Page 131 of Shattered By the Currents

Raven’s phone vibrated from her back pocket. It had to be Connor. She hadn’t shown up at Trap when she was supposed to.

He’d come looking for her. She just had to stay alive until he got here.

Briar looked down at the phone in her hand to unlock it, and the second her gaze was off Raven, she charged forward. She grabbed the wrist holding the gun with both hands and shoved it up.

Briar cried out and fell backward, Raven dropping on top of her. When the side of Briar’s head slammed into the base of a tree, she groaned.

Raven scrambled to the nearest tree and used it to drag herself to her feet. The forest swayed, her knees threatening to buckle, but she didn’t let them. She didn’t have time to do anything but run.

She took off, slipped through the woods, falling into trees while trying to lose herself. She was faster than when she’d run from Herbert but still far from a hundred percent. She pushed through the exhaustion.

The sound of the river whooshed beside her, the current so strong that one glance almost tilted her off-balance.

“Raven!”

Her foot hit a tree stump, and she stumbled, only just catching herself.

“Get the hell back here!” Briar yelled.

She ran faster, pulling out her cell as she moved and glancing at the screen. Low signal. Shit.

Still, she hit his number.

It barely rang before he answered. “Raven? Where are you?”

“Connor! Thank God. Briar’s trying to kill me.”

“Where…” Static crackled over the line. “Please…” More static. “Now.”

She ran faster, her legs feeling so heavy it took every ounce of strength she had to remain on her feet. “We’re in the forest beside the residence. Connor, I?—”

The line cut out.

Crap. She tried to send a pin of her location, but an error sign popped up.

Her foot hit a rock this time, and she fell hard onto her stomach.

“There you are.”

She spun to her back as hurried footsteps approached, and without pause, kicked Briar in the kneecap. She cried out and fell. The other woman was lifting her gun when Raven dove on her, grabbing her wrist and rolling her to her back.

Briar rolled them again. They were moving toward the water’s rocky edge.

No. If she wound up in the water, she wasn’t sure she’d have the strength to pull herself out.

She put a second hand on Briar’s wrist and swung, forcing the gun to hit Briar hard in the head, right where she’d hit the tree.

Briar growled and dropped to the side. Then Raven was up and running again. She moved as far and fast as she could before finally collapsing behind a tree to breathe. To allow her tired body to rest.

She only felt like she’d been there for a minute, maybe less, when the crunch of a branch sounded close by.

Her heart jumped into her throat. She scanned the dirt around her for something to use as a weapon.

A rock. That was all there was.

She reached for it, gripped it firmly in the palm of her hand, then waited.

“Raven? Can you hear me?”