Logan paused at that, the silence intense, and I frowned. Why would that particular aspect of the story have bothered him?
“Walk,” he said gruffly, yanking Henry around so that his back was to Logan, and forced him forward. From behind, I was unsure if he’d grabbed both of our weapons, which had been left on the ground, but I assumed he had. Still, I didn’t turn around, sure he would pull the trigger without much hesitation.
We marched together, side by side, until we were out of the forest and in the small open patch between the forest and the camp. I took a deep breath, and forced myself to keep my eyes on the snow in front of me.
Don’t look at the town, don’t look at the town, I repeated to myself again and again.
I knew Marlon was seeing what was going on right now. I knew they had guns aimed at us. And I knew that neither he nor Joe was a good enough shot to take Logan out. Well, I knew Joe wasn’t. As far as Marlon went…
I didn’t know any such thing. I had no idea whether he’d once been a sniper, or what.
But I also didn’t think he’d have helped me find the best sharpshooter in town if he thought he’d have had it under control on his own. Snipers didn’t exactly ask for backup. If Marlon had that sort of training, he wouldn’t have told me to find someone who might.
Which meant that although Marlon might be able to see us right now—could almost definitely see us, since the plan had been for him to keep watch until he saw us getting out of town alive—he probably couldn’t do a damn thing about it.
So we were well and truly on our own.
God, I hoped the story we’d cooked up for Henry worked.
“So if they took you hostage, like you say, and forced you to join them, what the hell are you doing with this jackass now?” Logan asked.
“What’s it look like I’m doing?” Henry asked, his voice amazingly reasonable. “I’m getting him this far so’s you can take him prisoner, which is what I figured you would have wanted to do. Right from the start, I saw that he was the leader. Right from the start, I figured he was the one you’d want. So when he asked for volunteers to go with him on a spying mission, I raised my hand. Figured I’d turn him in and join you at the same time—kill two birds with one stone. Smart, eh?”
The silence from Logan told me very clearly that it was smart—too smart for Henry. He was a good guy, but he wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, and Logan must have known that. Which made that story… hard to buy.
Unless he wasn’t sharp enough to catch onto that. I was hoping Logan was just smart enough to see the sense in the plan… and not smart enough to see the holes.
He kept silent as we trudged forward, and I watched the camp getting closer and closer, trying to make a decision. If we got into that camp, I thought, we were going to be in a whole lot more trouble than we already were. Right now we only had Logan to deal with. If we got all the way to where they’d built their little fort, there were going to be more men—and more guns. Possibly even Randall.
Logan might be smarter than the other cousins, but he wasn’t their leader. That was always going to be Randall. If we could get Logan to make some sort of decision before he found Randall… If we could get him to step out of line and decide something on his own, without Randall’s craftiness, and without Randall’s absolute aggression…
We might be able to trick him into making the wrong decision.
But we were going to have to do it fast. Not only because I wanted to get it done before we got to their camp, but also because we were going to run out of daylight.
As well as time to get back into town and help them prepare for whatever Randall and his men were planning on doing.
“So you were planning this all along?” I snarled, finally bringing my part of the story into the situation. “You thought it was just going to be that easy, to bring me down here and turn me in to these jackasses? Didn’t think I’d put up a fight?”
I saw Henry cast a glance out of the corner of his eye in my direction, and made the big eyes at him again. Look at me too much and he was going to give away the fact that we were in this together. He had to keep this story up on his own.
He turned his eyes quickly past me and toward Logan, then rolled them like he couldn’t believe how freaking stupid I was.
It was perfect.
“You hearing this guy?” he asked with half a grin. “He’s actually surprised that I’m not his friend. Actually surprised that I would choose my real friends over a bunch of people who kidnapped me. Guess he doesn’t know us outdoorsmen as well as he thinks he does, huh? Because we never turn on our friends. We’ve got more loyalty than that.”
I felt the pressure ease off the gun in my back, and tensed. Was this actually working? Was Logan actually buying this?
“He’s not from here,” Logan said. “He could never understand what it was like to grow up here. Could never understand what it’s like to look out for the people you’ve known your entire life.”
My God, he was buying it.
And he was right. I hadn’t grown up here. But I knew exactly what it was like to look out for the people I chose to look out for.
And with that in mind, I whirled around so quickly and unexpectedly that I knew Logan wouldn’t have the instinct to react, and went for his gun.
9
I knocked the gun he’d had pressed into my back up toward the sky, and then grabbed the hand that held the gun with both of my hands and twisted, breaking his wrist. The moment after the crack rang out over the landscape, his fingers lost their grip, and I was able to pull the gun right out of his hand without any trouble.
Logan screamed in pain and went right to his knees, and my mouth twisted at this pathetic response.
But that didn’t stop me from finishing the job. Logan was the one who had started this fight. I didn’t feel even a little bit bad about finishing it. Especially if it meant we got away—and could get back to town before anything went down.
I gave him a quick jab to the nose and then another to the temple, and he went down like a bag of potatoes—and didn’t get back up again.
I knew because I stood there for several moments, waiting to see if he would. Waiting to see if he was going to get up swinging, or come after us as we left, or scream for help. But he didn’t. He stayed on the ground, bleeding from the nose, his wrist turned at an awkward angle.
I counted to thirty to see if he was faking, and when he didn’t move, I inched closer and grabbed my CZ and Henry’s hunting rifle, which was slung over the unconscious man’s shoulder. I holstered my pistol and turned to Henry, handing him his rifle.
“Terrific job,” I told him quickly. “You did exactly what I needed you to do.”
His mouth was hanging open—and probably had been through the entire fight—but he closed it with a snap, now, and then frowned. “But we didn’t get anything,” he said. “We don’t know any more now than we did.”
At that moment, we heard a roar from behind us, and I turned just in time to see what had to be one hundred men tearing through the campground, and heading right for us.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I turned back to Henry, grabbed his arm, and started racing for the forest. I didn’t know if those men were after us, or if they were actually starting their invasion, or if they were just… out for some sort of after-pep-rally run. And I didn’t care.
Whatever they were doing, I didn’t want to be a part of it. And we had to make sure they didn’t see us. Because if they did, they were going to put whatever they were supposed to be doing to the side and come directly after us—which we couldn’t afford. Yeah, they might pause when they got to Logan, and that might buy us some time.