“You saved my life, Em. Our lives. You did what you had to do. Now we have to get out of here.” He helped her to a sitting position. “You’re not hurt, right?”

“I thought she was going to kill me.”

“She was going to kill you. That’s why you had to kill her first. You had no choice. Now, please answer me. Are you hurt? Can you stand?”

She answered by rising uneasily to her feet. Adam stood guard to make sure she didn’t collapse or tip over. When she was steady, he bent down and picked up her rifle as he let his fall against its sling. “Let’s get our stuff and get out of here.”

“I thought you needed to stay here.”

“This changes things,” Adam said. “A lot. That was a shit ton of shooting, and locals heard it. They know these assholes. Knew. Hell, they might even be family. We’re not from around here, so that means we’re the bad guys, no matter what the facts are.”

“Where are we going to go?”

“Someplace else. Come morning, people are going to notice that Bubba and Jane have gone missing. Hell, they might wonder why they haven’t come back down with our shit. We don’t need to be here for that.”

Adam and Emma spent ten minutes or so policing the area for tools and equipment. He found his saw, ax and blade sharpener near the shelter he’d been building. A lot of work had gone into that thing. It was tough to think of leaving it behind.

As he returned to the Bronco, Emma asked, “What about the bodies?”

“Let ’em rot. What he was gonna do to you, I hope a wild pig feasts on his face chunks.” He opened the passenger-side door to get in.

“Can you drive tonight?” Emma asked. “I’m too . . .”

So was Adam. He was . . . too.

The adrenaline had done its job, and now that he was on the far side of it, all he wanted to do was sleep. And maybe cry a little. He’d always wondered if he would actually have the guts to do the things that he’d trained for all these years. He worried that he would chicken out, or that he would hesitate. Now, looking back, he didn’t remember thinking about anything. He just remembered taking action.

And now he remembered the noises. Not just the moans from Bubba, but the horrible resonating wet impacts of the rifle butt against flesh. He remembered the gunshots.

Before climbing behind the wheel, Adam stopped at the tailgate and leaned inside. He pulled the Glocks he’d taken from the hardware store out from behind the rucksack, where he’d stashed them. Both were holstered. He slipped one onto his belt and walked the other around to Emma in the passenger seat.