Page 59 of Burnin' For You

“Go,” he said, his voice echoing in his head. He added oomph to it when he smelled smoke. “Get out of here!”

“No!” She kicked at the boards.

They didn’t move.

“Please, Gilly, go.”

“I’m not leaving without you!” She was frantic now, jumping on the boards. “Please, please—”

He couldn’t take it. He pushed himself up, grabbed her hand. Pulled her down to meet his face. “I can’t fit through there. The house is going to explode. Go. Now.Save our team.”

Something in his words must have clicked, because she stopped fighting and just stared at him.

Oh, she had gorgeous eyes—many of them—but all of them were a shade of blue, with flecks of green and gold.

He traced her face, memorizing it, and then, because he couldn’t stop himself, he closed the gap and kissed her. Quick and over before she could respond, but mostly because he’d lost his mind on the crawl to the bathroom, and he didn’t know what else to do to say good-bye.

Then he shoved her through the hole, a hand on her shoulder, all the way down, until she crouched in the blackness under the house. He tossed the gear pack down after her. Then he stuck his head down through the hole.

And sure enough, light dented the far edge, a crawl space under the length of the building.

“Go, Gilly!”

And thank God, she did, scrambling toward the light.

He closed his eyes, and breathed in the cool air, letting the oblivion take him.

Our team.Reuben’s words hung in her mind, burning as Gilly scrabbled out from under the back of the house, crouching in the shadows to search for Patrick. Or Brownie.

Her brain still couldn’t wrap around the fact that they’d been—were—trying to kill her.

Them.

Her team.

She wasn’t going to let any more of them die. Starting with Reuben.

No. The sound of Patrick screaming stirred inside of her. She couldn’t believe she’d bear-sprayed him. Or that her crazy ideaworked. She’d watched him talk to Reuben, all the while rooting in the pack for the bear spray. Waited for the moment when he turned to her.

Except it hadn’t quite turned out like she’d hoped—Reuben shot, bleeding, passed out with his head stuck in a drainage hole while the cabin burned around him.

The death Patrick hoped he’d have.

The death the Brownings had planned for all of them—first by arson and then by the crashing of her plane. She thought of the ripped chutes from earlier in the season, the ones Kate had found and fixed. She would bet that Patrick had had a hand in damaging them during the off-season.

Gilly gritted her jaw against a rise of fury and scuttled out into the yard, dragging the pack behind her, not sure what to do, but sure of one thing.

Reuben was not going to die.

Halfway to the forest’s edge, she spotted the woodpile. A beaver dam of split firewood, a chopping block, and embedded in it, an ax.

She ran toward it, keeping low, aware of the glow illuminating the night, the flames curling up around the roof.

Dropping the pack, she put her hands on the ax and pulled.

It refused to move, like Excalibur in the rock. She glanced again at the house, then stood up straight and wiggled the ax, fighting for leverage. The ax barely budged.

She could use some of Reuben’s epic strength.

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