LANYON Josh by Dangerous Ground (L-id) [M-M] Page B

of mud silenced Will. He watched Taylor camouflage his own face.

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    The shooting had stopped and the silence was nerve-wrenching.
    Bushes rustled noisily down the path. A tall shadow staggered drunkenly out of the trees. Taylor breathed an obscenity. Before Will had a chance to work it out, he spotted muzzle flash to the left. A rifle opened fire and the second rifle joined in a moment later. There was an animal scream as bullets tore apart the shrubs and low-hanging tree limbs.
    Will tried to get lower, but molded to the ground was about as low as it got.
    Silence. They could hear Bonnie and Orrin thrashing about in the bushes.
    “Oh my God,” screeched the woman. “It’s Stitch!”
    Will picked up the lower murmur of Orrin speaking too, but his voice didn’t carry as well.
    “Well, what was he doing here?”
    More muted words from Orrin.
    “Christ,” Will breathed. He glanced at Taylor. He could only make out the shine of his eyes.
    “I thought I hit him harder than that,” Taylor said almost inaudibly. He didn’t seem particularly distressed as he glanced at Will. “One down, two to go,” and Will saw the glimmer of his smile.
    Abruptly, Orrin and Bonnie started firing again, startling Taylor into immobility. A lot of firepower raking through the vegetation -- you had to respect that -- but the shooting seemed to be moving in the wrong direction -- away from them, and it began to seem that Orrin and Bonnie were just taking their frustrations out in ammo.
    Taylor cracked open the barrel of the .22, checked the magazine and swore very softly. “Three cartridges,” he mouthed to Will.
    Not good.
    Under the barrage of rifle shots, Taylor nudged Will back into motion, guiding him with one hand locked on his arm. They wove their way through the ferns and bushes, hunched down, stopping every few feet to listen.
    Taylor pulled him down, and Will knelt, trying not to lose his balance. Taylor’s hands felt over him, covering Will’s for a fleeting moment, as Taylor groped for the cords binding his wrists. Will could hear the grin in his whispered, “So…did you miss me?”
    “I thought you were dead,” Will said simply. He couldn’t joke, couldn’t cover, couldn’t pretend it had been anything but what it seemed: the end of everything he cared about -- made all the worse by the realization that he hadn’t accepted how important Taylor was to him until it was too late.
    Taylor said calmly, “Yeah, sorry about that.” And from his tone Will knew that Taylor at least partly understood what he wasn’t saying. “Are you okay? They didn’t rough you up too much?”
    For a minute Will couldn’t manage his voice. “You shouldn’t have come back for me,” he got out finally.

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    “You have the car keys.” Taylor was working the knots frantically. Thin, strong fingers wriggling and tugging -- apparently without luck. “ Fuck .”
    “I can run like this if I have to,” he reassured softly.
    Bullshit with which Taylor didn’t even bother to argue.
    He did more picking and pulling and plucking and prying, and finally Will felt the cords around his wrists loosen and fall away. He shook his hands free, and Taylor grabbed up the rope and stuffed it into his jacket pocket, which was good thinking since it was hard to know what might come in handy later.
    Clenching his jaw against the torture of blood rushing back into his arms and fingers, Will was dimly aware of Taylor’s hands rubbing, trying to aid circulation. He was astonished when Taylor suddenly pulled him into his arms, lowering his head to Will’s. For a moment he was held fiercely. He felt Taylor’s lips graze his cheekbone, and then Taylor had let him go again, turned away.
    Will yanked him back, running his hands over him until he found the bullet hole in his jacket.
    “I knew it. You were