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No answer.
I followed the noise she made and hit a slippery slope buried beneath dry leaves. My boots skidded, and I slid several feet before catching myself against a tree trunk.
I shoved off and kept going.
For a woman I’d named Mouse, she was making one hell of a racket. And the fact that those shorter legs were making me work this hard to catch her was becoming embarrassing.
Another branch cracked ahead.
“Mouse, slow the fuck down!”
Nothing.
I pushed through a wall of thorny brush, earning several new scratches I could add to my growing collection, and finally caught sight of her. The backpack bounced against her shoulders as she ran with no attempt to hide her trail or check the ground in front of her.
Then she disappeared again.
“Isabella!”
She kept running.
There was no strategy in it. No checking where she put her feet, no listening before she moved, none of the careful patience I’d watched her use inside the dungeon.
She was simply running.
Then the terrain ahead began to change.
The trees thinned so gradually that I almost missed it at first. The heavy canopy broke apart. Wind hit my face.
The light ahead opened too wide.
I slowed for half a stride.
There should have been more trees.
More mountain.
Instead, through the thinning trunks, I saw the sky.
Too much fucking sky.
My stomach dropped before I ever saw the edge.
“Isabella!”
I shoved Ciro’s pistol into my waistband at my right hip and ran as hard as I could.
I crashed through the brush, knocking branches aside. Loose volcanic soil shifted under my next step, sending stones skittering downhill ahead of me.
Isabella broke through the last line of growth several yards away.
Beyond her was nothing.
I hit the open ground behind her at a dead run.
“Stop!”
Her right boot came down on a patch of loose black soil.
