Unstoppable by Laura Griffin

they know where we are.”
    Another rat-tat-tat-tat.
    Gage cursed. He needed to get her out of here before these assholes got them pinned down. If it were just him or him with his teammates, they’d wait these guys out and pick them off, one by one. But he wasn’t willing to put Kelsey in the middle of a firefight.
    “Get your—”
    “I got it.”
    He glanced down and saw that she was, indeed, clutching her weapon. Good girl. He took her arm with his left hand. “There’s a ravine just west of us. On three, we’re going to sprint for it. Try not to make a lot of noise, okay?”
    She made a little squeak of agreement.
    “One . . . two . . .”
    Ping! A shot ricocheted off the rock near his head.
    “Three!” he said and they made a dash.

Eight
     
    Kelsey stumbled over the rocks, not knowing if her next breath would be her last. Her right hand hurt from gripping her pistol. Her left hand hurt from gripping Gage’s belt. And her ankle was pretty much on fire.
    “Where are we going?” she asked and heard the quiver in her voice. They’d hiked a long time without a word. It had seemed like hours, but maybe it had been only minutes. That last burst of machine-gun fire—so close it had made her ears ring—had wiped out even the slightest capacity to think.
    Gage halted and gripped her arm.
    “What?” she whispered.
    “Listen,” he said in a voice she could barely hear.
    She listened. She heard nothing. Just like she saw nothing. She had no inkling of anything around her, with the exception of Gage. He was a giant, rock-hard presence beside her. And somehow, miraculously, he seemed to have an unerring sense of where they were going.
    “What do you hear?” she whispered.
    “Nothing. That’s good.” He pressed her hand against his waist, making sure her fingers were still hooked around his belt. “Let’s keep going. I’m pretty sure we’ve lost them.”
    They moved forward again, and Kelsey tried to breathe. She willed her heart to slow down.
    The ground beneath her feet grew steeper. The air felt lighter. A breeze stirred. She still couldn’t see but she knew somehow that they were coming out of the ravine.
    “Where are we going?”
    “West, around the mesa.”
    “But isn’t the camp north east ?”
    “I don’t want to go back the way we came. We’ll skirt the mesa, then go straight north, then cut east as soon as I’m sure our tail’s clear.”
    Kelsey’s mind reeled. Walking around the mesa could take hours, and that was in daylight. The thought of hiking so far in the pitch-dark, over this treacherous landscape, seemed impossible.
    But Gage said they needed to do it, so they’d do it. He was the SEAL. She was the lab rat who’d gotten caught up in some horrible game of cat and mouse, and she was by no means confident she was going to make it out alive. At least not without help.
    “How’s the ankle?”
    “Fine.” How had he known about that? She hadn’t uttered a word of complaint.
    “You need me to carry you?”
    Yeah, right. “It’s fine,” she said. “I don’t think you could, anyway. I’m not exactly a featherweight.”
    “Doesn’t matter. If it starts to hurt I’ll carry you.”
    “It’s fine, ” she said. They were running for their lives from armed thugs, and yet that tiny insult made her eyes sting with tears.
    She was definitely losing it. She needed to get a grip on her emotions. With every painful step, she told herself to just keep moving, to just keep up with him. Forget about everything else and just get back to safety.
    “Interesting place for a tunnel,” Gage said. “Not a major urban area within a hundred miles.”
    “Maybe that’s the point.”
    “Interesting tunnel, too.”
    “How do you mean?”
    He glanced back at her over his shoulder. “It’s clean.”
    She scoffed at him. It had smelled like car exhaust. And if her knees and palms were any indication, the place was filthy. “By what standard?”
    “By illegal border tunnel standards.