Thomas had left behind no tell-tale footprints or even the hint of the direction he’d taken via a pattern of overturned leaves. Assuming he’d taken the trail and not simply gone into the forest.
Although, he’d mentioned that the extraction point—the hollowed out tree she’d imagined or whatever it was that he’d gone out twice a day to check—was to the north of the pod.
Moss grew on the north side of trees, didn’t it? Except as she climbed up to examine the trees above the now-camouflaged bulkhead, the smattering of moss she found was growing on all sides of the trunks, so that didn’t help at all.
Crack.
The sound of a twig being broken made her head snap up, even as she turned and wrestled the rifle into a firing position.
Two men. Ear Flaps and someone she’d never seen before. Looking pissed and heading up the trail, toward the ski lodge.
They spotted her several fractions of a second after she saw them, while she was still swinging the rifle barrel in their direction.
They were armed, but their weapons were casually slung over their shoulders, so while they were rushing to reach for them, she had a heartbeat of a lead, which she took by bracing herself for the recoil and pulling hard on the trigger as she fired vaguely in their direction, hoping to scare them off.
The rifle’s roar startled her—she’d only ever fired a weapon like this with heavy-duty ear protection—as both of the men hit the dirt, buying her even more time to scramble down toward the entrance to the pod.
She swept aside the brush, and yanked open the hatch as she heard the answering roar of at least one gun being fired back at her. She dove through the little door headfirst, scrambling to pull it shut behind her with a solid sounding clank, then swiftly keyed in the numbers that would engage the lock.
She could hear the sound of repeated gunfire, and bullets pinging off the solid metal of the hatch, and she got ready to scramble down the stairs, in case they were somehow able to blast the door open.
But the door didn’t budge and the bullets soon stopped.
She’d hurt herself in that dive—she was bleeding. She’d torn her pants, her knees were a mess, and they really, really hurt.
But as her eyes started to well with tears, it wasn’t from the physical pain, but rather the realization of how completely foolish she’d been.
She’d not only failed to rescue Thomas, but she’d taken his sacrifice, made to keep her and the pod hidden, and she’d thrown it away.
Tasha put her head in her hands and cried.
Thomas heard gunfire.
First one shot—it sounded like a hunting rifle, similar to the model he’d appropriated from the dead man at the ski lodge—and then a second, from a different weapon. A third and a fourth, a fifth and a sixth... All from that same second weapon, before the mountainside descended once again into an echoing silence.
It was close to impossible to pinpoint where the gunfire had been coming from, but the hair had gone up on the back of his neck, and every cell in his body was screaming for him to run.
Run.
As fast and as hard as he could, back to the pod.
To make sure Tasha was okay.
Thomas had yet to reveal himself again to the quartet of men who’d been following him. He’d yet to lead them to the cave, where they could “find” where he and Tash had been sheltering.
He knew he should follow through, but he couldn’t do it, his sense of foreboding doom was so intense.
So instead he chose Tasha, and ran like hell toward the pod.
Chapter Twenty-One
There was blood on the trail about twenty meters from the bomb shelter bulkhead and Thomas felt himself shift even further into firefight mode.
It was a heightened state. Cool and calm. Colors were brighter and the world was sharply focused.
No bullets were flying here, but they had been—this was where the shots he’d heard had been fired—still, his training pushed his fear for Tasha far to the side as he stayed concealed and assessed the scene.
Blood—lots of it—and drag marks. Casings—he could see at least three—glinted in the still-early morning light, there on the trail.
That likely meant whoever had been shot had also been shooting, and that after they’d been killed or injured they’d been taken away.
More bad news: The bulkhead was exposed—his careful cover of branches and debris knocked away from the concrete. The metal hatch was dented