Page 35 of One Last Stand
She threw herself onto the ground, her face in the snow, her hands over her head. Debris rained down into the yard. The fire roared, thundering, heat and light a fireball into the sky.
She pushed herself to her knees, staring at the furnace. It lit up the entire forest, the flames engulfing the house.
The windows of the SUV had shattered, the roof pummeled by fireballs of debris, which now burned in the yard.
Shep. No—oh no . . . no, no . . . no?—
Shep!
Her knees buckled, and she hit the ground, her hand on a tree.
No.
Then, in the light of the fire, she spotted a figure—just an outline—but it fled into the forest.
And right then, Ziggy’s words hardened in her heart.
Tomas had to die.
* * *
His plan had worked better than he’d expected.
Shep paused only a moment at the edge of the clearing to watch as the cabin burned, the flames so hot he ducked down, his hand over his face.
Hopefully Tomas wasn’t in the area, standing too close. The last thing he wanted was to kill someone. But now maybe Tomas might think he’d expired in the fire, and this lie he’d told himself about London being alive might die with it.
It didn’t matter—Shep knew the truth, and he wasn’t waiting around for Tomas to return empty-handed and maybe unravel in a very lethal, anger-induced temper tantrum.
So yeah, he’d used the fork to free himself from the cuffs, then turned on the gas, leaving the stove unlit, but the pilot light that wouldn’t turn off would be sufficient to add oomph to the explosion. Then he’d jimmied open the window, climbed out, flashed the lighter and dropped it inside, closed the window again to keep the fumes inside, and run. The scant amount of air from the window delayed the flash—just a few seconds, but long enough for him to dive into the brush. Roll, protect his head, then get up and run.
Now he whirled around and, using the light from the blaze, took off through the forest. Away was the only direction in his head. Maybe later, after he’d trekked far enough, hunkered down, and survived the night, he’d sort out his bearings and find his way back to civilization. But without moonlight, he could be heading straight over the edge of a cliff.
And wouldn’t that be fun?
Still, anywhere—even a broken leg at the bottom of a cliff, butfree—seemed a thousand times better than shackled to the sofa waiting to die.
He held his hands up to protect his face as the forest grew darker, the light from the blaze dimming. Still, the flames reached above the tree line and dented the night enough for him to keep from running into trees or earning a slap in the face from an errant limb.
He kept trekking, listening. The fire thundered behind him, but ahead, a whoosh, something louder—maybe a river. Which meant even in the darkness, the world might open up enough for him to see. And all rivers headed to the sea, so that seemed the right direction.
He followed the rush of the river, slowing as the darkness consumed him, plowing through the bushy arms of mountain hemlock and black spruce, his feet wet in the soggy loam of the forest floor.
Branches breaking. He stiffened as the thumps of footfalls broke through the clutter of the forest, the wash of the river, and?—
Shoot. Tomas was a hound dog with a bone.
Shep took off, pushing harder through the trees, toward a glimmer of light in the darkness. It helped that the clouds had jockeyed open, a wan amount of moonlight sneaking through.
He caught himself seconds before he careened right over the edge of the riverbank, jerking back just in time.
Not a far drop, from what he could tell, but?—
Footsteps, faster now, and he turned.
His pursuer tackled him flat-out in a flying run.
It blew them both out above the river, and for a second they hung there in space, the frothy tangle of whitewater below.