No flashlight. No hesitation. He navigates the terrain with an animal certainty, picking paths through underbrush that my eyes can’t even register. Diego keeps pace behind him, weapon still drawn, covering our rear. I’m sandwiched between them—protected, but also trapped. If Thorne decides to turn on us, there’s nowhere to go.
He doesn’t turn on us.
He doesn’t speak either. Just moves, silent and sure, while the drone searches the canopy somewhere behind us.
“Vehicle’s ahead.” First words in five minutes. “Stay low until we’re clear of the tree line.”
The SUV materializes out of a natural depression in the terrain—black paint over angular armor plating, covered with branches and camouflage netting. Military-spec, or close enough. No markings. No plates.
Thorne strips the covering with efficient movements. “Back seat. Keep your heads down until we hit the main road.”
Diego opens the rear door, guides me in, and slides in beside me. His hand finds mine in the darkness. Squeezes once. I’ve got you.
Thorne takes the driver’s seat. The engine starts with a muted growl—powerful but suppressed.
“Lights off for the first mile. Thirty seconds to clear the tree line.” He puts the SUV in gear. “The drone’s targeting logic is running about two seconds behind. Fragmented processing. Stay low, and we’ll outrun its solution window.”
We roll forward into the darkness.
The drone sound builds—closer, angrier, rotors straining as it searches for targets. I press myself against Diego, against the seat, making myself as small as possible.
Through the armored rear window, light blooms behind us. The crack of automatic weapons. Rounds hammering into trees and dirt.
But not into us.
The SUV bursts from the tree line onto a gravel road. Thorne floors it, and we surge forward.
Behind us, the drone’s weapons fire tracks across the forest floor—two seconds late. Three. The targeting lag is buying us the margin we need.
“Clear,” Thorne announces. His voice is flat. Bored, almost. Like extracting people from firefights is something he does before breakfast.
Diego releases a breath. His grip on my hand loosens—and that’s when I feel it.
Wet. Warm.
Blood.
“You’re hit.”
Diego looks down at his side like he’s noticing it for the first time. A dark stain spreading across his shirt, just below the ribs. Not arterial—the color is wrong—but more than nothing.
“Graze,” he says. “Caught it in the clearing. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine.” I’m already pulling at his shirt, trying to see the wound. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“We were busy not dying.”
Thorne’s eyes find us in the rearview mirror. He doesn’t comment. Just reaches across to the glove compartment and pulls out a first aid kit—the real kind, military-grade, not the cheap convenience store version.
“Field dressing in the green pouch,” he says. “Hemostatic gauze if the bleeding won’t stop. We’re forty minutes from a safe house. He’ll live.”
“How reassuring.” But I take the kit, tear it open.
The wound is ugly but shallow. A furrow carved through the meat of his side, maybe three inches long. It’s already starting to clot; the blood flow is sluggish rather than pumping.
“Through and through on the soft tissue,” Diego says, clinical. “No organ involvement. Just needs to be cleaned and dressed.”
“Stop diagnosing yourself and hold still.”
