feet had never looked so impossibly distant.
The girl was shaking, limp in his grasp. He squeezed her hard to get her attention, nodded desperately toward the crevasse.
“Can you make it?” he shouted.
She followed his gaze, shook her head weakly.
“Damn it, don’t you give up on me now, lady!”
His anger seemed to ignite whatever embers of grit she had left. She lifted her head. “Yes,” she choked out in a watery sputter.
It seemed the only word she was capable of. He took it as an assent. And didn’t bother counting to three this time.
In a headlong dive, he let go of the root and threw himself toward the crevasse. They struggled across the ten feet of water together, swimming, kicking, reaching for it in one long ungraceful splash. It felt like he would never get there.
But then he touched it with his right hand, grabbing the edge of the stone with some last reserve of stamina, pulling himself up. She grasped the opposite edge and hung there, breathless.
It took some maneuvering, but he made it out of the water, levering his body into the tight opening, helping her scramble up behind him. The fissure opened to a gap several feet wide.
Then it broadened into a cave.
They collapsed on the cool stone floor, gasping for breath, choking on all the water they had swallowed, spitting up mouthfuls of river. The cave was small, dark, clammy, and contained nothing but wet stone.
And it felt like heaven.
The closest to heaven he had ever been in his life and the closest he ever expected to get.
He lay flattened, on his stomach, his cheek resting against the cold granite, jaw slack, every muscle in his body shivering, weak, twitching spasmodically. He felt as waterlogged as a soaked sponge, wanted nothing so much as to have someone bunch him up and wring him out.
But breathing felt almost as good as that. Bloody hell, he had never appreciated breathing before. In, out, in, out, a smooth flow of air punctuated only by his frequent tortured coughs.
Over the roar of the rushing water, he could hear the faint barking of the dogs. Bloody damn accursed dogs. Yelping at the top of the falls. Probably a good thirty feet above, he guessed. Standing right over their heads.
Howling in outrage because their prey had abruptly disappeared.
A satisfied grin lifted one corner of Nicholas’s mouth. He opened his eyes. The only light came from the crevasse they had squeezed through, but he could see the girl sprawled on her back nearby. She lay utterly still, only her chest rising and falling as she breathed.
Pushing himself up to a seated position, he ignored the blaze of pain down his back and slid the soaked fishing creel from his shoulder. Most of the supplies in it were probably ruined. And his pistol was gone. Lost somewhere at the bottom of the river. He cursed. They were left with only one weapon. He found the knife still shoved deep in his boot. He took it out and dropped it beside the creel.
Then he studied the shackles, briefly hoping, just for a second...
Still intact. Of course. No force of man or nature seemed capable of breaking the blasted things.
He sank back down to the cool stone floor and lay there, too weak to do anything more at the moment.
The girl began sobbing.
Nicholas lifted his head. “What are you crying about?” he croaked in disbelief. “We’re alive.”
She didn’t respond, only crying harder, covering her face with both hands.
“A while ago you were willing to drown,” he reminded her lightly.
That didn’t seem to help at all. She only sobbed more desperately, her whole body shaking with the force of her tears.
He frowned at her, utterly perplexed. Somehow he always managed to say exactly the wrong thing in situations like this. “What the devil is wrong with you, woman?”
“I’m frightened!” she shouted, shooting the words at him like bullets. “Haven’t you ever been frightened?”
That struck him dumb. The way she said it, as if the words had been torn out, as if it were a deep admission she hadn’t wanted to make, brought that odd sensation back to his chest—the one he had experienced yesterday when she talked about being so hungry that she would steal. It was such an unfamiliar feeling, he couldn’t even name it.
All he knew was that he had felt the same way as her. Many times in his life.
Aye, he had been frightened.
“We’re safe now,” he said gruffly.
“No, we’re not.” She sat up, the