Chapter Twenty-Nine

Sam covered her ears against the alarm blaring though the house and looked at Garrett. Fear grabbed her by the throat.

Right before her eyes, he turned into the man she’d met in the alley behind the restaurant. The man who’d held a gun to her head and ordered her to keep up as he dragged her along. He ran to his laptop and tapped on the keyboard, then stepped backward as though the image on the monitor was too awful to look at.

“Sam, run.” He said it so calmly the words didn’t make sense.

“What?”

“Out the back. Someone pulled in the driveway. Go. Just like we talked about. The bunker. Run.” He handed her a gun and pushed her toward the deck. “Now.”

She stopped when he didn’t follow her. “What about you?”

“Sam! Now!” His sharp look had her moving again.

She stopped asking questions. Maybe he had a plan. Maybe his plan wasn’t to deal with whatever was coming up the driveway alone. Maybe he had explosives set to detonate when someone stepped on the front porch. Something like that.

She ran across the deck as two black SUVs pulled up in front of the house next to Garrett’s Jeep. At least five men poured out of the vehicle.

Her feet didn’t even seem to touch the ground as she bolted up the hill, running faster than she ever had before.

Instincts took over as she sprinted up the railroad bed, stopping momentarily behind a tree to make sure no one was following her. It wouldn’t be a good idea to lead them to her hiding spot.

After taking a moment to listen, she heard nothing but her heartbeat pounding in her ears. No one was coming.

She took off again. Left at the arrow, and left again at the tree that was down. She saw the markers she’d made. The small pile of rocks.

The air cracked with the sound of a gunshot, like thunder during a storm that was too close.

“Garrett!” She gasped as she skidded to a stop. A different instinct made her turn back for a few steps, but then she paused again. No. Keep going. She needed to do what he’d told her. Surely, he would meet her there.

Her feet carried her faster as more shots rang out.

When she held her hand to the panel, she wondered how she had gotten to the bunker so quickly. She closed the door and went to the keypad.

“Zero, three, one, three,” she told herself as she punched in the code. The hatch popped. She hadn’t even gotten the chance to ask Garrett what the numbers meant. Was it his birth date? Or of someone he cared about?

As she pulled the hatch shut and turned on the light, she realized how badly she was trembling. She was shaking worse than when she’d been running through the woods. She was safe now, but she was terrified.

Garrett was still out there.

Suddenly, she understood what he had meant by complicated. With anyone else, she would have been content to stay here and hide. But Garrett was out there, alone, and she cared about him.

She couldn’t just wait here for ten days where it was safe, while he lay up there bleeding or dying. She just couldn’t. What if he needed her help?

She could almost hear Garrett’s gruff voice telling her to stay where she was.

But how was he supposed to fend off five or more armed men? He couldn’t. Even as skilled as he was, that would be impossible.

Without consciously realizing what she was doing, she strapped her rifle over her shoulder and picked up a box of ammo. It wouldn’t do any good to have to stop to reload, so she stole the clips from the three neighboring guns of the same caliber.

She tucked the Glock down the back of her jeans, and filled her pockets with clips and extra bullets.

Without so much as a second of hesitation, she left the safety of the bunker.

And went to save the man she was falling in love with.