Authors: Capri Montgomery
Hiking for Danger (8 page)
Parker had said they wouldn’t leave anybody behind. He had even appealed to their sense of humanity and then the outright knowledge that they themselves wouldn’t want to be left behind. What it came down to was they were wasting time—time they couldn’t afford to waste.
“So leave me here. I’ll be fine. You can send somebody back for me once you’re all safe.”
“No.” Cody said, but the others were already agreeing.
“She makes sense,” one had said.
“We can’t let her slow us down or we'll all die,” came another response.
“She’ll be okay up here,” was the last reply.
“Let me remind you,” Cody growled. “She wouldn’t be injured if it weren’t for you and your games, Stacey. We’re not leaving anybody behind.”
“Cody,” she called to him. What he gave her was a fierce gaze that seemed to scare even her. “Cody, listen to me. He’s not interested in hurting me. If he wanted to hurt me he wouldn’t have told you to get your injured someplace safe. I’ll be okay.”
“Of course you will, because you’re getting your butt down that mountain.” He said before slipping his arm around her waist and pulling her to her feet. “Now, anybody else want to leave somebody behind and you can stay up here too,” he said. “Kid,” he gestured for him to come.
“You’re not using my son.”
“Aw dad, shut up,” he said as he tucked Sahara’s arm around his waist. “I’ve got her.”
In all his years of working the park ranger job and then adding in this hiking adventure tour job he had never encountered anything like this. The most dangerous situations he had encountered were the occasional idiots who thought it would be fun to sneak up on a bear; or riding the rapids with a person who couldn’t understand why staying secure in the raft was smarter than standing up and trying to “ride the wave,” as the bleached blond with spiky hair had called when he decided to jump up on the back of the raft and then fell off.
The dangers were stupid situations with stupid people, but they were always containable. This, however, was something he wasn’t prepared for. These were humans hunting humans and his group didn’t even have a weapon. Since the cutbacks, they only had the one communication device that could reach the base from this altitude. That one device was in Parker’s bag and the arrow had taken that out. While they both still had their phones they were going to have to get down and out of the heavy tree coverage before they could call for help. They were outgunned, and they were on their own.
“We have to move fast, people.” Cody took the lead while Parker took up the rear to make sure they didn’t lose anybody. “We’ll have to take the shortcut down and it’s going to be hard all the way.” Hard was probably an understatement because he knew it was going to be more than hard. He knew the steep trail was hard for an experienced hiker let alone for the novice and an injured hiker. He just didn’t have a choice. The only way to take a moderately less difficult way down was to go up first and going up was just stupid because they wouldn’t be able to get a signal for a call out for help. They had to take one of the rough paths, but once they got low enough for him to get reception he could alert the base, get aerial help and somebody with weapons to come either take these guys out or arrest them. He didn’t care which just so long as these guys paid for the havoc they were causing and the lives they were putting in danger.
They started down the path, cautiously keeping keen watch of the path behind them while trying to navigate the path in front of them. They all had to work together now because these guys could be anywhere. They could come from the side or from in front of them too. That was the thing about the wilderness, there were so many ways to get to one destination, which made it more difficult to know where these guys would come from. He still didn’t know how many men they were dealing with because the guy whose voice they heard said he was teaching his boys—boys could mean two or ten for all Cody knew.
They were roughly twelve minutes into their walk when the group seemed to forget about what was chasing them. “This can’t be serious,” Stacey stopped walking. “I’m not going to break my neck going down that,” she pointed to the path ahead of them.
“She’s right,” Misty said.
“I agree, but I’m more than willing to keep walking for no other reason than to find out we are wrong,” Riley said. “Let’s keep moving people.”
Cody was ready to issue the same demand, he was glad at least one of the hikers was on his side. He couldn’t be sure of anything with the rest of them, other than Sahara and Parker that is.
“Fine,” Stacey barked as she shoved her friend Nikita forward.
“Hold up,” Cody snapped because he should be the one in front, but Nikita didn’t listen to him over her friend’s insistence that she move forward.
“I said hold up!”
Nikita took one more step forward and a spring snapped, a wall of spikes popped up and sliced right into her. Everybody screamed, including Sahara.
“Jesus!” Parker growled. “How the hell did they get that there?”
“I’m guessing they planned this. They had all night to set this mess up and we wouldn’t have even known about it. And if they have been tracking our movements for longer than that they could have planned this whole thing.”
“This was the quickest path down,” Parker mumbled.
This was their only path down from this angle, other than the steepest segment over the ridge that he knew Sahara wouldn’t be able to make no matter how much support she had. He brushed his hand through his hair. “Okay, Parker, you take them and head down Devil’s Drop.”
“What about you?”
“I’m going to take Sahara down the long way. We’ll have to go up first. When you get to the bottom you get us help.”
“I’m not cool leaving you, Cody.”
“I know, but you have to get them down and we can’t risk going that way. She won’t make it down Devil’s Drop.”
“I can help her,” Shell said and his father protested.
“Thanks,” Cody nodded. “But you won’t be able to help her. You’re going to barely be able to hold yourself up. Take them down Parker, and send us help.”
“Cody, just leave me,” she said.
“No,” he bit out the words. He didn’t know how many times he could tell her he was not leaving her. “Now stop wasting energy on arguing with me,” he set his sights on her, locking eyes with her and seeing her defiance. “You’re going to need that energy for the journey ahead of us.” Her shoulders relaxed and she nodded her understanding. He wasn’t leaving anybody behind and she finally seemed to understand that.
As they started their ascent Sahara couldn’t help but think about the others. She seriously hoped they made it down safely, not just because they were their beacon of hope, but because Cody and Parker made it sound as if the way they were going wouldn’t be much easier than the way he was taking her. If it wasn’t for her ankle they could have stuck together. If it weren’t for Stacey then her ankle wouldn’t be in the condition it was in. Still, despite her anger she could only feel sorry for the young woman. To see her friend die like that had torn her apart. The last thing Sahara remembered seeing was Donald Baker pulling her up to her feet and encouraging her to walk. She was sobbing hysterically, maybe part of it was watching her friend die, but the other part was probably because she knew part of what happened was her fault. If she hadn’t pushed Nikki onward then she wouldn’t have sprung that trap. On the other end of that had they kept going somebody was bound to spring it. Cody knew about avoiding traps, but that was usually any misplaced hunter’s traps. Since the section he was a ranger for didn’t allow trapping he would spring the traps and remove them, at least that’s what he had told her while they were talking about his job as a ranger.
“What are you contemplating?”
His deep, sexy voice lulled her out of her analytical musings. “The situation,” she hadn’t felt a need to lie about it. Clearly they were both thinking about things. Cody was probably trying to figure out how he was going to stay alive while he tried to help her support her weight. She was slowing him down. “You should have left me and gone with them,” she would feel guilty if he died because of her.
“Wasn’t going to happen then and it’s not going to happen now.”
The anger in his voice told her he was not in the mood for more of this conversation. “I know,” she sighed. “It’s just…I don’t want you to die because of me.”
“We’re not going to die. And if, by some off chance, the bastards do kill me it won’t be your fault. Now stop doing that, stop blaming yourself for something you have no control over.”
She nodded. His words were accurate but that didn’t mean they made her feel any better. She liked this guy—a lot actually. He was sexy and brazen and smart, but beyond that he was a man—a real man like the kind she thought died out a long time ago. He was chivalrous without being controlling. He had enough finesses with brawn to make him effective in the situations they had encountered. He had restraint, which she thought was admirable. She hadn’t missed the rage in his eyes when Stacey had caused her injury. She didn’t think that was because she was hurt; she figured it was because he wanted order, discipline and adults, not children masquerading in an adult body. Despite that rage he still held back. She had no misgivings that the words he uttered were severely curtailed.
“Do you think they’re still behind us,” she held on to his waist as he had instructed her to do. He could get so much farther and faster without her hanging on to him.
“Yeah, I’m sure at least one of them is behind us. I just don’t know how many are out there.”
She nodded. “Maybe you should leave me over—” She held up her hand to cut off his protest. “Over there,” she pointed, “or someplace safe so that you can circle back and see.”
“Sahara,” he admonished.
“Look, Cody, right now we’re being hunted. Why don’t we start chasing them?”
He laughed sarcastically. “And what am I supposed to do if I find one of them? I don’t have a gun. While I can street box I don’t think my fists will stop a bullet. We need to…”
“Change the game,” she said and she knew that he knew she was right. “Stop being the hunted. It’s like ants really—”
He laughed softly. “We’re ants or they are?”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “In ant colonies the females are the ones that do all the work and protect the nest from enemies—except the queen of course because she has the job of reproducing.”
“And the others don’t?”
“No, only the queen produces eggs.”
“I never paid attention to that part of science classes,” he admitted. “That’s one busy queen.”
She laughed. “Sometimes there is more than one queen per nest and sometimes there aren’t. My point is,” she stressed. “I can’t protect us because of my ankle so I’ll have to take the place of the queen ant in this scenario.”
“I am not having a sex change,” he joked. How could he joke at a time like this?
She sighed. “Cody,” she glared up at him, but he kept his focus ahead of them.
“So how do you know the males from the females?”
Would he let her finish her comparison already? “The males are usually smaller than the females…”
“That’s not us,” he winked at her.
“And they, along with the queen are the only ones that have wings. Now stop interrupting me. I had a point I was trying to make.”
“Make it faster,” he teased. “No, tell me more about these ants. I find it fascinating.”
“Liar,” she rolled her eyes again.
“Are they all the same?”
“Seriously,” she huffed. “Fine, there are over eleven thousand species worldwide. Now point is this…”
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