She forced herself to keep her voice level. “I’m going to try and lift it. Help me?”
She watched him visibly wrangle his temper.
Amanda had once gone to a bull-riding contest at the county fair with Cassie and Stephenson. In her opinion, no one with any amount of common sense would enter an enclosed space with an enraged animal. It would be less scary sticking your finger in a live light socket.
But Stephenson had wanted to go. He’d had a whole speech about wanting to see masculine intelligence at his finest. Amanda thought it was weird, but she went for her friend’s sake.
It had been as awful to watch as she’d imagined. Full-grown men purposefully got onto the back of a crazed animal for the singular purpose of trying to stay on its back. Which was impossible, of course. The bull always won.
Watching Dal wasn’t so different from watching those idiots on the bucking bulls. Except Dal wasn’t an idiot, and his temper was ten times scarier than those bulls.
His fists clenched and unclenched. He drew in several deep breaths, trying to stop the heaving of his chest. A shiver ran through his body as he fought back whatever demon lived inside him. If she hadn’t been so wary of him, Amanda’s heart might have broken when she watched him scrub at his eyes with the back of his hand.
When his hand fell away, the Dal she knew was back. Almost. There was still an edge in his eyes that intimidated the hell out of her, but at least he didn’t look so scary anymore.
He came to stand by Amanda, bracing himself by the tree trunk. Amanda wrapped both her hands around the trunk, bending her knees to give herself leverage.
“On the count of three.” At Dal’s nod, she counted. “One. Two. Three.”
Amanda gripped the tree with everything she had. She pressed up with her leg. She pulled with her arms. She strained with her back.
The tree moved. Inch by painful inch, she and Dal pried the tree up from Lena’s still form.
“Get her,” Amanda wheezed, refusing to let go of the tree. “I’ll hold it.”
Dal didn’t have to be asked twice. He released his part of the tree, diving to the forest floor to grab Lena by the shoulders.
Amanda gasped as the added weight strained her muscles. Sweat popped out along her brow. Her arms screamed. Her back protested. Her legs wanted to collapse.
She held on.
“Hurry,” she gasped. “I don’t know how much longer I can hold it.”
Dal had both hands under Lena’s armpits. He scurried backward, dragging her out from under the tree.
As soon as Lena was free, Amanda dropped the tree. It thunked back to the ground, limbs and leave rustling.
She sucked in great gulps of air, hardly able to comprehend what she’d just done. For the first time, her eyes took in the enormity of the tree she’d just singlehandedly held up from the ground.
Massive did not begin to cover it. No way should she have been able to hold it on her own. Dal was a big, strong guy like Leo. Not even he had been able to lift the tree on his own.
But she’d done it. She’d held the tree long enough for Dal to get Lena free. Somehow, she’d done it.
“You’re a fucking amazon.”
She turned around. Dal sat on the ground, Lena cradled in his lap. When he looked up at Amanda, she felt like she was being seen for the first time.
“You’re a fucking amazon,” Dal repeated. “You saved her.” His chest hitched. “Lena would still be under that tree if not for you.”
For the first time in her life, Amanda looked down at her body with a sense of reverence. Until today, she hadn’t really acknowledged or appreciated the strength that lived within her.
Amazon. That’s what Dal had called her. Hell, yes.
Amazon. Tasting the word felt like reconnecting with a hidden part of herself. She was an amazon.
So what if she wasn’t a petite triathlete like Mrs. Fink? Mrs. Fink couldn’t have thrown a mutant zombie off Dal. Mrs. Fink couldn’t have picked up that tree off Lena.
She bet Mrs. Fink couldn’t even nail her own ropes course. Amanda recalled the PE teacher showing off on occasion, like when it came time to planking or jumping over a hurdle. But she’d never scaled one of her long ropes like she made all the girls do. Maybe Mrs. Fink wasn’t as confident as she pretended to be.
Amanda knelt beside Dal and Lena, wishing she had some water to clean Lena’s face.
Something caught her attention in her periphery. Mr. Cecchino’s truck. Or what was left of it, anyway.
It lay in pieces. The trees around it had been blown up with the grenades. The undercarriage of the truck was nothing more than a twisted metal hunk. The remains of the front seat were lodged ten feet away in the boughs of a fallen tree.
It was gone. Their mobile broadcasting station had been blown to smithereens.
The sight of it hurt. How would they get messages out to the people?
How would they get home?
More importantly, how would they get away from the team of Russians bearing down on them?
20
Boulder
Dal rocked Lena in his arms, continuously smoothing hair away from her face.
“Come on, babe,” he murmured. “You have to wake up.”
It hurt to see the anguish in his expression. Even worse was knowing they had no supplies—no water, no food, no first aid kit, and no way home.
“Dal, we have to get out of here.” How fast could the Soviets run through the forest? The very idea of them bearing down on their location filled her with terror. “Can you carry her?”
Dal nodded. He rose, lifting Lena in his arms and holding her close.
Amanda hustled through the ruined trees, heading away from the general direct of Mr. Cecchino’s truck. She held back the bigger branches, doing her best
