trumpet he was holding went flying into another tent.
'Cell phone,' Avery shouted at the man sprawled on his back. 'We need your cell phone.'
'No signal up here,' he answered as he came up on his elbows. His face was red with anger. 'Who in thunder do you people
think…'
John Paul was frantically searching the road ahead of them. Monk wouldn't have any qualms about taking a couple of kids out as long as he could get his primary targets. One of the boys shouted when he saw the gun tucked into the back of John Paul's jeans. One blistering look from John Paul shut the boy up.
Avery dropped down on her knees next to the leader. 'Listen to me. We need help. There's a killer coming this way. Where's your transportation? Answer me, please,' she begged.
Her terror got through to him. 'We've got a camper here, but my Ford four-wheeler is parked about half a mile down the road. The keys are in my jacket in that tent over there, the one with the troop numbers painted on it.'
John Paul was lifting Avery to her feet. 'Get in that camper and get your boys out of here,' he yelled back at the man as he
pulled Avery toward the next slope, staying well hidden in the trees.
'Get to a phone and call for help,' she shouted.
Her legs were trembling, and she didn't think she had it in her to run much longer. Concentrating on putting one foot in front of
the other, her heart feeling as though it were lodged in her throat, she suddenly remembered they hadn't gotten the keys.
'We have to go back… the car keys.'
'We don't need them,' he said. 'Now move it, sugar. You're starting to drag.'
She fantasized about hiding somewhere and waiting for John Paul to come back with the car. She could find a spot where Monk wouldn't find her, couldn't she?
Suck it up. Damn it, I don't want to. I can do it. I can do it. She kept up the drill until the pain in her side became excruciating.
She wondered if she could die upright. Sure she could.
Tears came into her eyes then, for she saw the old SUV parked in the gravel near the curve in the road. John Paul raced ahead
of her. He broke the back window, reached in, and unlocked the front door.
Avery ran around to the other side as he unlocked the door for her. It took less than forty-five seconds for him to hot-wire the
car, throw it into gear, and take off.
She was impressed. 'Were you a juvenile delinquent growing up?'
The second they rounded the curve, she fell back against the seat and allowed herself to fall apart. A sob caught in her throat.
'Are you crying?'
'No.'
'Sure sounded like you were.' He gave her a sharp look.
'I'm joyful.' She hastily wiped the tears of relief from her cheeks.
He grinned. He had the very same feeling, but it didn't last long. 'Hell,' he muttered.
'What hell?'
'The road's winding back around… he might be coming down, getting into position… ah, hell, that's what he's gonna do,
and there isn't any way we can go off-road here.'
He leaned forward, pulled his gun out, and dropped it into his lap. He rolled down his window, then picked up the gun.
She frantically got her weapon out and then rolled down her window. 'What the hell are you doing?' he asked.
'Getting ready just like you.'
'No. Get down and stay down. If he's coming at us, you'll be on his side.'
She ignored his order. 'Just tell me when to start shooting. We'll keep him down until we get past.'
It sounded like a great plan, and she'd said it with gusto, but that was only because she didn't believe Monk could have gotten down the hills that quickly.
She was wrong about that. She spotted him before John Paul did.
'Get the hell down,' John Paul shouted.
Her response was to flip the safety off. Leaning against the door, she put her arm out the window, steadied the barrel of the
gun on the side mirror, and waited. She ducked down as much as she could.
When Monk crouched down and swung the rifle up, John Paul shouted, 'Now!'
They fired simultaneously, again and again as they sped toward the killer. Monk dove for cover, then scrambled to roll over and get his weapon up. Avery kept firing, pinning him down as they flew past.
The road suddenly curved up the mountain. There was a dirt road that angled sharply to the south that would have taken them farther down the mountain, but John Paul knew that, at the speed he was going, the SUV would roll if he tried to make the turn. 'I'm out,' he said as he emptied the magazine. She was turning to look when John Paul grabbed the back of her neck and shoved her down. 'Get on the floor,' he ordered as the back window shattered. They were still climbing and had reached another sharp curve when Monk blew out the left rear tire.
The car went into a spin. They careened off the road into the brush, narrowly missing a tree head-on, but finally stopping when they hit a rock.
'Move it,' he shouted as he leapt out of the car and raced around to the other side. Avery had no sense of where they were, only knew they were once again climbing. Her heartbeat, like the turbulent white water, was roaring in her ears. She raced up the steep slope, then skidded to a stop. 'No,' she cried.
John Paul stopped beside her. 'Ah, hell.' She wanted to weep as she stared down at the swirling water below. No. Not again. Shaking her head, she said, 'I won't do it. I can't. You can't make me.'
He looked genuinely sorry when he grabbed her. 'Sure I can.'
Chapter 25
Picturesque, my ass. If Avery saw another white-water anything, she thought she just might start screaming and never stop. At the moment, she was feeling malevolent toward pine trees too. Hated every one of them. She wasn't real fond of John Paul either. He had tossed her over the cliff like a discarded candy wrapper, and on the way down she had vowed that, if he survived, she'd kill him, just for the sheer joy of it.
She knew she was being irrational. She didn't care. Her bad mood intensified when she cut her leg on a jagged rock. If they'd been in the ocean, the blood pouring from her cut would have sounded the lunch bell for the neighboring sharks. Trying to stay positive as she fought to stay afloat, she told herself to be thankful there weren't any sharks around. And her leg didn't hurt all
that much compared to the searing charley horse in her calf that nearly caused her to drown. John Paul hauled her onto the
bank, half carried her into the trees so they wouldn't be seen, and then dropped her. She landed with a thud on her backside.
He dropped beside her. 'That wasn't so bad, was it?' Since she'd taken in more than enough water to fill a backyard swimming pool, she was too waterlogged to answer the absurd question. Shoving her hair out of her eyes, she glared at him.
'It wasn't as bad as the first jump, was it? I don't think that drop was more than twenty feet,' he said.
'You pushed me over a cliff.'
