Megs gave Winona a motherly pat on the arm. “I know.”
Winona spotted Jason standing with Gabe and Zach on the creek bank, and she knew what they were doing. She walked over, heard Gabe recounting the day of the fire. Even two months later, the story sent chills down her spine.
“We stood on the banks of the creek, knowing we were trapped. Then I saw it.”
Jason looked up, frowned. “I don’t see a cave.”
“That’s because it’s hidden behind that arete.” Gabe took a few steps to his left. “We didn’t see it either, not at first. Look now.”
Jason stood where Gabe was standing, then his jaw dropped. “Holy …shit. You climbed up there?”
“I climbed up, hammered a pulley into the rock, and pulled the others up.”
Jason was still looking up at the cave. “That cave is a geological accident that’s millions of years old. It’s amazing to think it’s been waiting there all this time just for that day.”
“Yeah, we got lucky.”
“That wasn’t luck, man. That was a damned miracle.”
Winona couldn’t have agreed more.
* * *
Firearm in hand,Jason moved as quickly as he could through the darkness, fresh blood on the spines of an ocotillo and the distance between footprints telling him the suspect was getting careless and running now. Jason knew where the bastard was heading. He thought he’d slip across the border and disappear. Jason wasn’t going to let that happen. The son of a bitch belonged in a prison cell.
As the ground leveled out, Jason picked up his pace, the border less than a half-mile away. He watched for movement, listened for footfalls or heavy breathing.
There you are, cabrón.
A dark shape moved through the night, a gray-on-black shadow running toward the vehicle barrier that marked the US-Mexico border. The fucker was angling for one of the gates intended for use only by the O’odham. If Jason didn’t stop him before he made it through, he would lose him.
Jason ran. “¡Alto!”Stop!
But he was too late.
The suspect slipped through the gate into Mexico and kept running.
Fuck that.
Enraged, Jason pushed his way through the gate, closing in on him.
Then the suspect turned, raised his weapon.
But it wasn’t a man at all.
“Elena!”
Jason jerked awake, his pulse pounding. He found himself in his tent, the day’s first light filtering through the mesh flap. He was in Colorado. Camp Mato Sapa.
Hell.
He sat up, drew in a breath, a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Elena had been his world. He’d believed that what they had was real, that they would get married, raise a few kids. How could he have been so wrong?
Let it go.
That was easier said than done.
These past six months, he’d been trying to figure out who he was without Elena. Now, he might have to figure out who he was without the Shadow Wolves.