Sarah’s voice cut through the night, sharp and precise as she spoke into a radio.
“I have visual on the target. She’s moving uphill toward grid four. Cut her off.”
The words sent a fresh surge of fear through Annie’s chest, but they also snapped something into clarity. They weren’t improvising. They were coordinating.
She forced her thoughts to slow even as her legs burned.
Panic gets you killed.
She had seen it too many times in case files. Victims who ran without thinking. Who made themselves predictable. Who exhausted themselves before the real danger ever reached them.
Think like a detective.
Think like Jack.
Jack wouldn’t let himself be driven where they wanted him. He would use the land. He would break patterns. He would refuse to become prey.
Annie veered sharply, changing direction and angling back toward the cave system. If she could reach the tunnels, she might vanish into the mountain the way they had before. Stone didn’t care about tracking devices. Rock didn’t care about radios.
But as she scrambled downslope, her boots slipping on loose shale, a terrible realization struck her.
She was heading straight toward the logging station—toward Jack, toward the sabotage site—and the truth slammed into her with crushing force. If they were tracking her, she wasn’t escaping danger. She was delivering it. Her chest constricted as distant flashes of light burst below, followed an instant later bythe unmistakable crack of gunfire. “Jack!” The cry tore from her before she could stop it, echoing across the mountainside.
She staggered as the image formed too clearly in her mind—Jack alone near the vehicles, limited ammunition, no warning.
I led them to him.
The guilt was crushing, immediate, threatening to drop her to her knees.
“No,” she whispered fiercely, forcing air into her lungs. “Not happening.”
She changed direction again, this time deliberately, recklessly, driving herself downhill. She was no longer trying to escape.
She was trying to intervene.
She tore through the forest, branches whipping her face, roots snagging her feet. Sarah’s voice rang behind her, barking coordinates, redirecting unseen teammates. Annie no longer cared about silence or strategy. Only speed.
“Please, Lord,” she prayed as her lungs burned. “Please let him still be alive. Please give me time.”
The slope steepened, forcing her into a half-slide, half-run. Rocks scattered beneath her weight. Pine needles slicked the earth. The sound of gunfire echoed again, closer now.
She burst from the trees into the clearing.
The sight stopped her cold.
Two men stood near the disabled SUV, their weapons lowered but ready. Between them lay a body.
Even in the fractured light, even from this distance, she recognized the shape of him. The breadth of his shoulders. The fall of his dark jacket.
Jack.
He wasn’t moving.
The world seemed to tilt.
For one suspended moment, the forest, the voices, the danger all blurred into irrelevance.
Jack lay motionless on the ground.
