged against the rock face at an angle. Passenger side elevated. Driver’s side crushed.

Silence.

“Ryker.” I’m already reaching for him, fighting the seatbelt and the airbag. “Talk to me.”

He’s conscious. Eyes open. Blood is running from his nose. There’s a dazed quality to his expression that tells me the impact scrambled something. His left arm is pinned against the door where the frame buckled inward. When he tries to move it his face goes white and a sound comes out of him that I’ve never heard before. Genuine, involuntary pain.

“Arm’s caught,” he says, voice thick. “Can’t get it free. My weapon’s on my right hip. Can you reach it?”