Okay. She knew who the boss was now. And she would listen to the little beast.

She finished the jerky, then ate several bites of cheese, not even bothering to slice it off the brick. Boss baby needed food.

After several moments, the shaking of her hands subsided.

When did my hands start shaking?

She thought back over the last half mile of terrain and realized she remembered none of it. It had been like driving a car down a familiar highway with no other vehicles in sight. She’d been so deep in her thoughts, she couldn’t remember taking bearings and adjusting her trajectory, but she knew she had. Knew she was on the right course. She was almost to the flat where she’d watched Xavier tumble down the slope.

She took another bite, then put the brick of cheddar back in her pack.

It was time to find her lover.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Xavier’s head swam, and he guessed he might have a concussion in addition to broken ribs.

Good times.

But fuck. He was alive, and that was more than he’d had a right to expect. The moment the merc threw the grenade at him was frozen in his mind. It was like he saw every moment through a disjointed strobe effect.

The grenade in the air, closer. Closer.

Batting at it with the empty Glock, trying to send it back downslope, toward the merc.

But he’d swung too hard, and the projectile went to the left, heading for third base. And it hit that rock and tumbled into the crevasse that snaked across the hillside, a split caused by the heavy rainfall of the last few days.

The shock of the explosion, the rocking of the hillside. He’d stood for a moment on the precipice, knowing the slightest movement would collapse the ground beneath his feet.

But then the ground dissolved anyway, and the next thing he knew, he was gripping roots, hanging on with his one good arm as the other had been torqued when he grabbed at the collapsing hillside. Then the tree he gripped came down, with him clinging to the side.

It was a jumble from there. A blur of pain and motion. He and his tree plummeted into the pool. He lost his grip on the trunk and slipped underwater—or rather, undermud—and had grappled for the surface with his one good arm, the other hanging limp and useless.

He caught a branch and tried to surface, but couldn’t through the leaves and twigs. He was going to suffocate in draping moss that grabbed on to his face.