the best I could, “sure.”
“Dammit, you and Trigger have that same Spidey sense when shit is about to get real.” He moved up to my level, and once he got his footing right, he used his shoulder to push his sunglasses up on his forehead to eye me better. “Okay, do your one with nature thing and tell me if we’re about to get—”
Zip! Zip! Zip!
Suddenly, bullets sprayed down all around us, echoing off the adjacent mountain. Rock dust created a momentary protective screen, just long enough for Mike and me to know what we needed to do. He used all his strength to push off from the rock and leaned into the fall.
I’d dropped from worse heights, but staring down at a gun barrel within a sniper’s range was slightly different.
My fingertips scraped the ledge as I let go. I used my feet and pushed myself farther out. Somehow, my mind went back to my music, and that wonderful sad loop of instruments seemed incredibly fitting as I watched the flashes of orange light above me like a spectacular lightning show.
As I dropped lower, I turned my head to the rock to watch for the scrape mark we’d made so if the unthinkable did happen, we knew when to…
I twisted, reached for the knot that held my rocks, and let them tumble ahead of me. Using all my muscles, I prepared for the impact. My heels took the brunt of the hit, and I kept my arms tucked in tightly, but my elbows still got a blow. Bones could be healed, but the phone was our only reliable resource, for us and our team.
Water rushed in my nose and tried to haul me down to the bottom. Every single instinct I had told me to hold my breath and swim forward.
I kicked hard and beat my arms through the adrenaline that coursed through me. As much as I wanted to surface to find Mike, I was just happy all my limbs were still intact, and my lungs still held life-giving air.
When I started to see black spots, I pushed to the surface, and the moment my head broke through, I did a quick sweep of the shoreline.
A familiar quiet bird sound caught my attention, and I squinted to see Mike embedded in some shrubs at the bottom of the cliff. I gave him my own quiet tweet back before I ducked under and swam over.
“You good?” I asked softly as I tugged the satellite phone out and breathed a sigh of relief to find it intact.
“Yeah. You?”
“Better now.” I belly crawled up into the shrubs next to him to catch my breath. “Well, that was a waste of a climb.”
“Never a waste.” We chuckled like the adrenaline junkies we were. “The others made it to the rendezvous point and, since he’s scratched the idea of us ever getting up to the lookout point, Cole wants us to join them.”
“Glad to know the radios are working.”
Mike grunted in agreement as we started yet another long journey to meet up with the rest of our unit. I didn’t like being on low ground. I was wired to be up on a ledge somewhere looking down. It unsettled me not being able to see what was around me.
“How’s the family settling in to the mountain?” I whispered to Mike, needing the distraction as we hit our rhythm in a slow, careful jog. We both dodged a makeshift trap the cartel had set in hopes someone would fall through into the barbed wire below, and we both kept our eyes on where we were putting each step as we went.
“Couldn’t be happier.” He let out a long sigh. “I loved being home, but man, I didn’t miss the humidity.”
“How’s Keith with leaving Nan?”
“Leaving?” He tossed a smirk back at me. “When she heard Keith was moving and the baby wasn’t going to be born there, she got hold of Frank and arranged to have her stuff moved to a place just down from Dan and Sue’s. Said something to him like, ‘What’s a little old lady going to do? Give up the location of her grandson and family?’”
“What?” This was the first time I’d heard about that.
“Oh, yeah, I believe the next thing she said was, ‘Besides, ski asses are the best to gawk at.’”
I had to fight the laugh that wanted to escape my throat.
“She’s pure comedy. What did Keith have to say about that?”
Mike slowed slightly to avoid another hole, and