“I’m going on three,” Max said. “One, two, three.”

On three, Lyle rose to the top of the bank and fired a shot at Reed’s last position. Max sprang over the bank and ran with everything he had. Shots rang out from the hillside, but whether Reed was firing at him or Lyle, Max couldn’t tell. All he knew was that he hadn’t been hit. Lyle fired back from the river.

Max charged past Lyle’s backpack, scooping up a fistful of clothing as he passed. He cut right, knowing that Reed’s last position was toward the left side of the hill. When he got to the woods, he kept moving, breaking sticks and thrashing through the scrub, making as much noise as he could, hoping to draw Reed away.

In the penumbra of the fading sun, the branches and thorns seemed invisible, tearing at Max’s face and arms and chest from all directions. He pushed his way up the slope, his feet churning like those of a running back charging the goal line. At some point, the sound of gunfire had ceased, replaced by the thumping of his pulse. Had Reed been hit? Or had he given up his nest to chase Max? Either way, Lyle would be able to get to safety.

As he neared the top of the ridge, Max stopped to listen but could only hear his own heavy breathing. A few feet ahead, two fallen pine trees lay crisscrossed in a natural barricade. He crawled between the trunks, aimed his shotgun in the direction that he thought Reed would come from, and looked at the clothing in his hand: a coat and a wool vest. His core would be protected at least.

When he took off his wet shirt, he saw blood oozing out of a wound in his side. Had he been hit? He touched it and could feel that it was a cut—not a bullet wound. He must have hit a sharp branch on his dash up the hill. He hadn’t even felt it. His knee throbbed with pain and he remembered hitting it on a rock as he came up out of the river. All in all though, he had come through the skirmish relatively unscathed.

And he still had that one shotgun shell left—one last chance to stop Reed Harris.

CHAPTER 68

Reed had been working his way around Lyle’s flank when the second man opened fire, the boom of the shotgun sending Reed diving to the ground. A spray of pine needles and leaf confetti marked the path of the shotgun pellets. The man was shooting at the wrong spot.

That’s when Reed saw Lyle lunge into the rapids, scrambling to retreat back to Minnesota. Reed took aim and squeezed off three rounds, at least one of the bullets dropping Lyle into the water.

“Die, you prick,” Reed yipped with his first big grin in days.

The shotgun fired again, peppering the trees to Reed’s left. Reed fired two shots into the far woods and ducked behind a tree just as a third shot ripped through the tree above him.