Lone Defender. Shirlee McCoy

fear and fury driving him on. He should have realized what she’d planned. Should have known she wouldn’t do things his way. Not if it meant she might pull him down with her.

      He climbed until they were side by side, her trembling body just a few feet to his left. “Are you crazy!”

      “I think we both are,” she panted, her breathing barely controlled.

      “Focus, Grady. You lose your breath, you’ll lose your grip. Hold your position so I can tie your safety line.”

      “Too dangerous. Just keep going.”

      “Climbing without a safety—”

      “Jonas, shut up and climb, okay? Because I do not have the strength to do what I’m doing and argue with you.” She pulled up another few inches, found a handhold and kept moving.

      He followed, his gaze dropping to the desert floor. A hundred and thirty feet to rocky soil and certain death. He couldn’t let her fall. Couldn’t allow her to lose focus.

      He stayed silent, following her up inch by agonizing inch. No sign of their pursuers yet, but it was only a matter of time before someone looked up and saw them perched on the rock face.

      One shot from a high powered rifle and Skylar would be dead.

       Blood spilling out.

       Not this time. Please, God. Not this time.

      The prayer caught him by surprise. His faith had been so used up, so dried out after the murders, that he’d made no attempt to regain it. Had missed it only in a peripheral way. Church had become an empty ritual he did to assuage his family’s worries. Sermons were just words printed on a heart that was too hardened to acknowledge them.

      God was too far to reach, too big to care.

      And Jonas hadn’t cared, either.

      Until now.

      Now he wanted desperately to believe that the faith of his childhood was real and alive. That God could and would reach down and lend a hand.

      His fingers slipped on wet rock, his left foot sliding from its mooring. He forced himself to keep calm as he anchored himself again. Ascended another few feet.

      Losing focus was a sure way to die, and, if he died, Skylar might, too. He moved up another dozen feet, the cold air ripping through his shirt. Beside him, Skylar eased to the left. Up. To the right. Up. Slowly, surely, making progress.

      Maybe they’d make it to the top.

      And maybe the God who’d seemed so far away for so long was only a prayer away.

      Neither seemed likely, but Jonas forged on anyway, his knee-jerk prayer whispering through his mind, sinking into his soul as he pushed on toward the top of the mesa.