Page 49 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

Outside, the dark truck’s engine is still running. Then it cuts. A door opens. A door closes. Footsteps on gravel. Deliberate. Unhurried.

I reach across the console. My hand finds the SIG on his right hip. Magazine release on the left. Slide back to chamber. Trigger is the safety. He told me twice. My hands remember.

I pull the gun free and chamber a round. The slide racking back is the most decisive sound I’ve ever made.

“Zoe.” His voice is fading at the edges. His good hand finds my wrist. “Don’t go out there. Stay in the cab. If he comes to the window, you shoot. Don’t warn. Don’t negotiate. You shoot.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.” The words are slurred. “I should have taken the other road. I made the wrong call.”

“You made a call. That’s different from a wrong call.”

His eyes find mine and hold. Even dazed and bleeding, they hold.

The footsteps stop just outside the driver’s window. A shape appears through the spiderwebbed glass, tall and broad, backlit by the fading light.

I raise the SIG and point it at the window. My hands are steady.

The shape leans forward. A face appears in the cracked glass. I don’t recognize it. Not Tyler. Not the man from the diner. Someone new.

The face sees the gun. The face sees the woman holding the gun. The face reassesses.

A phone rings. His. He steps back and answers it. I catch fragments through the broken glass. A tone that sounds like orders being received. Then footsteps retreating. The dark truck’s engine starts. Tires crunch on gravel. The sound fades down the mountain until it’s gone.

I don’t lower the gun for another two minutes. I keep it pointed at the broken window until the silence proves itself.

Then I set the gun on the dashboard and pull the satellite phone from the console. Mason’s number. Static. Again. More static. The mountain is blocking everything.

“Kane,” Ryker says, eyes half-closed. “Radio frequency seven. Handheld in the glove box.”

I open the glove box, find the military-green radio, turn the dial to seven, and press the button.

“Kane. This is Zoe. We’ve been hit on Route 12, about six miles below the Forest Service turnoff. Ryker’s hurt. His arm is pinned. The vehicle is disabled. We need help. Now.”

Static. Then Kane’s voice, low and immediate. “Copy. I’m coming. Stay with him. ETA twenty minutes.”

I set the radio down and turn back to Ryker. His eyes are half-closed, the pain and the impact pulling him under. I take his good hand in both of mine.

“Stay with me,” I say. “Don’t close your eyes. Talk to me. Tell me about the birds. What kind of birds are out there right now? What do they mean?”

His mouth moves. Almost a smile. “Jays,” he whispers. “Coming back. Means the threat’s gone.”

“Good. What else?”

“Nutcracker. Far ridge. Means the temperature’s above zero.”

“Keep going.”

He talks about birds while I hold his hand in a wrecked truck on a mountain road with a box of animal mugs in the back seat and a gun on the dashboard. He talks about jays and nutcrackers and chickadees and kinglets and the things they tell you about temperature and danger and silence. He talks until Kane’s headlights appear around the switchback below us and the radio crackles with his voice saying he’s thirty seconds out. He talks until the door is pried open and his arm is freed and the pain makes him go silent in a way that’s worse than any sound.

But he doesn’t close his eyes. He keeps them on me.

I hold his hand. I don’t let go.

Somewhere down the road the man who hit us is driving toward a phone call that will tell Tyler the woman with the flash drive is still alive and still refusing to be the person they decided she was.

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