Anya peeked around the side of the granite lump. The hill they’d been climbing slowly as they searched crested in about one hundred yards. From the top of that crest, she thought she saw movement. Something dark. Then a flash.

  Crack!

  One of the searchers, running for cover behind a large evergreen tree stumbled, fell. The man beside him turned, grabbed him under the arms and dragged him out of sight, behind the evergreen.

  “Oh, my God,” she muttered on a quavering exhale. “That man was hit.” Training kicked in, needling her. “Brody, I have to go help him. He’s hurt.”

  When she tried to rise, Brody put a hand around her wrist, stopping her. “Hang on. You won’t do him any good if you get shot getting to him.”

  “But I—”

  “Let me think.” He pressed his mouth in a firm line, his heavenly blue eyes growing hard and determined. “We have to time this right.”

  As she studied the set of his square jaw, felt the heat of his body close to hers, Anya acknowledged how grateful she was that Brody was with her. She felt safer—safe being relative at the moment—with him beside her.

  More shots rang out as the other searchers bolted hither and thither. Brody moved to a crouch. “Get ready.”

  With his hand under her elbow to help her change positions, Anya rose to a squat, her heart thumped like a wild rabbit in her chest, the beat loud in her ears. Brody laced his fingers with hers.

  “When I say ‘go,’ run like hell for that spruce tree where the downed man is. Okay?”

  She bobbed her head. “Right.”

  Anya held her breath while Brody sized up the situation, waiting for the right moment. When shots rang out again, sending up a spray of dirt, grass and stones farther down the hillside, Brody jerked her hand and barked, “Go!”

  He hauled her along behind him, his own pace surprisingly fast on the uneven and steep terrain. She stumbled a couple times but stayed upright until they collapsed together behind the spruce where three other searchers, including the injured man, were already huddled.

  A man Anya knew as Tim, another searcher with her team, held his hands over the man’s wound, trying to stem the bleeding. Tim was whey-faced and wide-eyed. “You’re a nurse, aren’t you?”

  She gasped for air, still winded from her sprint, and fought her shirt from her shoulders. “Yes.”

  “Please, do something for him! He’s my brother!” Tim said, his voice cracking.

  Anya crawled closer to the man with the wound in his chest. She checked for a pulse and found one. It was thready. Weak.

  She balled her outer-layer shirt and pressed it hard on the wound, avoiding Tim’s panicked gaze. The outlook for her patient was grim, and she hated to think of his brother’s loss and grief. Tears filled her eyes as she continued applying pressure.

  Brody moved into position across from her. “What can I do to help?”

  “Got a medevac handy?” she asked, casting him a quick worried glance.

  “Will he be all right?” Tim asked, his tone saying he knew the bleakness of the situation but was desperate for some grain of hope.

  “Cameron!” a man shouted behind her from some distance. “This way! Into the trees!”

  Brody raised his head. Waved to the man who’d been on the bullhorn earlier, then shouted, “We have a man down!”

  Even from their distance, she heard the curse word the other man bit out.

  “You go,” Anya said to Brody, then turned toward the other two men. “All of you. There’s...” She took a breath. “There’s not much we can do for him. But I’ll stay and keep pressure on the wound, just in case.”

  Tim gave a raw moan that crawled down Anya’s spine and made her soul hurt. She was no stranger to heartache and loss, and Tim’s grief reverberated inside her.

  She stared down at the red stains on her shirt as she held it to her patient’s wound and fought back her own tears.

  Brody reached over and wrapped his hand around her wrist. Squeezed gently. When she glanced up at him, his eyes were warm, kind...resolved. “I’m not leaving without you.”

  Something in her chest kicked. His willingness to risk his own safety to stay with her touched her deeply. “I...no, Brody. You should—”

  “I’m staying.” He glanced at the other men, aimed a finger toward the man who’d beckoned them. “When there’s a break in the shooting, head for those trees where Jerry is. The woods will provide some cover. Better than here.”

  Anya dared to glance up then, to meet Tim’s bereft eyes. His throat worked as he swallowed hard. Nodded. “His name is Donnie.”

  Anya’s heart squeezed, and she nodded, moving aside as Tim bent to kiss his brother’s forehead and whisper private words to his loved one.

  The second man put a hand on Tim’s back, muttering condolences as they both readied themselves to sprint to the line of trees.

  Anya touched Donnie’s neck again, searching for the faint thump that would tell her he was still with fight, still clinging to life. But the thin pulse was gone.

  “Now!” Brody said, sending the other two men off.

  As Tim and his companion raced away, Anya raised her chin and met Brody’s gaze again.

  “What?” he asked.

  She wet her lips and sighed. “He’s dead.”

  Brody stared at her as if he didn’t understand for a moment before shifting a pained gaze to Donnie. He mumbled a cuss word, then laid a hand on the dead man’s shoulder. “Rest in peace, friend.”

  Anya rocked back from Donnie’s side, landing on her bottom and staring off toward the trees where Tim and the second man scampered into the safety of the woods.

  “We should join them. Get ready to run again,” Brody said.

  “What about Donnie? He’ll need to be transported back to the—” Morgue. She couldn’t bring herself to say the word.

  Brody rubbed a hand over his face. “Someone will come back for him. Once everything is safe.”

  He reached over to squeeze her shoulder, and somehow the sympathetic gesture broke her. She couldn’t catch the sob that rose up from her chest or the tears that poured from her eyes any more than she could bring Donnie back to life. She’d lost patients before. It was an undeniable and heartbreaking truth of emergency medicine. She saw some of the most gravely injured and desperately ill cases the hospital handled. But Donnie’s death felt more personal somehow. More tragic. More...real.

  She heard rustling sounds, and then Brody’s arms were around her. “I know. I know. It’s okay,” he crooned softly, the pat, meaningless words still comforting.

  Or maybe it was just Brody’s presence. The shared moment. Knowing she wasn’t alone.

  She could have gone on huddling close to Brody and weeping on his shoulder over the appalling loss of life, the horror of their situation and the feeling of professional failure that wrenched inside her, but the shooter took away that option.

  As gunfire began peppering the hillside again, the flying bullets came dangerously close to the spruce where she and Brody hid. The thick branches of the evergreen were good for hiding but not helpful as a shield.

  When a shot landed a foot from where Brody set his backpack, Anya gasped. She swiped an arm over her face, drying her tears and gave Brody a look that said she knew what had to happen.

  Together they shifted position, their attention on their destination as they linked hands.

  “Ready?” he asked.

  She inhaled a deep breath for energy, for composure. For luck. And nodded.

  “Go!”

  * * *

  Jerry met Brody and Anya as they entered the cover of the hardwoods and scrub brush where several of the searchers hid behind trunks of larger trees. “Your downed man?” he asked.

  Brody shook his head. “Didn’t make it.”

  Jerry’s jaw hardened. “Who?”

  “His name was Donnie. He was with the SAR team.”

  With a heavy exhale, Jerry bowed his head and closed his eyes for a moment before rallying and narrowing an all-business look on Brody. “Needless to say, this search is over. Let’s get everyone rounded up and off this mountain before anyone else gets hurt.”

  “Has anyone called the situation in to the police?” Anya asked, her back to a beech tree that didn’t fully shield her.

  Another volley of gunfire warned them the shooter wasn’t finished.

  “What is this guy’s deal?” Brody grated. “He can’t not know he’s shooting at people. He long ago passed the threshold of mistaking movement for wildlife.”

  Jerry’s radio crackled, and a voice said, “Team leader, report?”

  “We’re still taking fire. I have six—” he paused and glanced around the area where other searchers were crouched behind trees or lying on the ground behind small boulders “—no, seven souls with me.”

  Brody, too, scanned the wooded hillside, locating other members of the search team.

  “I have most of the crew with me. Law enforcement has been apprised of our situation and is en route,” said the voice on Jerry’s radio.

  “Good. If you haven’t already, abort your search and get your people out of here,” Jerry said.

  Something beyond the copse of trees, down the hillside, caught Brody’s eye. Careful to move from the cover of one tree to the next, he crept forward to find an angle with fewer branches obscuring his view. Was that a...cabin?

  “Brody? What’s wrong?” Anya asked.

  Wiggling his fingers, he waved her to him. “C’mere. Take a look at this.”

  She joined him, sidling up close to him behind the wide oak where he’d taken cover. He aimed his finger toward the small wooden building nestled in a clearing below them.

  “Was that...?” Cutting herself off, Anya dug in her pocket for the small topological map they’d been given at the start of their search. “That’s not on our map. Do you think anyone has searched it for Sophie?”

  “I’m wondering if that’s where our shooter came from. We could have run across the camp of an extremist who prefers living off the grid and thinks the government is out to get him.”

  “Cameron, let’s go!” Jerry called. The other five searchers who’d taken cover in the woods were already headed through the trees in an approximate direction of the operation base at the foot of the mountain.

  “Hold up, boss. Look at this.” Brody hitched his head, signaling Jerry over.

  Crouching low, despite the fact the gunfire had ceased, Jerry scuttled over to Brody and Anya. “What do you have?”

  Brody again pointed out the cabin, just visible through the dense underbrush and low-hanging branches. “If you were a hiker, lost on this mountain, and you found that, where would you take shelter until rescuers came?”

  “You think Sophie’s down there?” Jerry asked.

  “Can we really leave without checking?” Anya countered.

  Jerry furrowed his brow and cast a glance in the direction the gunfire had come. “Seems more likely we found what the shooter was trying to protect.”

  “Jerry?” another searcher called back from the group that had already started their retreat. “Something wrong?”

  “Hang on, Frank. I—” Indecision darkened Jerry’s countenance.

  Brody weighed his options. Beat a hasty retreat with the rest of the searchers and live with the knowledge the hiker could have been in that cabin, could have been rescued if only they’d taken the time to check the structure? Or take the chance of running into the shooter, up close and personal, if they approach the cabin?

  The crunch of dry leaves drew him out of his pondering as the other searcher, a balding man who appeared close to Brody’s father’s age—Jerry had called him Frank—drew close to join their discussion. “What’s the problem?”

  Jerry showed Frank the cabin.

  Anya touched Brody’s arm, drawing his attention, while the older men discussed the find and their next move. “I can’t in good conscience leave without giving the place at least a cursory search.”

  Brody clenched his back teeth. He’d come to the same decision himself, but he didn’t like the idea of Anya putting herself at risk. “I don’t think you should—”

  A flash of bright light at the cabin, like the sun reflecting off metal, caught his attention, stopping him mid-sentence.

  “Did you see that?” he asked the others.

  Then the flash came again, along with the faint cry of a female voice.

  Brody’s pulse stumbled, and Anya grabbed his arm, squeezing hard. The look on her face said she’d heard the cry, too.

  “Someone’s down there!” She lifted her chin and sent Jerry a determined look. “We have to go down and check. I’m not leaving until I do.”

  Brody squared his shoulders and readjusted his backpack. “I’m going with her.”

  “Cameron, I’m not sure that’s—”

  “I’m going, too,” Frank said, interrupting Jerry. “As a father of three girls and a retired cop, I have to follow through on this.”

  Jerry sighed, raised a palm. “I guess we’re all going then. But carefully. Don’t go charging in there blindly. Let’s use common sense and caution, huh?”

  “Naturally,” Brody said, putting a hand under Anya’s elbow as she stepped over the trunk of a fallen tree and started her descent.

  After Jerry radio their intentions to the other searchers, the four picked their way through the scrubby underbrush, rocks and vines until they reached the nearest point of the tree cover to the cabin. In order to reach the wooden structure that was about the size of a two-car garage, they’d have to cross a grassy field. Translation: no protection if the shooter spotted them and decided to continue his target practice.

  “Do we just...make a run for it?” Anya asked.

  “I don’t see another option,” Frank said. “Although you should probably—”

  Anya shot up a hand, her palm toward the retired cop as she said, “Stop right there. If you’re about to make a sexist comment or play the overprotective dad type and tell me to stay behind, I swear I’ll...”

  Frank arched an eyebrow and gave her a crooked grin. “Once a protective dad type, always a protective dad type. No offense intended.”

  Brody scratched his chin, an awkwardness skimming through him. He’d been about to suggest Anya stay put himself. Did that make him sexist or overprotective? And was overprotective really such a bad thing?

  Jerry eased to the very edge of the woods, scanned the area and muttered, “Here goes nothing.” Without further hesitation, he sprinted across the field.

  Brody followed, the tall grass and uneven ground making it more difficult to run the short distance than normal. He passed Jerry, and as he reached the corner of the cabin. He skidded to a stop and just avoided crashing into the side wall. No gunfire.

  He turned to glance back across the field just as Anya stumbled to a stop. He spread his arms and caught her, helping break her sprint. The last across, Frank, was just on her heels. Winded from the dash, the four pressed their backs to the sun-heated side of the cabin for a few seconds. Nodding silently to the others, Brody eased to the corner and peered around to the entry. Jerry went the opposite direction and checked cautiously around the back corner, Frank following close behind him.

  As Brody took the measure of the front of the cabin—an empty porch, a tree stump with a hatchet stuck in it and evidence of earlier wood splitting, an impressive garden spot with young plants already sprouting, a rusted barrel with a dirty rag hanging over the edge—the cry they’d heard before came again. The woman’s shout was louder now that they were closer to the house. “Help me!”

  The voice was ragged, as if the woman had been screaming at full voice a lot lately. Brody’s gut somersaulted. Even if they hadn’t found the lost hiker, they’d definitely stumbled across a serious situation.

  From behind him, Anya grabbed his arm. “We’re going to need police backup. Probably an ambulance. I dropped my radio when I was helping Donnie. You need to make the call.”

  Frank must have heard her or been thinking along the same lines, because he heard the older man’s voice speaking into his radio. “...need law enforcement and medical support near last point of search. A rough wood structure approximately one klick east of where shooter was positioned. Over.”

  Brody glanced at Anya. “Would it do any good for me to advise you to wait here?”

  She arched a black eyebrow. “No.”

  He sighed. “Stay close then. Keep low. Just in case.”

  She nodded her agreement, and he made his way slowly around the corner, walking duck-like to the only window on the front of the cabin. He peered inside, but the unlit interior was difficult to make out. He saw no obvious signs of life in the one large room.

  “I’m going in,” he said.

  “Unarmed? What if it’s a trap or someone is hiding, waiting to jump you?” Anya’s fingers dug into his forearm.

  “Well...” He scanned the ground, looking for a thick stick at a minimum that he could use as a weapon. When his gaze landed on the hatchet, he scuttled over to it, staying low and yanked it from the stump. Rushing back to meet Anya by the door, he said, “Better?”

  Her eyes rounded. “Let’s just hope you don’t need it, huh?”

  “Definitely.” He keyed the speak button on his radio and said quietly. “Jerry, you there? I’m going in the front door. Is the back clear?”

  “Back and east side. We’ll join you inside in a second,” Jerry replied.

  Pressing his back to the wall and holding the hatchet ready in his right hand, Brody pushed on the front door with his left hand. The door swung open. When no one fired a gun or sprang from the shadows, he peered around the edge of the door. The room, now illuminated by sunlight from the open door revealed a sparsely furnished room with a table and a couple of chairs. An old potbelly wood-burning stove. A cot with a rumpled blanket. A milk crate with split wood. A few shelves lined with jars and plastic storage containers.

 

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