“It’s okay, Chip. We’re going to be just fine.” Whether she was comforting the dog or herself, she couldn’t say for sure. The dog whined as though he’d understood her whispered words. She wouldn’t be surprised if he had.
“Let’s move out.” MacGyver stood and glanced toward her. “Another twenty minutes will see us on flatter terrain. We’ll turn north and head for the edge of the golf course.”
What? When did he decide that?“The golf course? Not the lake?” Kellie wrapped the strap of her backpack over one shoulder.
MacGyver turned away and started walking again. “That’s where our ride’s going to meet us. It’ll be easier for him to land there than on the lake.” He tossed the words over his shoulder.
Kellie stared after him.Their ride? Easier to land?She fisted her hands and silently fumed.Blake!Did MacGyver sell her out after all?
She glanced at Pop, who shrugged and looked away before he turned and followed MacGyver. Chip plodded at her side as she strode toward Travis and Jeremy, who were waiting for her to go ahead.
Jeremy’s smile was sympathetic as she skirted past him. He stepped up beside her, keeping pace. Leaning toward her, he spoke in a low voice. “Do you trust your buddy, MacGyver?”
Shocked, Kellie fixed him with a glare. Did she?Implicitly, before this whole Blake thing came back to haunt her. In fact, besides Anna and the four men making this hike with her, there was no one else shecouldtrust. In spite of MacGyver siding with Blake on the incident in Iraq, he still held a special place in her heart.Go figure.
“Yes, I do.” God help her.
Jeremy nodded and gradually fell back, apparently satisfied with her answer.
They stopped to rest again at the bottom of the slope and once more, after leaving the forested hillside for the thin band of rocks and scrub brush that bordered the golf course. The sun was in their eyes to the west when they took cover behind a patch of bitterbrush near the deserted green expanse of the course. Clearly, the intense weather patterns of late had contributed to the current lack of golfers in attendance. There’d be no blending in with vacationing tourists, even if theydidlook the part—which they didn’t.
Keeping low, Kellie moved forward, dropping to a crouch beside MacGyver and Travis. “I assume Blake is picking us up?”
MacGyver raised a pair of field glasses and scanned to the north. “You assume correctly.” No warmth resonated in his words.
Okay, so she’d finally managed to tick him off, and he wasn’t going to make this easy. “What did he say to convince you we could trust him?”
MacGyver lowered the glasses and squinted at her. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about Blake.”
The infuriating, self-righteous butthead!Gritted teeth kept her thoughts from spewing out of her mouth. She managed to smile, though the effort not to lose her temper was killing her. “That was before you sold out to him.”
“No…no, I didn’t sell out. Blake brought us a shitload of firepower, told us about the tracking device and offered us a way to save your pretty little neck. If you’d bothered to stick around and hear him out, you’d have known that.”
That isn’t the issue, even if he is right, damn it. She swallowed hard and tamped down her anger. “And you believed everything he said?”
MacGyver shrugged. “Pretty much.”
Travis reached for the field glasses and looked through them. He pointed. “Chopper at three o’clock, coming in low.”
Only then did Kellie hear the sound of the blades beating the air. She watched, dread roiling her stomach, as the aircraft became visible to the naked eye.
“Wait here.” MacGyver rose and stepped into the clearing, waving toward the helicopter.
Beside her, Chip growled, and the hair stood up along the ridge of his back. Kellie glanced behind her, over the terrain they’d just covered, to see what had alerted him. Suddenly, the air over her head was filled with lead. She dropped to the ground and crab crawled to the other side of the sparse bushes as Travis swung around and returned fire.
At least a half dozen men, armed with rifles and handguns, took cover at the edge of the forest, taking potshots at Travis until he hit the deck. He caught her attention and waved her on toward the incoming chopper.
Jeremy grabbed Pop’s arm and shielded him as they ran for the wide open area of the golf course. Kellie burst to her feet to follow, yelling for Chip as she ducked and ran. MacGyver was lying flat on the ground, sighting in on the shooters, who were periodically popping up and firing rounds in their direction.
Chip barked furiously before scurrying through the brush and gluing himself to Kellie’s side again.
“Jeremy, get Kellie and Charlie on that chopper.” MacGyver flagged his arm in the direction of the approaching aircraft.
Kellie drew her gun from her waistband and prepared to fire, but Jeremy yanked her toward him and gave her a shove toward the open fairway. She met MacGyver’s troubled gaze and read his lips as he mouthed, “Go…now.”
As though in a dream, she twirled and her feet dug for purchase on the soggy ground. “Chip, come!” Pop and Jeremy were about a hundred feet ahead, running for the helicopter hovering a foot above the ground just ahead of them. When Jeremy jumped onboard and turned to help Pop, Kellie felt a wave of relief. No matter what else happened, Pop was safe.
Under a barrage of bullets, the chopper banked right and gained altitude, circling back to hover again, while MacGyver and Travis drew the enemy’s fire. Inside the cargo bay, Pop beckoned her, and she could see his lips moving, urging her on. She looked for Chip—saw him barking and snarling at a line of men who steadily advanced on MacGyver’s position. Every fiber of her body screamed for her to go back and help, but then Travis burst through the brush, running toward her, waving her on.