Page 6 of Manhunt in the Narrows
They moved a few more yards upstream with nothing but the white noise of the river filling the silence, and damn it, the seam in his jeans cut through the first few layers of skin as easily as a blade at this point. He’d survived far more violent injuries since signing on with the Bureau, but this was a slow death. Heat charged into his face as he realized Sayles had stopped ahead, that intense green gaze on him.
Her eyes pinched at the corners. Assessing him from head to toe. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Who says anything is wrong?” He hopped to the next rock and landed without tripping over his own two feet. Hell, maybe he was getting the hang of this trail after all.
“Your face. You keep wincing.” She worked her way downstream, closing the distance between them.
“It’s nothing.” He was a federal agent, for crying out loud. A wet jean seam shouldn’t make him feel as though his thigh had caught fire.
Sayles tipped her head back. Clouds rolled above the sliver of canyon overhead. Thick and darker than they should be. She’d mentioned a storm caught on radar before they’d left. Looked like they hadn’t managed to outrun it. “We need to pick up the pace. The storm is almost here, and we need to be on higher ground by the time it hits.”
Was that him groaning or the river? Elias wasn’t sure.
She didn’t wait for him to answer, heading back upstream.
Suck it up, Broyles.Wet jeans would not be the reason he met his maker. Every muscle in his legs protested against deepening waters. He wasn’t sure he could feel his toes anymore, even with the waterproof boots. The water’s temperature rated belowfreezing, all that snowpack melting off the mountains to the north and into the Virgin River.
A rumble of thunder seemed to shake the canyon around them.
Sayles pulled up short, attention to the sky. Her gaze then locked on him. If he hadn’t studied human behavior his entire career, he might’ve missed the note of panic in her face. She scanned the waters around them, going from clear to muddy in a matter of seconds. What the hell? “Run!”
He didn’t need to be told twice. The pain along the inside of his thigh shifted to the back of his mind. Elias forced his body to comply, tucking his thumbs around his pack straps to avoid the bounce. The water fought his every step, working to drag him downstream. He replicated Sayles’s footsteps, the areas she steered clear of and her change in direction. Straight ahead to diagonal. To the right.
“Move!” Her warning was drowned out by an angry roar ahead.
His muscles burned harder as the waters seemed to rise several inches in a matter of seconds. Flash flood. The storm must’ve dumped rain higher up the trail, and now they were going to pay for it.
Panic ticked up his heart rate. At least they’d find his body in a few hours. That was what she’d said, right? It wasn’t until Sayles cut down a smaller canyon to the right that hope dared show its ugly face.
She scrambled out of the river’s grip and almost straight up a streaked, slippery rock face. Elias couldn’t keep up, and she reached back for him as if expecting him to suddenly become a mountaineer. “Come on!”
The roar was growing louder. Closer.
The river water churned around his legs and rose impossibly higher.
Elias latched on to her hand, surprised by the strength behind the tug. He dug his toes into the slick rock and grabbed for the nearest shrub to get hold. His feet left the river a split second before the waters consumed the very rocks he’d been balanced on. But it wasn’t enough. The Virgin River was going to eat them alive.
“Climb!” Sayles shouted over the thundering scream of the flood. Pointing to the next hold, she directed him to an outcropping of rocks overhead. His foot slipped. Her hand slapped across the back of his thigh as she took position behind him. Putting herself between him and the river. The waterproof boots weren’t meant to be utilized as hiking gear. One wrong move and he’d take her down with him. He had to keep moving.
They’d reached the outcropping, and the ground evened out enough to provide a ledge overlooking the flood. Elias landed on his back, out of breath, staring up at the darkening sky.
The first drops of rain pattered against his face as Sayles centered herself in his vision. “And that’s why we don’t wear jeans hiking.”
Chapter Five
They’d barely managed to escape.
And now she was stuck on a collection of boulders no more than five feet in diameter, marooned over the gushing waters of the Virgin River with a man she didn’t know. They’d been lucky. If she and Elias had been even ten feet behind, they wouldn’t have survived the crush of the flood.
Agent Broyles, she told herself. Using his first name humanized him.
Rain pelted her ranger’s hat and fell in heavy drips from the brim. Her button-up uniform shirt had soaked through, leaking into her hydro bib, and she couldn’t stop the chill skating across her shoulders. The sky unloaded its fury straight overhead, but this outcropping had been the only option to stay alive.
Mystery Falls sat off to their right, heavier than usual with the rain. The 110-foot angled rock face wasn’t a waterfall in a straightforward sense but smoothed red rock forged over years of drainage. Like the stones peppering the bottom of the river. Thick green trees jutted out from the rock walls in random patterns, but none of them would provide any protection.
Sayles swept her hair out of her face, coming away with a handful of rainwater as she took a seat. Closer than she wanted to be to Agent Broyles, but there was nowhere else to go, and they were in for the long haul as of right now. “Are you injured?”
“No.” He shook his head, droplets flinging every which way, and threaded his hands into his hair. The action took some of the intimidation right out of him. Though he hadn’t given her reason to doubt his agenda on this little assignment of theirs, she’d been fooled by a pretty face before.
