“It’s relatively open?”
“Yes.”
“What about the other side?” he asked, looking to his left where he saw a wooded area with water sparkling in the moonlight. “Is that a lake?”
“A reservoir, with a naturalized park along the shore. It’s full of huge azaleas planted all through the woods. Right now, they’re blooming. In the daylight, it’s like a fairyland with big splashes of color.”
He stared into the woods. Some of the flowers must be white because they stood out in the moonlight.
“There are trails with blooming bushes towering over your head on either side. I tell people that if they live around here and don’t visit in the spring, they’re crazy.” She laughed. “And here we are. Perfect timing! Too bad we can’t see much in the dark.”
“Yeah.”
In his life, he hadn’t given himself much time to stop and smell the flowers. He didn’t even know if azalea flowers had much smell.
Climbing out of the car, he was glad to stretch his cramped muscles. He’d been doing too much walking on the damn leg. He was just leaning down to massage it when a noise made him stop short.
Sophia came around to his side, her look questioning. “What?”
He swore, listening for another moment to be sure. Unfortunately, the noise was all too familiar. “Another helicopter—coming this way.”
“You think?”
He took a quick look at their surroundings—wondering if the moonlight was a help or not. It gave him some additional night vision. But that was also true of the enemy.
The open area below the dam was deep in shadow now. But a searchlight would illuminate anyone down there like roaches running for cover when you turned on the kitchen light in the middle of the night.
He swung the other way, seeing the trees and flower-covered bushes along the lake.
That was their better bet.
“Into the woods. Hurry.”