Page 19 of Burning Hearts

If she didn’t pick up some speed, they might all get shot.

Logan headed between two trees ahead of them, Tristan behind Jamie. She stumbled on an uneven patch of ground and went down. She managed to hold on to the laptop and planted her other hand in pine needles. Logan wound an arm around her, but she got her feet under her, and he didn’t need to carry her. She wasn’t going to slow them down.

“I’m okay,” Jamie said.

But Logan wasn’t looking at her.

A gunshot cracked behind them. He dived at her, and her back hit the ground as Logan landed on top of her, shielding her with his body, smelling like sweat and…man. Maybe the scent was just inherently Logan, because she’d never been attracted to a guy’s smell before.

Tristan crouched by a tree. “I’ll hold them off.”

Her brother turned and fired at the gunmen. Risking his own life to protect theirs.

Logan hauled her up for a second time. “Come on.” Before she could argue, Logan added, “Tristan, you’d better be behind us.”

Her brother only said, “Go!”

Jamie grabbed the laptop, and Logan pulled her deeper into the forest. She ran until her legs screamed and her chest hurt. When she glanced back to see if Tristan or either of the gunmen were on their tails, she spotted a dark, wet stain on the side of Logan’s shirt.

Jamie gasped. “You’ve been shot!”

FIVE

“It doesn’t matter.”Logan turned away from her so she couldn’t see his wound. Given how it felt, he doubted it was worse than a graze. Then again, she wasn’t exactly wrong that he had been shot. “We need to get out of here.”

She stared at him, all wide eyes and mussed hair. Both arms around that laptop. Was she in shock?

Logan touched her elbow and eased her away from the compound behind them. “Come on. We need to keep moving.”

They’d run a ways from where he’d dived on her. Hopefully Tristan was holding off the gunmen who had been chasing them. Unless they needed him alive for some reason, he was putting himself at risk. To save them.

Probably more like to save his sister. Logan wasn’t sure Tristan cared about him all that much.

But either way, his actions had enabled them to make a run for it to safety.

“Is he going to be okay?”

Logan prayed her brother would be, but that was all he could do. Right now, his priority was getting Jamie to safety. “He knows how to survive if he got this far. And he wanted to take the information you have from the compound. That means you and I don’t get captured and taken back there or it was all for nothing. So, in order to do what Tristan wanted, we have to keep going. We have to get the files away from here.”

But what did Tristan intend to do with them?

For all Logan knew, he was planning to sell information to Brian Howards’ enemies for cash so he could fund whatever he planned to do next.

Hopefully, Jamie would see the logic in handing whatever it was over to the police instead of back to her brother the next time she saw him.

She glanced over her shoulder, but they kept going. Rather than take the same deer trail he had taken to get to the compound, Logan skirted the edge of the trees and chose a roundabout route back to the car. It took longer, and his side stung. He could feel that the blood had soaked his shirt more than before.

Logan didn’t want to stop. He wanted to keep going, get in the car and drive out of here. But pretty soon, blood loss would make his head start to swim.

Then he would be the one in shock. And he didn’t need both of them in more trouble than they already were.

He did a mental inventory of everything he had on his person, which apparently no longer included the radio. Must’ve dropped it.

Jamie glanced back over her shoulder.

Logan dug into the thigh pocket of his cargoes and pulled out a flat, square packet.

“There’s a lot more blood on your shirt than before.” She came toward him and took the packet. “What is this?”

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