Page 94 of Mountain Security

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Yvette

Yvette suddenly had a bad feeling about this.

“What are you thinking, Yvette?”

Why would he stop heating it?

The driveway, too, had more snow on it than she would have expected to see.

“Maybe he—“

A sharp crack sounded. Something flew at them from the fountain.

What on earth—

Then she was airborne in Alex’s arms. She landed on her back—hard—the fall taking her breath away. And then Alex was on top of her.

The sound came again. A second crack, louder this time. It took her another long moment to comprehend what was happening.

Somebody’s shooting at us.

Fear froze her mind. She was still there, inside her body. She could feel the cold as the snow went under her clothes, the pressure on her hips and shoulder blades where his body pressed her hard into the ground. But she couldn’t hear, she couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t—

Oh, my God.

We’re going to die.

She moved her head, which was about the only bit of her she could move, to the left—saw dark rock. They’d landed behind the fountain, but they couldn’t stay here forever.

Silence.

Her muscles tensed. She felt an irrepressible urge to jump up and run, but Alex’s hands held on to her forearms.

“No. Stay.”

Another crack. This time, it sounded closer.

No.

She shivered. Terror, white and all-encompassing, gripped her. Fantastically, her brain remembered a line from a famous novel, where life was distilled to five thousand heartbeats per hour. The way her heart was beating, she was on her way to exhausting that.

“Yvette!” Alex whispered. “Yvette. Please look at me,” he said, his tone urgent and beseeching.

And, because this was Alex, she had to at least try to do what he said. Their gazes met, and in his dark blue eyes she saw only deep calm.

“We’ve got this, Yvette. You with me?”

She nodded. And, suddenly, she knew that the only way either of them would survive them was if she listened to him.

“I’m with you,” she whispered. “What do we do?”

He let out a relieved sigh. His lips came down, and he kissed her—hard.

There was so much fire in his kiss, which made the contrast that much greater when he raised his head again, and his expression turned to ice.

“I’m going to get you out of here, Yvette.”

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