We find her with a mile of bad road between us and not enough time to drive it.
Micah pings my phone with a pin drop and a grainy still from a motel camera—faded red doors, a flickering Vacancy sign, and Travis’s profile, half-turned. Room number stenciled crooked on the peeling frame: 6.
Eagle Creek Motel. Two towns over. Cash desk. No questions asked.
Sheriff Tom Donaldson rolls the Silverado into the gravel lot beside the fire road where we’re staging and kills the lights. Hale’s already there, leaning on the hood of his truck with that dead-calm look he gets when the question isn’tifbuthow.Two deputies check rifles behind the truck; another hands out radios with fresh batteries. The air tastes like snow and metal and old cigarettes.
“She inside?” Tom asks, straight to it.
“Room six,” Micah answers, voice low in our comms. He’s back at the command laptop in Tom’s rig, eyes on three municipal cameras and one ancient security feed he coerced to life. “Carrick went in with her twenty-seven minutes ago. He hasn’t come out. One buddy posted by the ice machine, south end. Another in a beater sedan across the street. They’re not great at their jobs.”
“Three outside, one inside,” I say. “Could be more.”
“Could be,” Hale agrees. “Assume worse.”
Tom tips his hat toward the motel. “We do this quiet until we can’t.”
I nod. Quiet is a language I never forgot.
We gather over the hood, breath fogging. I unroll a motel printout Micah texted—L-shaped building, thirteen doors, two stairwells, ice machine by the laundry.
“Stack on six,” I say. “Hale on my six. Deputies take the exterior: Miles, you babysit our ice-machine genius; Sosa, you keep the sedan from playing hero. Tom, hold the lot and block exits. Once we breach, we keep it fast—Carrick’s the target, Greta’s the reason.”
“On the ‘reason,’” Tom says, eyeing me, “you good to talk instead of tackle when you see her?”
“No,” I say. “But I will.”
Hale laughs lightly. “I’ll keep him honest.”
My shoulder itches where the dart hit earlier. I roll it out, flex my hand. Rage is still there, cold and clean. It sharpens everything.
“Window or door?” Hale murmurs.
“Door,” I say. “These old windows stick, and the last thing we need is a squeal announcing us. Hinges are on the inside; frame looks tired. I’ll pop it low—shock and awe—and you clear left.”
Micah’s voice crackles in my ear. “Heads up: sedan just lit a cigarette. He isn’t looking at the door. Ice-machine guy’s on the phone, bored out of his skull. Carrick’s moving in the room—one heat signature at the bed level. One by the window. Can’t see her.”
My jaw tightens. “Copy.”
We move.
No conversation. No rally cry. Just four men breaking apart like shadow and night air and reassembling as a line of intent. I feel the old rhythm awaken in my bones—doorways, corners, angles, time. Under it, Gret a’s laugh finds me like a small flame in a dark place and I carry it with me.
We reach the breezeway. The neon sign buzzes overhead. A TV mutters through thin walls two doors down; somewhere, someone coughs. I can smell mildew and old smoke and the tang of a fried compressor chugging against winter. Room 6is seven paces from the stairwell, door paint flaking like sunburn.
I put my ear to the wood. Male voice, low, then a beat of silence. A woman’s breath—tight, contained, the way you breathe when you don’t want to cry.
“Greta,” I send into nothing, like a prayer. “Hold.”
I twist a strip of tape around the latch to keep the door from relatching if it swings; old habit. Hale takes position high and right; I post low and left. Tom’s guys ghost away—one to the icemachine, one to the curb. Tom is the weight out in the lot that saysno one runs.
I give Hale the count under my breath. “Three… two…”
I hit the lock with my shoulder low and hard. The frame gives with a hollow bark and the door slaps the stopper, bouncing open.
We flood the threshold.
Room stinks of motel dust and fear. Left side: dresser, TV, bathroom door cracked. Right side: chair, curtained window. Straight ahead: bed with a thin floral spread, Greta zip-tied at the wrists, sitting on the edge, eyes huge and bright andalive.
