The sound of a gun exploding pierced her ears and she instinctively threw herself to the ground.
Quickly realizing the bullet had missed her, she scrambled to get back up, but before she could get back on her feet, his hands were yanking her hair and he was pulling her across the dirt.
“You tricky little bitch. You’re just like your sister. Don’t you dare f**k with me again or I’ll make sure not to miss next time. Your fans might not think you’re so pretty with half your face blown off.”
He shoved her forward with his boot and she realized she was looking at a black tire.
“Get on the bike,” he said, pointing to a dirt bike parked in the bushes just off the dirt road.
Finally accepting that the most important thing was to get to April in one piece—and praying the two of them would be able to come up with an escape plan once they were together again—Dianna straddled the leather seat while he shackled her arms and legs to the bike with sharp, thin chains that cut into her skin.
Although she tried to mentally prepare herself for his touch, she couldn’t stop from shivering with revulsion when he got on the bike behind her and said, “You took my brother from me. I can’t wait for you to watch me take your sister from you.”
———
His body throbbed in a dozen different places, but Sam barely noticed. All he’d been able to think during his long fall was that he’d left Dianna completely at a stranger’s mercy.
Up on the mountain trail with no supplies, with nothing to protect herself with, who knew what the crazy bastard would do to her, if he’d pull a gun and rape her?
Thoughts of losing Dianna threatened to overwhelm him completely, even though any hotshot worth his turnouts knew how to keep going, even when a wildfire turned into a clusterfuck.
On the day Connor had been burned, he’d managed to get right back out on the mountain to fight the wildfire, he knew he had it in him to ignore the sharp pains shooting through him head to toe. He needed to get back on that trail and save Dianna, goddammit.
Slowly activating one painful muscle group at a time, Sam pulled himself upright, letting lose a stream of guttural curses into the otherwise silent forest. It was almost as if the birds and animals knew something bad was going down and had decided to stay hidden until the danger passed.
Incredibly, he hadn’t passed out. Fifty feet, at least, of crashing into boulders and tree stumps and thorny bushes and he’d felt every goddamn thing. If it weren’t for the mock-orange bush that had stopped his fall, he’d be as good as dead. He was going to plant a f**king grove of it when he got back to Lake Tahoe.
His pack was still strapped to his back—he figured it had probably kept his back from breaking—but the fabric was almost completely shredded. By the slight weight of it as he shifted, he guessed it was pretty much empty. He’d have to make do without his first-aid kit and the extra food, water, and supplies.
All Sam had left to work with was a pocketknife and a handful of flares that remained in his cargo pants’ pockets.
Grabbing a thick tree trunk, he pulled himself upright, fitting the toes of his boots into crevasses between the rocks.
It was slow going up the mountain. His joints screamed in agony. The lacerations on his head and face stung as sweat dripped into them. With each painful bit of progress, he called on his years of extreme wildfire training, pulled from every deadly situation he’d ever made it out of alive.
Sam had risked his life a hundred times over for strangers. This time he was giving everything for the woman he loved.Finally, his fingers hooked over the edge of the trail. So far, he’d been able to use the muscles in both his upper and lower body together, one compensating for the other when needed, but now he had to rely on his upper body alone to hoist himself up onto the ledge.
Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath and put himself deep in the zone, a place where pain was irrelevant, where all that mattered was that his body obeyed his brain.
Three, two, one—up!
Sam’s biceps and triceps shook and his left shoulder hurt like a mother, but he got himself up on the ledge, belly down, and lay there until he caught his breath, then crawled on his hands and knees to solid ground, leaving a trail of blood and sweat behind him.
Pulling himself to his feet, he leaned heavily against the cool rock on the inside of the trail.
He was worse off than he wanted to admit.
One step at a time, one foot in front of the other, was how he was going to have to do this. At least their footprints were clearly marked in the mud. Thank God at least one thing was on his side.
The first quarter mile was the hardest. Sam felt like a newborn foal just learning to walk—stumbling, tripping, then picking himself up and trying again.
It was impossible to ignore the shooting pains through his right knee and the left side of his hip, so he gave in to them instead, letting the pain fuel his rage, along with his determination to find Dianna.
Finally, Sam picked up speed, managing to find his rhythm on the trail, even though he was moving a hell of a lot slower than he usually did. It helped that he didn’t have a hundred-and-fifty pound pack. Without any sort of vehicle, he wouldn’t overtake them, but he held tight to the hope that he wasn’t too far behind.
Until he got to the dirt road and saw the tire tracks.
Fuck! The bastard must have stashed a dirt bike on the trail.
Sam could easily follow the tracks. But on foot, he didn’t stand a chance of getting to Dianna nearly fast enough.
He needed help, but heading back to the Farm for reinforcements and to call in the Rocky Mountain hotshot crew and police force was out of the question. Odds were Dianna would be dead by the time he hiked back the way they’d come.
Knowing he’d have to make do alone, Sam ran through the meager tools he had on him. The knife might come in handy later, but what about the flares? He still had four left.
Best-case scenario, the flares would simply send off a smoke signal to any passing aircraft. Worst case, they would ignite a forest fire.
As a hotshot, it went against everything in Sam to light a wildfire on purpose. Arson had always been his biggest enemy, but he couldn’t waste any time feeling conflicted over the choice he was making.
He’d face a hundred arson charges if it meant saving Dianna.
Pulling the cap off of one of the flares, he bent down and lit a clump of dry brush on the edge of the trail.
Watching it burn and move across the mountain with the wind, he hoped like hell that Will and the rest of the Rocky Mountain hotshot crew were canvassing these mountains hourly for wildfires. If the wind picked up, the flames would either ravage the forest in a matter of hours—or turn on him and catch him up in the fire he’d started.