“If it makes you feel any better, pretend I’m on my way back to the boat. I’ll call as soon as I get there.” He disconnected, then looked at Remi. “Change of plans. You go back to the boat. I’ll go after Dimitris and Zoe.”
“No. I’m going with you.”
“Remi, you heard what he said. They’ve already killed a couple of officers. I’m not going to let you be next.”
She tucked her phone into her pocket. “And what? You’re going to go in like a one-man wrecking crew?”
“I work better by myself.”
“That’s what you said at Kyril’s party. What if I’m the one factor that makes a difference?”
“I’ll admit your quick thinking was . . . appreciated, but—”
“Appreciated? Why is it so hard to admit that I might be able to help? Those two guards would’ve definitely caught you if not for me.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you. It’s easier to work if I know you’re safe.”
“That settles it, then. I have to go with you.”
“Your twisted logic isn’t going to work this time.”
“You have no way of knowing that I’ll be safe once I leave. I could fall and break my neck on that steep trail. And let’s not forget the scorpions, or the four hundred pounds of mother boar protecting her babies.” She crossed her arms, then lifted her chin, her expression defiant. “The way I see it, you can worry about me there, or here with you.”
“There’s nothing I can say that’ll convince you to go back?”
“Nothing.”
When it came right down to it, he’d rather Remi take her chances with a boar and the scorpions over Kyril’s thugs. Realizing he wasn’t going to change her mind, he let out a frustrated breath. “Fine. But you have to do everything I say.”
“Let me guess. No going rogue. Where have I heard that before?”
Sam rolled his eyes. “She won’t take my advice but, ‘Oh yes, Sam, I’ll do everything you say. No going rogue.’”
Remi arched her brows. “I sound nothing like that.”
He looked down over the edge at this side of the gorge. There was about fifteen feet of cliff jutting out, but once they cleared that, it sloped out slightly the rest of the way down—something he thought Remi could handle. “I don’t suppose you’ve ever done any rappelling?”
“Only if you count cliff-jumping at Adrian Kyril’s party.”
He stood, pulling a coil of rope from his backpack. “Our only hope,” he said, taking a knife and cutting off a section, “is to get to Dimitris and Zoe before they get to the processing facility. If we head straight down on this side instead of following the mule tr
ail, we can cut off a good chunk of time. Maybe a couple of hours.”
Remi peered over the edge, her brows rising. “I’m going to need you to define exactly what you mean by straight down.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Sam pointed to the base of the gorge. “As in, we’re way up here, and we need to be way down there.”
Remi eyed the rope, then the edge of the bluff, wondering if maybe she’d been a bit rash in her decision to accompany him. Once past the twenty feet of sheer cliff, there was at least a hundred more feet of steep slope down to the bottom. “You’re sure that’s doable?”
Sam finished knotting the length he was working with. “The hardest part is getting down the cliff to where the slope starts. You see that tree growing down on that ledge?”
She carefully peered over, seeing the treetop about twenty feet below. “Yes.”
“I’m going to lower you, then I’ll follow. We’ll rappel down from there to the next tree. And then the next.”
She eyed the distance to the bottom of the gorge. “That rope isn’t near long enough.”