Expect the Sunrise (31 page)

Sure, you will.
Mac should have listened to his instincts, should have
never
let any of them out of his sight. He’d been lazy. Stupid. He listened to the static as Nina cut off transmission and nearly threw the radio against the rocks.

“Mac, calm down,” Phillips said.

“You calm down! I can’t believe I didn’t see it!”

Phillips took a step toward him.

Mac held up a warning hand. “Don’t. I have to go after her. I can’t just sit here.”

Ishbane stopped his pacing. “Yeah. You do. But leave the radio. It’ll be GPS tracked, and they’ll know you’re moving. We’ll call for help.”

Mac stared at him, frowning. GPS tracked. Of course. Nina hadn’t needed the radio. The GPS tracking allowed her cohorts to locate her. No wonder she’d gone along peacefully, despite volunteering a few times to hike out with Andee. He thought of Nina’s courageous, deceitful efforts on the scree slope. Imagine if she’d let Ishbane fall? It might have slowed them all down. And she’d buddied up with Andee because she’d needed her to stay alive. Until her fellow terrorists had located her.

Had he alerted these terrorists by turning on the radio, somehow activating an inbuilt GPS signal? He felt sick, nausea pitching his stomach. He handed the radio to Phillips. “I don’t know if you can get any other channels, but try.”

Phillips nodded. “God cares just as much about Andee as you do, Mac. Don’t forget that.”

Mac scrambled up the path in the direction Ishbane had pointed.
Please, God, don’t take her away from me. I’m so, so sorry I haven’t valued what You’ve given me. But I do now! I really want to be that guy who remembers birthdays and risks getting hurt just to see Andee smile.

Before he’d met Andee he’d felt numb. Disintegrating. Andee had reached past the cold and made him feel alive.

“Joyful are those who have the God of Israel as their helper
.”
He heard Andee’s words quoting from the psalm in his head as he thundered up the path, feeling nothing as his feet fought for footholds.

Please, God, I’m not good at this, but I want to trust You. Help me trust You!

He found the flattened Jacob’s ladder flowers, indentations where Andee had dug her feet into the ground, and what looked like stuffing. He picked it up, sifting the batting through his fingers. Nina’s whale.

He wanted to hit something hard. Nina had been hiding something—a transmitter for a bomb? a radio? It had been inside that toy for four days and he hadn’t suspected a thing.

Like a hammer driving home the last of his suspicions, the truth finally fitted into place. He’d dreamed this scenario a billion times. With the mountains as sentries, any remote detonation signal from a safe distance would have to happen from the air. While others planted the bombs on the pipeline, probably acting as hunters or hikers, Nina had most likely planned to hijack Andee’s plane to send the radio/GPS signal that would flood millions of acres of Alaskan soil with crude oil. She’d used the stuffed animal to get through customs, probably removing the voice box of the whale and replacing it with the hardware to get the job done.

But now that Andee had crashed said plane … what was Nina up to?

Apparently Plan B.

Mac had to alert the right people. To stop Nina and her group, whoever they worked for.

Did he go after help, save the pipeline, or … find Andee?

There was only one right answer.

Mac tripped, landing hard on his knees and hands. Blood warmed his palms as he shot back to his feet. Below, he saw the rapids, heard the roar of the river.

His breath sawed in his lungs, cutting, burning as he topped the cliff. And then he spotted a rope, used to traverse the river, dangling over the edge, cut from the other side.

The other side, the side on which lay the pipeline … and Andee.

Everything inside him wanted to explode, to shout her name. But his voice echoing across the canyon just might be enough to kill them both.

Chapter 18

“GERARD, WHAT ARE you doing here?”

They had to wrestle her father to his knees and put him in a submission hold while Andee traversed the gorge. She saw the horror on his face when she touched ground, the way his eyes fought to glaze over, to show nothing, to feel nothing.

It was a look she hadn’t seen since that day on the tarmac, her sixteenth birthday, when her mother had demanded, “Choose.”

As Andee stared at her father, forced to his knees, his hands tied behind him, a gun to his head, that moment returned. A flash of pain that cut so deep it felt like lightning had scored her down the middle.

Choose.
The word froze her, just as it had so many years before when her world shattered. She’d listened to the impossible word echo in her ears, staring at the two people who embodied her future.

Did she choose flying with her father, the one who’d taught her to trust herself, to believe that she could overcome her fears and find the strength to reach the other side? Yet he was the one who disappeared, who chose, over and over, his job above his daughter.

Or did she choose her mother? Steady. Wise. Accomplished. Wanting only Andee’s future. The one who tucked her into bed each night, who fed her, clothed her.

An impossible choice.

But as her father met her gaze now, horror in his eyes, she realized that maybe she hadn’t been the one forced to choose at all. Had her mother looked at her … or Gerard? What if she had demanded that Gerard, not Andee, choose?

Gerard had gotten into his plane and flown off. Without a word of explanation, leaving Andee to fill in the blanks.

She wondered now if perhaps, finally, she didn’t have the answers. Maybe his choice had cost him even more than it had cost her. Maybe he hadn’t come after her because he
couldn’t
.

Not because he didn’t want to. Maybe his choice had to do with this very moment, seeing his daughter—or his wife—suffer. The thought pushed tears into her eyes.

“I told you, MacLeod, that you’d do what we wanted,” the one called Constantine said.

Andee listened closely to him, noticing he spoke without an accent. The man who’d followed her across the river and cut the rope trekked out ahead of them, then turned and glared, as if impatient.

Andee felt hands on her neck, forcing her to her knees. She refused to wince at the pressure and simply clamped her jaw and allowed her hands to be taped behind her. She kept eye contact with her father, willing him to explain.

“Get up, MacLeod,” Constantine said, gripping her father’s jacket collar. “We have some flying to do.”

“Not unless you let her go.”

Andee felt the barrel of Nina’s gun press against her temple. “Get up, MacLeod.”

Andee thought he might break into two pieces from the way his expression wavered, his jaw quivering with a rage she’d never before seen. “I’m sorry, Andee. I thought I could protect you from all this. I thought that keeping you away from me might—”

“Shut up!” Constantine cuffed him, and Gerard fell chin first into the dirt. He pulled Gerard up by this jacket. “Get up. Now. Or she dies.” He glanced at Nina and nodded.

Realization came like a fist, clamping hard. “They want you to fly them over the pipeline,” Andee said.

Gerard met her eyes, said nothing. He didn’t have to. Andee remembered the device in Nina’s pocket, Mac’s wild theories, and she knew.

“You’re going to blow the pipeline from the air,” she said. “You’ve already set the charges, and you’re going to destroy—”

Nina grabbed her hair. “If we kill him, we still have you. Shut up.” She eyed Constantine. “How far to the plane?”

“A half kilometer maybe. We parked it on the Dalton.”

“Let’s go.”

Nina forced Andee to her feet, pushed her ahead toward the brush.

Gerard met her in stride and kept his voice low. “I know I made mistakes with you, Andee. But right now I need you to be the girl I raised you to be. I can’t protect you anymore, but you can protect yourself.”

Andee glanced at him, frowning, ducking as a branch slapped at her from Constantine’s plow through the forest ahead of her. She’d heard Nina threaten Mac on the two-way. She’d wanted to cry out, to tell him the right answer. But she already knew what he’d choose. The pipeline. That was the only choice.

“Run,” Gerard whispered. “Run for the river.” He snuck a look at her, his eyes holding that twinkle, the one right before they had an adventure. The one that told her he had a plan.

And leave him here alone? But Nina had her gun. And—“I can’t.”

“You can. Run!”

He spun, kicked at Nina, and Andee bolted. She flew past Nina, who barely missed her, and sped through the woods, her footsteps sure. She heard shots, then screaming and shut herself from them.
Run!
The hot blood in her ears filled her veins with adrenaline. She ripped and tugged at the bonds as she ran, feeling her hands break free.

She burst into the clearing where she’d crossed over the gorge.

And then she was flying over the edge, her arms windmilling, her body caught in the spray of river as she fell.

No!

Mac froze as he watched Andee fling herself over the edge of the cliff. She’d materialized from the woods like some forest animal and screamed as she hit the air. His knees gave out as she plummeted into the white water below.

A man appeared right after her, pointed a gun where she’d been, then advanced to the edge, searching.

Mac picked up a rock and with everything he had in him threw it across the gorge. It hit Andee’s shooter in the neck. The man fell back and shot at Mac. He dived behind a boulder. Bullets chipped rocks around him, but it bought Andee time. Precious time.

Except, well, if she didn’t get out of that river fast, hypothermia would grab her like a bear after hibernation and pull her under. That is, if she didn’t go over the falls first.

Go,
go!
Mac willed the shooter. He peeked to see him disappear into the woods. Good. Maybe they’d believe they shot him.

Or not.
Please let Phillips and Ishbane have reached someone!

Mac advanced to the edge of the gorge, searching for Andee. He saw her, a black head bobbing in the water. “Andee!” Giving one last look at the hole in the forest left by the shooter, Mac flung himself over the edge.

He circled his arms, fighting to stay upright. When he hit the water, the cold stole the breath from his lungs. It sucked him under; water closed over his head. Everything in him told him to kick, and he lunged hard for the surface.

Air. He sucked it in even as he felt the current take him. It wrestled him downstream as he fought to stay afloat. “Andee!” The cold burned his limbs, fire in every pore. The water filled his nose and blurred his vision.

“Andee!” He choked, coughing. Banging a rock, he pushed off from it, righting himself.
Think, Mac.

He backstroked, turning himself so he faced downstream. His legs forward, he let himself ride the current, pushing away from rocks, arrowing downstream.

Andee had long since disappeared.

His body felt numb as the canyon flowed by. The river roared in his ears, thunder that threatened to consume him.

Then he saw her. She was clinging to a boulder the size of a half-submerged moose, a blur of red as the white water lashed his vision. “Andee!”

She looked in his direction, and the current nearly ripped her clutch from the boulder. He watched her grit her teeth as she pulled herself up, climbing onto the rock. Then she turned around and held out her hand.

Mac had his feet on the rock, slowing him when he caught her grip. Fear flashed across her face for a second as his weight threatened to pull her back into the water. He’d let go before he let that happen. He dug his fingers into the rock, and with her pulling, he managed to get a firm grip. He hauled himself out of the water and climbed onto the rock, breathing hard and shivering.

Andee sat beside him, her hands tucked around her knees, shaking. Water coursed down her face, into her neck, her saturated red jacket and spilled from her boots.

He put his arm around her, pulled her tight against him, his heart still pounding. “Are you okay?”