Exit Strategy (26 page)

M
ASON WAS ALMOST
to the ladder to the zip line tower when someone slammed into him, knocking him to the ground. He roared with rage and jumped to his feet, gun in hand. But it wasn’t Ace or any of Stryker’s thugs who’d attacked him. It was Buchanan.

“What are you doing?” Mason demanded as he holstered his gun and headed toward the tower again.

Buchanan shoved him away and blocked the ladder. “Saving you from being stupid. What are you going to do, blindly climb down that cable without assessing the situation?”

Mason was about to shove him out of the way when Pierce and Logan flanked him, like three giants blocking his way.

“If I have to shoot the three of you, I will. Sabrina has to be terrified out there. Her parents plunged to their deaths right in front of her on a zip line. She’s tied up and she’s helpless.”

“She’s helpless for a reason,” Buchanan argued. “She’s bait. If you can’t see that, it’s because your feelings for her are clouding your judgment.”

“My
feelings
are none of your business and my
judgment
is just fine. Move,” he growled.

“Wait. We can all agree that Ace is the one who put her out there on that line. What do you think he’ll do if you climb out there? He’s probably on the other side of the river ready to shoot you. Or me. Or any number of us. If we don’t take a minute to plan, some of us may die, including Sabrina.”

Mason forced himself to back down and rein in his temper. Buchanan was right. He wasn’t thinking clearly. If he didn’t use his training, Sabrina would pay the price. “All right. A plan. I’ll need zip line equipment—­a pulley, a harness, gloves. They’ll be in a storage room under the tower.”

“I’ve got this.” Pierce hurried to the tower.

“Logan, we need to make sure Ace can’t ambush us. I remember we passed a bend in the river a bit upstream. The rapids were only ones and twos there. You should be able to wade across and circle back. Look for Ace and make your way to the other tower.”

Pierce rejoined them, holding a pair of gloves in each hand, his face mirroring his disgust. “This is all he left—­gloves and helmets. He must have taken the other harnesses and pulleys with him, or thrown them into the river.”

Mason took the gloves, shoving one pair down the front of his vest for Sabrina just in case. He eyed Buchanan, who was still blocking the ladder. “I’m fresh out of any other plans besides crawling down the cable and getting her pulley working. Unless you can magically produce another harness and pulley for me.”

“You might need rope.”

“I might. Got some in your pocket?” Without waiting for a reply to his sarcasm he shoved Buchanan, hard. He stumbled a few feet, giving Mason the opening he needed. He hurried up the ladder to the platform.

Buchanan cursed him from below, then called up, “Hold it.”

Mason looked over the railing. “You’re not stopping me this time.”

“Just let me check on Logan first.” He pulled out his phone and made a call.

Mason looked out the opening of the platform, pulling his gloves on, anxious to get to Sabrina. She was too far away for him to see the fear that must be on her face. She kept staring in his direction, shaking her head. Leave it to kindhearted Sabrina to be worried about his safety when she was the one dangling from a zip line with nothing but sharp boulders directly below and a big-­ass waterfall that probably had her terrified after her previous experiences with this river.

Buchanan held up his hand. “Just one more minute.” He listened to the phone for what seemed like an eternity, then replied and hung up the call. “Okay, Logan’s already across and he picked up a trail. It has to be Ace, heading back toward the access road, probably has his car parked there. Logan’s in pursuit. If he doesn’t catch him, at least he can follow his trail to make sure he doesn’t double back and try to shoot you while you’re on the cable.”

Mason nodded and was about to climb out when Pierce called up to him. “I remember a footbridge not far from here when I was chasing some of Stryker’s men earlier. The handrail is just rope looped through poles. I’ll cut a good length of it in case you need it.”

“Sounds good,” Mason said. “But I’m not hanging around here waiting for it.” He tugged his gloves into place, grasped the overhead cable, and pulled his legs up, locking them at the ankles on top of the zip line.

He pulled himself hand over hand toward Sabrina. He went slower than he preferred because he didn’t want to bounce the cable with her suspended from it. But the closer he got to her, the more concerned she looked. She didn’t stop shaking her head either, continuing to silently warn him away.

When he reached her and saw her harness, relief swept through him. The straps looked solid, new. She might be terrified at being suspended above the rocks and water, but she wasn’t in danger of falling. All he needed to do was get her pulley working and use gravity to get her to the tower on the downhill side.

Keeping his ankles locked over the cable and one gloved hand holding on, he used his teeth to pull off the glove on his right hand. He stuffed it under the top of his Kevlar vest then grabbed the edge of the duct tape on Sabrina’s mouth.

“Sorry, sweetheart. This is going to hurt.” He tore the tape off as fast as he could, bracing himself for her cry of pain.

“Don’t touch me, Mason,” she said in a rush instead of crying out. “Don’t touch me. Ace strapped—­”

“I see them.” His blood ran cold as he leaned down farther and took a good look at her vest. “My God. Don’t move,” he whispered. “There must be eight grenades taped to the inside of your vest.” He studied it more closely. “The pins are all tied together with a spider web of fishing line. One wrong tug and they all blow.”

She swallowed hard as he confirmed what she’d already suspected. “The pulley is broken too. He used pliers on it.”

Mason pulled himself up and examined the pulley. The soft metal guides had been crushed around the wheel assembly onto the cable. There was no way she’d be able to slide down the zip line using that equipment.

“Sabrina, what exactly did Ace do when he brought you to the platform? Don’t leave anything out.”

As he listened to her, he looked back at the tower. Buchanan stood in the platform opening, watching them. When Sabrina finished telling him everything Ace had done, Mason pulled out Ramsey’s phone and pressed the speed dial for Buchanan.

“Ace spent a few minutes up under the eaves just past the platform opening,” he told Buchanan when he answered. “He strapped grenades all over Sabrina, so be careful when you look up there.”

“Got it. Give me a second.” He set the phone down and climbed out onto the railing to look up at the eaves. Even without the phone, Mason could hear Buchanan’s cursing as he climbed back down to the platform. He grabbed the phone and stared down the cable at the two of them. “I’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is that there aren’t any hand grenades up there.”

“The bad news?”

“Our friend left us a bomb.”

Chapter Twenty-one

Day Five—­10:30 a.m.

S
abrina clung to the strap on her harness that suspended her from the pulley. Mason had cut and removed the duct tape around her wrists so she had freedom of movement, but of course she couldn’t move, not with little bombs strapped all over the inside of her vest, and another, bigger bomb strapped to the zip line platform that held up the cable she and Mason were hanging from.

Devlin was currently working on the bomb on the tower, trying to figure out how to disable it without setting it off. His first hope had been to simply remove it and toss it over the waterfall. But Ace had thought of that. He’d used some kind of heavy duty adhesive to bond it to the wood. It wasn’t going anywhere.

Mason had carefully cut two grenades from under her vest so far and was currently working on a third. With each one that he removed, he pulled the pin and threw the grenade over the waterfall. The sound of the rushing water muffled the explosions but didn’t lessen her worry that he’d pull the pin on the next one too late and would blow himself up, not to mention her.

She looked past him to where Devlin was working on the bomb. A shadow suddenly appeared at the top of the ladder. A man with a gun ran onto the platform toward the edge, toward Devlin. Devlin clawed for his gun but Sabrina was already grabbing Mason’s Glock from his holster. She fired off two quick rounds. The gunman screamed, his gun falling from his bloody hand as he fell off the platform onto the rocks below. The sudden silence had her looking up into Mason’s wide-­eyed stare, his mouth half open.

“Told you I was a good shot,” she said.

“I never doubted it.” He slowly lifted his hand to show her the grenade he was holding. “Luckily I got the pin with this one right before you grabbed my gun.”

“Oh my God.” She could feel her face go cold.

Mason pulled the pin and tossed the grenade down the river. Sabrina flinched from the explosion and handed him the gun so he could put it back in his holster.

“I’ll, ah, try not to move suddenly again,” she said.

He very carefully pulled her closer and gave her a soft kiss. “You did great. You saved Buchanan’s life. I’m sure he’ll thank you later when he’s not trying to dismantle a bomb.”

He shuddered from the close call but immediately went back to work, trying to free the next grenade. Sabrina couldn’t quite believe he was risking his life like this for her. But the whole thing just seemed hopeless.

“Please, Mason. Just leave me here. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m not going anywhere without you. Stop asking.”

His gruff voice didn’t disguise the underlying concern. It warmed her heart to realize he cared as much about her as she did him, but she’d much rather that he didn’t—­because maybe then he wouldn’t be putting his life on the line for her—­literally. He was hanging upside down, his knees hooked over the cable above him in a precarious position that had her holding her breath every time the air stirred around them.

If it had been a windy day he’d have fallen long before now. Seemingly unconcerned with his dangerous position, however, he continued working on gently easing the edge of her vest back to get to the next grenade without pulling any pins out. A moment later, he had the grenade free and lobbed it away from them.

It boomed from below the waterfall.

“Mason,” Devlin called out, just as Pierce climbed to the top of the platform, holding a length of rope in his hands. “I got the cover off the bomb and I can see the next layer of wires. It’s on a timer. If we can trust it, you’ve got fifteen minutes to free Sabrina
and
get out of here before it all blows. So hurry up.”

“Working on it,” Mason grumbled beneath his breath.

“You should—­” Sabrina began.

“No,” Mason interrupted, before she could tell him to leave her again.

She let out a deep sigh. “Is there at least something that I can do to help?”

“Yeah. Don’t move.”

A light breeze bounced the cable, pushing her a few inches. He swore and grabbed her shoulders, then let out a shaky breath and moved on to the next grenade.

When Sabrina’s heart stopped pounding so hard from that near disaster, she focused on holding on to the harness and doing what he’d said—­not moving.

His face was so red from hanging upside down that his head had to be pounding, but he hadn’t complained once or stopped working since he’d seen the grenades.

“What did he mean?” Sabrina asked, very softly, making sure not to move. “Devlin said we had fifteen minutes, ‘if we can trust it’?”

He grew still for a second, then started working again. “Buchanan saw a timer, but it might not be the one that triggers the detonator. It could be a false one, to make us think we have more time than we do.”

“Great. Is Pierce the one who’s holding the rope?”

“Um hm.”

“
Why
is he holding a rope?”

“Just in case.”

She swallowed hard and risked another quick glance down. Ropes meant climbing. There wasn’t anywhere to climb from here but down. Onto razor-­sharp boulders. With intense rapids rushing over them. She’d rather blow up than get shredded on those rocks. At least she’d die quickly and wouldn’t feel anything. Or so she hoped.

Mason had been splitting the seams and working the vest off her a little bit more with each grenade that he freed. He’d said his goal was to remove the vest entirely and then get them both to the receiving platform, where hopefully Logan would be soon to help them. But if they only had fifteen minutes, at the rate Mason was freeing the grenades, that didn’t leave much time to maneuver down the cable, especially without a working pulley.

Even if she could start across the cable right now, Sabrina didn’t think she had the strength and speed to make it to the platform and then run far enough away that she’d be safe when the bomb exploded. Basically, she was out of time. But Mason wasn’t. She had to make him leave. Now. While he could still get away.

“Mason, fifteen minutes—­or probably thirteen now, if the timer is even right—­isn’t very long.”

“Nope.” He looked past her and she followed his gaze.

A man was standing on top of the other platform, the one Ace had climbed down after leaving her stranded on the cable. He climbed up on the railing and started looking under the eaves.

“Logan,” Mason called out. “Did you catch Ace?”

“I almost had him. He took off in a four-­by-­four pickup on a ser­vice road not far from here. I managed to put a few bullets in the back window but he went around a curve.”

Mason ripped the seam another few inches. “What about the zip line equipment? Any usable pulleys?”

“Everything’s gone. Just like the first tower. Mason, there’s a bomb here too.”

“I figured,” he called out.

Logan reached up under the overhang, taking pictures of the bomb with his phone.

“Why’s he taking pictures?” Sabrina asked.

“Probably because he doesn’t know anything about defusing bombs. He’ll text the pictures to Buchanan to analyze.”

“Same kind of bomb,” Devlin called out from the other platform as he looked at his phone. He was still standing on the railing, holding on to the eave with one hand, flipping his thumb across the screen with the other as he studied the pictures. His head snapped up. “Mason, stop playing around and get out of there. That other bomb is set to blow in five minutes.”

Sabrina gasped.

Mason stopped, his knife poised in one hand as he looked at Logan. He looked back over his shoulder at Devlin. “Any chance you can disarm the one on your side, Buchanan?”

“If I had the right tools, and another ten minutes, maybe.” He’d put his phone away but in spite of his gloom and doom, he was still tugging at the wires.

Mason’s jaw firmed in a tight line as if he was thinking through all of the possibilities.

Sabrina let go of the strap that suspended her harness from the cable. She didn’t need to hold on anyway. The equipment held her upright like a chair. She’d only been holding on out of fear. But now that fear had given way to acceptance. Everything that had happened over the past few days had led her to this point. And for the first time since this had all begun, she knew exactly what she had to do.

She cupped Mason’s face in her hands, urging him to look at her. When he did, she carefully leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. It was a quick kiss, because they didn’t have time for more. She pulled back and let him go.

“You have to go back to the platform right now,” she told him. “You did your best. And I thank you for that. But we both know there’s no way I can climb down the cable, get down from the platform, and run fast enough to make it. We also both know that you, however,
are
fast enough. So, go, Mason. Please. I don’t want you to die for me.”

“Four minutes,” Logan called out from his platform. “Get out of there, Mason. There’s nothing else you can do.”

“See,” she said. “Even your friends know I’m a lost cause. Save yourself.”

His eyes narrowed. He suddenly reached down. Before she could figure out what he was up to, he’d attached the strap from her waist to his harness.

“What are you doing?” She reached down to unclip the carabiner.

He grabbed her hand and held it tight. “Stop trying to say good-­bye. This is
not
good-­bye. You need to trust me. We’ll face the future together, whatever it holds.” He lifted her hand and kissed her palm before letting go. “Logan,” he called out. “Get out of here before your tower blows.”

Logan yelled at Mason to get to the platform, but he didn’t wait around. He slid down the ladder to the ground.

Mason went back to work on Sabrina’s vest, sawing like a mad man, splitting seams, tearing fabric.

“There are only two more back here. With the other grenades gone, I’ve been able to split most of the seams now. That should make it possible to get the vest off before it blows.”

“Should?” she choked.

“Will. It will. Trust me. When I say three, I need you to raise your arms. The pins will pull out as soon as you do and we’ll only have a few seconds to get the vest off. Are you ready?”

“Oh my God, oh my God.”

“Rina.” He grabbed her chin. “You can do this.”

She nodded. “Okay.”

“One, two, three!”

She raised her arms, feeling something give behind her, probably the tension on the fishing line and the pins pulling out. Mason yanked the vest. It didn’t move. He cursed and ripped his knife down another section. He yanked it again and this time it pulled up over her head. He split the last seam and pulled it from around her then heaved the vest toward the waterfall. He grabbed her, pulling her face against him and cocooning her body with his arms.

The twin explosions were close and nearly deafening. Water splashed up at them but no debris.

“Three minutes on that other platform,” Devlin yelled across to them from his side. “When that tower goes, the cable goes.”

Mason reached up and hooked an arm over the cable above them. “Throw me that rope, Pierce!”

It took three attempts. Obviously Pierce had never roped a steer or lassoed anything before, but finally the end of the rope fell close enough that Mason was able to grab it. As he reeled it in, he yelled at his two friends still on the top of the first tower. “Get out of here!”

They didn’t waste time arguing. They hurried to the ladder.

“What are you doing?” Sabrina demanded. “Go! You might make it in time before the other platform explodes and you’ll still be able to get into the woods before the second bomb goes off.”

He shook his head as he looped the rope over and through itself around the cable and tied a thick knot at the end before dropping it to dangle over the rushing river. “Do what I say and quit arguing. We don’t have time for it.” He tugged on both of his gloves and climbed down onto the rope, using his shoe to loop the rope around his legs, using it like a brake. For the first time since he’d slid down the cable to her, he was upright but his face was still bright red.

“Put your arms around my neck.”

She frowned in confusion. Did he want her to hold him as they died together? It was a sweet gesture, but a stupid one. “No, you’re not staying here to die with me. Go on. Get back to the platform.”

“Two minutes,” Devlin cried out from farther upriver now, his voice barely audible.

“
Now
, Rina. Put your arms around my neck. Hurry.”

His voice brooked no disobedience. She flung her arms around his neck.

“Tighter, hold on.”

She tightened her arms, laying her head on his shoulder, finally accepting the inevitable. “I’m so sorry, Mason.”

“Put your legs around my hips and lock your ankles around me.”

She immediately complied. Being wrapped around Mason as she died wasn’t exactly a hardship. She was finally right where she wanted to be. And she realized, it was where she
always
wanted to be. She just wished she’d realized that before it was too late.

“One minute,” Devlin called out.

“Whatever you do, don’t let go,” Mason whispered against her neck.

“I won’t let go. I love you, Mason Hunt.” She pulled back to look at him. “I love you.”

His eyes widened, then narrowed. “You’re giving up, Sabrina Hightower. Stop it. Lay your head back down and hold on.”

“Whatever you say.” She tightened her hold and clung to him.

His hands were both above her holding onto the rope, while his legs were entwined in the rope below. He reached up and she felt his shoulder jerk, then the harness around her went slack.

She sucked in a breath, instinctively clinging harder to him. “Mason?”

“Hold on.” He moved his legs and she felt his arms moving on the rope above them. Suddenly they were slipping down, dropping lower and lower until they were near the end. She could see below and he twisted his foot around the last part of the rope using the knot as his guide to know how much rope he had.

His shoulders flexed as he moved his hands on the rope above them again.

“Thirty seconds,” Devlin called out.