"You're not fine, you're bleeding." She's at my side, pulling up my shirt to examine the wound. "This needs treatment."
"Later."
"No, now." She tears strips from her already-ruined blouse. "Sit still."
"Where did you learn field medicine?"
"Red Cross volunteer in college. Seemed like a useful skill." She ties off the bandage, gentle but efficient. "This'll hold until we can do better."
"We need to move. Those shots will bring more." More concerning is how they found us so quickly.
She helps me up, and I notice she's taken one of the dead mercenaries' weapons—a compact HK416.
"You know how to use that?"
"Point and squeeze, right?" At my look, she smiles grimly. "Daddy was a Marine. I've been shooting since I was a kid. Just never shot at people before today."
We move faster now, urgency overriding exhaustion. The ranger station appears through the trees, and miracle of miracles, there's a truck parked outside.
"Wait." I hold her back, studying the scene. "Too easy."
But scans reveal nothing, and we're out of time. More voices behind us, closing fast.
"We go fast," I tell her. "I'll cover, you get the truck started."
She nods, and we break from cover together. No shots, no ambush. Maybe luck's finally on our side.
The truck's unlocked—rangers up here don't expect theft. Savannah finds the keys, and the engine roars to life.
"Go, go, go!"
I dive in as she accelerates, tires spinning on gravel. In the mirrors, figures emerge from the forest, muzzle flashes, but we're already around the bend, gaining speed.
"Where to?" she asks, hands steady on the wheel despite everything.
"South. Los Angeles." I pull out her laptop, praying it survived the chaos. It powers on, and relief floods through me. "We've got thirty-six hours to stop Prometheus. Time to go on offense."
"How?"
"You've got their membership list. We're going to start dismantling their network, one member at a time."
She glances at me, something fierce in her expression. "Together?"
"Wouldn’t have it any other way."
NINE
Savannah
The truck smellslike pine air freshener and old coffee, rattling with every pothole as I push it faster than it wants to go down the mountain road. Sawyer works on my laptop in the passenger seat, his blood seeping through the makeshift bandage I applied, and I'm trying not to think about how close those bullets came to taking him from me.
Which is insane. I shouldn't feel like losing him would break something fundamental in me.
But here's the thing about trauma—it strips away all the careful constructions we build around ourselves. The polite distances, the professional boundaries, the measured responses.
When someone saves your life, when you trust them with your survival, when they bleed for you, the typical timeline for emotional connection gets thrown out the window.
I've known Sawyer for maybe a day, but I've seen him kill for me, take bullets for me, jump from a tower with me in his arms. That's more truth than three years with Nathan ever revealed. Nathan showed me what he wanted me to see. Sawyer has shown me who he is when everything is on the line.
