I shoulder it up, glass still intact on this side. Cold air rushes in, smelling like wet dirt and pine.
“Feet first,” I whisper.
She swings through, dropping lightly into the ferns outside, then looks up, hand raised.
“Bag,” she hisses.
I lower the duffel, and she catches it with a grunt.
Then I haul myself through, landing beside her in a crouch.
The forest is dark and alive.
Crickets.
Distant owl.
Closer, the crunch of boots on snow-crusted leaves from the front of the cabin, voices low and angry.
Backup.
Of course.
“Move,” I breathe.
We run.
Branches whip at my arms, cold air burning my lungs. The car is a dark lump in the trough between two pines, exactly where we left it.
I throw myself at the driver’s side door, fumbling the handle. It opens with a groan that sounds deafening.
Lark is already tossing the duffel in the back. “Keys?” she pants.
I flash them. “On it.”
We piled in within seconds—she in the passenger seat, slamming her door, me behind the wheel.
The first shout goes up from the direction of the cabin.
“Back! They’re out back!”
I turn the key. The engine coughs, then roars to life. Headlights stay off. We can’t risk spotlighting ourselves.
“Seatbelt,” I snap, flooring it.
The vehicle lurches forward, tires spitting mud and pine needles. We bounce over roots, rocks, and a half-rotted stump. My teeth rattle, but the engine holds.
Behind us, a flashlight beam cuts through the trees, wild and swinging. Something thuds against the car’s rear quarter panel—a bullet, maybe, or just a branch. No time to check.
The old service road looms ahead, a darker line between the trees.
I wrench the wheel, sending us fishtailing onto it, gravel and slush crunching under the tires. The car skids, catches, straightens.
“Knight,” Lark says, voice too steady for how wide her eyes are. “There’s a guy with a gun on the road.”
Of course there is.
He’s standing dead center of the track like he owns it, gun up, braced, totally unfazed by two tons of car barreling down on him.
