Page 53 of Out of Sight

He must have felt my gaze because he looked down at me, squeezing my hand.

“You’re okay, Claire. I’m not going to let anything happen to you. I promise.”

His eyes were so fierce, his grip so firm, like he truly cared about me. Nobody was that good an actor.

I had to believe him.

nineteen

Will

“Just fucking shoot him!” I shouted to Jim. He was holding the gun in his hand as he pumped his arms, but that didn’t do any good if he didn’t point the damn thing.

“No cover,” Jim panted. “If I turn to aim he could shoot me and you two are shit-out-of-luck. We need to get some distance and find cover first!”

So we ran. Jim and Claire were lagging and I wasn’t as fast as I normally would have been either with my injured leg, but we had to get away from Antonio. His taunts kept coming every minute or so and they sounded closer each time.

I was so grateful that I managed to convince Claire to go running with me this past week. If nothing else, I taught her that motivation was half the battle: she couldn’t quit running no matter how tired she was if she wanted to catch up to me to smack the shit out of me. Now we couldn’t stop no matter how much pain we were in if we wanted to survive to see tomorrow.

But Claire looked like she was dying already. I paused just long enough to pick her up, swinging her over my uninjured shoulder before picking up my pace again. Jim was still going, but his pace was half of what it was when we started five minutes ago.

If we weren’t running for our lives it would be the time to make another joke about how many icing-covered cinnamon rolls he could fit in his stomach and if the sugar-overdose would slow him down more or energize him.

“You can’t keep going forever!” Anthony shouted, his voice sounding closer than ever. If we weren’t surrounded by forest he’d be able to target us easily.

“He’s right,” I breathed out to Jim as I caught up. “We need to come up with another plan.”

Jim grunted, making a sharp turn to the left. I followed—right down the side of a steep hill. Claire screamed as the ground dropped out from under us and I’m sure I made some sort of sound, too. I shifted her across my body as we slid down the embankment, covering her head against my chest.

We slid maybe seventy feet almost straight down, but I didn't feel any new injuries.

“Claire?” I whispered, helping her to her feet. “Are you hurt? That was a big drop-off.”

“I’m fine. Jim?”

“Here,” he said, a few feet to the right, staring up the embankment we slid down. No sign of Antonio, so he must not have seen us fall. Jim hurried us into the thick of the woods again, but let us stop once we were past the tree line.

“Take a rest, kids,” he said, holstering his gun and sliding down a tree to sit on the ground.

Claire sat on a rock and I bent over, hands on knees, trying to catch my breath. I could feel the burn in my legs and torso from running, in my back and arms from carrying Claire. My burned leg ached and my injured shoulder throbbed. I was in good shape, but even I couldn’t keep this up forever with the hell I was putting my body through.

“I hear water,” Claire said, sitting up straight. “Maybe there’s a stream nearby?” She made to stand up, but I held up a hand to hold her off.

“Stay here with Jim. I’ll check it out.”

She looked to Jim for confirmation. At his nod I took off toward where Claire pointed. Now that I was listening for it I could hear the water, too. Good. A splash of cold water to the face would wake me up and a drink sounded like heaven to my parched throat. Maybe I’d just jump in, clothes and all, to wake myself up properly.

I cleared the last few trees and found the water source: it was so huge it had to be the Columbia River, not a small stream like Claire guessed. The rush of water was loud as hell outside the cover of trees and the current was moving fast. It looked like waking myself up with a polar bear dive was out of the question.

I crossed the embankment and crouched down, dipping my hands into the water.

“Shit!”

It was freezing. I took a couple seconds to work up the nerve and dipped my hands back in, cupping up a drink. Itwas so cold it burned my throat on the way down, but it definitely jolted me. Claire and Jim would get a second wind, too.

I headed back to our resting spot. The river was close enough to shout back to them and be heard, but I couldn’t risk Antonio hearing my call and finding us.

There. I could see them standing together just a few yards up.

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