I put my head down, bellowed, and charged him like a bull. My head rammed into his stomach and he grunted as I forced him back towards the very edge of the cliff. But then he punched me in the kidneys again and I had to let him go. I straightened up, wheezing in pain and holding my side. He grabbed my shoulders, ready to throw me over the cliff.

That’s when I headbutted him as hard as I possibly could. My forehead smashed into his nose and he staggered back…and ran out of ground. I watched as he went over the edge and tumbled a hundred feet to the valley below. “That’s what we call a Glasgow Kiss,” I panted. “You wanker.”

Then I stumbled over to Becker’s car. Erin was wedged in the driver’s seat, trying to push the bomb out with her feet. “Get out of there!” I snapped.

“Pull it!” she hissed through gritted teeth.

I cursed, got my arms around the thing and heaved and with her pushing, too, it slithered off the seat and fell to the ground, narrowly missing my foot. But now we had a new problem: the massive weight of the bomb had been helping to hold the car on the cliff. Now it was gone, the car started to tip even faster. “Move!” I yelled.

She started to scooch forward towards me but the car was tipping too fast. Even as her feet reached me, the seats turned almost vertical. I lunged in, grabbed her sneaker and—

There was a horrible second as the car fell away from her. If one of her fingers got caught, if a seatbelt snagged on her….

But then the car was gone, tumbling and spinning in space, and Erin was dangling from my hand. I managed to take a couple of stumbling steps backwards, enough to pull her back onto solid ground, and then I fell flat on my ass. We lay there in the snow, panting and utterly spent but together. Then she got to her hands and knees and crawled just far enough that she could collapse with her head on my chest.

I heard a chopper overhead but I couldn’t be bothered to open my eyes. I just wrapped my arms around Erin and stroked her hair. Everything else could wait.

We lay cuddled there until a shadow fell across us. I looked up to see JD standing there, watching us.

I tightened my arms around Erin and stared back at him.

The emotions played across his face: anger, worry…and finally, hope. At last, he lifted his jaw and glared at me, but it was a glare I recognized, one I understood. You better not break her heart.

I nodded solemnly.

JD took two steps forward, crouched beside us and wrapped his arms around us, pulling us both to him in a three-way hug.

EPILOGUE

ERIN