Lena Diaz - Smoky Mountains Ranger

The clomp-clomp of boots pounding up the path sounded behind them. She looked over her shoulder. The first gunman didn’t have his hands cuffed anymore. The short delay of removing them had given her and McKenzie a head start. But their lead was dwindling.

“Come on.” McKenzie pulled her around rocks, over branches, at an impossibly fast pace.

“I’m trying,” she gasped, struggling to match his long strides. She already knew she couldn’t outrun the man behind them going uphill. She’d tried once and failed. Keeping up with the tall, long-legged McKenzie was impossible.

“Stop or we’ll shoot!” the man named Owen yelled at them.

She started to look over her shoulder again. But McKenzie tugged her forward.

“Don’t look back. It’ll only slow you down.” He yanked her around another curve in the trail.

A shot rang out. Jody instinctively ducked. But McKenzie was already pulling her under some thick branches from another downed tree. He came out the other side, hopped over more branches, then lifted her over.

A bullet whined past them. She let out a startled gasp and pressed a hand to her galloping heart. Good grief, that was close. McKenzie didn’t react at all. Was the man used to getting shot at? He pulled her behind a huge boulder that was clustered with several others and pushed her down. He scanned the area around them, up the trail, out toward the open vista of mountains that alternated between blackened bald spots and new spring greenery poking up through the ashes.

The twin peaks of the Chimney Tops, two of the higher mountains in the park, stood out in stark relief from the destruction around them. She’d never even been in the park before, other than sitting in a car looking out the window as her adoptive father wheeled and dealed for yet another parcel of land. The only reason she recognized that particular landmark was because a new client had shown her pictures of them a few weeks ago and was considering hiring her to take new ones for a tourist brochure. What she didn’t understand was why McKenzie was looking at the Chimney Tops. It wasn’t like they had a helicopter and could magically fly to them and escape.

His gaze flicked back to her. “I need to know whether I can trust you.”

The cuts on his face had guilt flooding through her. “I could have run when you told me to. But I didn’t leave you behind. Isn’t that proof enough?”

He seemed to consider that, then shrugged. “For now, you’re going to have to trust me .”

She gave a nervous laugh. “Well, I certainly don’t trust the guys shooting at us. Where are they?” She tried to peek around the largest boulder. He stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

“Don’t. They’ve hunkered down behind the last tree we jumped over, about forty feet back. I imagine they’re waiting to see if I’m going to pull a weapon from my backpack, since they made me toss my pistol into the ravine and took Tattoo Guy’s pistol away from me.”

Hope unfurled in her chest. “Do you? Have a backup gun?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got a hunting knife. But you know the saying about bringing a knife to a gunfight.”

“I’m really good with a knife. I could throw it at them. All I’d need is some kind of diversion to get one of them to stand up and give me a clear target.”

As soon as she said it, she realized she’d made a mistake. He was looking at her with open suspicion again.

“In college,” she rushed to explain, “I hired a guy who ran a gun range to teach me to defend myself. He taught me to shoot. But he also taught me how to throw a knife.”

“Ever thrown a knife at a real, live person?”

“No, of course not, but—”

Bam! Bam!

They both ducked at the shockingly loud sound of pistol fire.

She drew a shaky breath. “Well?” She held out her hand for the knife.

“I’m not giving up my only weapon just yet.”

She dropped her hand. “You have a better suggestion?”

He looked toward the Chimney Tops again. “I’m considering a few possibilities.”

“Is one of them to crouch down and use these boulders to block them from seeing us retreat up the path, back the way you came? We might be able to get pretty far up the trail before they realize we’re gone.”

“That’s a good suggestion, except for one problem.” He shrugged out of his backpack and unzipped the top. “The trail straightens out after that next curve, with no cover of any kind for about three hundred yards. It’s also unstable. There’s a lot of debris but nothing sizable enough to hide us from view. The odds of us making it that far before those guys work up the courage to storm our little hideout are too low to make it worth the risk.” He pulled out a length of white nylon rope and the knife he’d mentioned earlier.

She was about to argue with him, but the rope made her pause. “What’s the rope for?”

“So we don’t die.”

It took several seconds for her to realize he wasn’t going to expand on his cryptic answer. Instead, he shoved the knife into a leather holder and tucked it into his backpack. After slipping the pack onto his shoulders, he connected some extra straps on the pack that he hadn’t bothered to fasten earlier. One went over his chest. Two more attached the pack to his belt loops with metal clips. She thought they might be called carabiners, like she’d used when Tracy had badgered her into going on a zip-lining trip in Pigeon Forge to celebrate Jody’s new, second job at Campbell Investigations.

“What are you doing?” she tried again.

He picked up the length of rope that he’d cut. His fingers fairly flew as he tied knots and created loops.

She watched him with growing frustration. The gunmen could be creeping up on them this very minute. So why was he tying knots? She hated being kept in the dark. Her life was on the line just as much as his.

And Tracy’s.

He pulled on one of the loops as if testing it, then let out a few more inches, making it larger.

“Are you going to tie them up or try to lasso them or what?” she snapped, unable to hide her frustration any longer.

For the first time since he’d appeared on the trail with a goofy, dumb-as-a-rock grin, he gave her a genuine smile. It lit up his eyes and made him look years younger than the thirty-one or -two that she’d assumed him to be. Maybe he was only in his late twenties?

“Lasso them? Can’t say that’s ever been part of my law enforcement training. Might be a good skill to learn, though.”

He continued to work the rope through the metal clips. “Hypothetical. We figure out a way to get Owen or Tattoo Guy to stand up and give us a clear target. You do a Wonder Woman move and take him out. That leaves the second thug with two pistols, and potentially other weapons we don’t even know about. We’re left without even a knife to defend ourselves. What would we do then?”

“Maybe I do another Wonder Woman move and lasso the second guy.”

His lips twitched as if he was trying not to laugh. He looped the rope through one of the backpack’s metal clips.

She curled her fingers against her thighs. It was either that or shake him. She closed her eyes for a moment and drew deep, calming breaths. Their lives were on the line and this man was pushing all her buttons. What she needed to do was calm down and think. There had to be something they could do instead of just waiting here playing with a rope. She opened her eyes again, then frowned. “What are you doing?”

He swept the ground between them clear of debris, scattering several broken pieces of branches and twigs, then motioned for her to move toward him. Exasperated, but curious enough to see if he actually had some kind of plan, she scooted toward him on her knees. He closed the distance and slid the rope through one of the belt loops on her shorts.