Those jeans fit her very well. I file that away, too, mostly because I’m male and have a pulse.
"Mitzy, I need terrain options. Looking for defensible ground."
"Already on it. Two hundred meters south-southeast, there's a rock formation—natural choke point. You can control the approach, limit their angles."
"Send it to my nav."
The coordinates pop up on my wrist display. I adjust our heading, pushing harder than I should with a civilian in tow.
But Evie keeps up.
Her breathing is ragged now, harsh at the edges, but her feet don't falter. She's running the way people run when they've runbefore—not the panicked scramble of someone fleeing for the first time, but the measured expenditure of someone who knows how to manage their reserves. Someone who understands that endurance isn't about going fast. It's about not stopping.
Who the hell is this woman?
The rock formation materializes through the trees—a jumble of granite boulders, chest-high, creating a natural defensive position. I pull Evie down behind the largest one, pressing her back against cold stone.
We're both breathing hard. Her body is warm against my chest, her hair brushing my jaw, and the scent of her—sweat and fear and something soft underneath, like vanilla or clean cotton—cuts through the pine and adrenaline.
Focus.
"Stay here." I force myself to step back. "Stay down. Don't move unless I tell you."
Her eyes search my face again. That same look from before—like she's reading me, cataloging me, trying to decide what I'm made of. Up close, I can see gold flecks in the brown of her irises. A tiny scar near her left eyebrow, silvered with age.
"Be careful," she says.
The words are simple. Nothing special. But something in her voice makes them land harder than they should.
"Always am." I give her the grin again—the charming one, the easy one—but it feels different this time. Less armor, more... something else.
I move to a position where I can cover the approach. Weapon up, breathing controlled. The joker's gone now, packed away in the same mental compartment where I keep Joey's face and Deacon's last words and all the other things that don't fit inside a grin. What's left is colder. Sharper.
The forest is quiet except for the whisper of wind through pines and the distant call of a bird that doesn't know it's in a war zone.
Then: movement. A shadow between trees, forty meters out.
I wait.
The first tango emerges from cover, moving in a tactical crouch, weapon sweeping. He's good—professional, patient, checking his corners. Former military, maybe, or cartel-trained. There's a difference in how they move. Military training leaves patterns, habits, and predictable behaviors. Cartel training is wilder, more brutal, and less concerned with rules of engagement.
This one moves military. Which means he's precise. Which means he's dangerous.
But he's focused on the obvious approach, the path we should have taken if we'd kept running straight.
He doesn't see me.
Two rounds, center mass. He drops.
The second tango reacts fast—drops behind a tree, returns fire. Bark explodes near my head, splinters stinging my cheek. I shift position, use the rocks for cover, and count the seconds between his shots. Three-round bursts, then pause. Checking position, probably. Trying to locate me by sound.
Amateur mistake. In a firefight, silence is just another kind of weapon.
I wait.
Silence. More silence. The kind of quiet that makes men nervous, makes them doubt, makes them do stupid things to break the tension.
He does something stupid.
