Go, he said. Don't look back.
But I can't stop watching.
He's methodical about it. No wasted motion, no hesitation. The second man breaks cover, and Riot puts him down before he makes it three steps. The third is smarter—stays behind the vehicle, trading shots, trying to pin Riot in place.
More vehicles on the road. The engines growl through the trees—reinforcements that are going to make this math impossible.
Riot hears them too. He breaks from cover, sprinting toward the treeline, toward me, and the third man rises to track him, and I grab a rock. Baseball-sized, rough-edged. My arm remembers Little League, the coach who said I had a decent arm for a girl, and I throw before I can talk myself out of it.
The rock catches the man in the shoulder. Not a kill shot—not even close—but it staggers him, throws off his aim, buys Riot the second he needs to reach the trees.
He crashes into cover beside me, breathing hard, and stares at me like I've grown a second head.
"Did you just?—"
"He was going to shoot you."
"With a rock?"
"It worked."
For a moment, something breaks through the operator mask—surprise, maybe, or the beginning of a laugh. His eyes crinkle at the corners. Up close, they're brown after all. Warm brown, with flecks of gold near the pupils. The kind of eyes that would be easy to get lost in, if I were the kind of woman who got lost in men's eyes.
I'm not. I'm definitely not.
He's looking at my mouth.
No. He's looking at me—all of me—like I'm a puzzle he didn't expect and can't quite solve. The weight of his attention makes my skin prickle.
Then the moment breaks, and he's all business again.
"Stay with me. We've got a two-minute head start, and they'll have numbers on us soon." He starts moving deeper into the trees, and I follow. "Also, for the record, that was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid."
"Can't it be both?"
The laugh escapes this time—short, sharp, almost startled out of him. "Yeah, sweetheart. I'm starting to think it can."
We run.
The forest is dense and unforgiving—undergrowth that catches at my legs, branches that whip across my face, terrain that slopes upward without warning. My lungs burn. The Merrells grip the uneven ground, find traction where lesserboots would slip, and I silently thank three years of weekend scrambles for teaching my feet how to read terrain.
Behind us, shouts. More shots, but distant—they're organizing, spreading out, trying to cut off escape routes.
Riot moves as if the forest were his native territory. He picks paths I wouldn't see, avoids dead ends I wouldn't recognize, and keeps a pace that's just below my breaking point. Every few minutes, he glances back—checking that I'm still there, still upright, still moving.
I don't know how long we run. Time stops meaning anything when your world narrows to the next footfall, the next breath, the next tree trunk to dodge.
Eventually, Riot slows. Stops. Listens.
The sounds of pursuit have faded—not gone, but farther. We've bought ourselves room.
"They'll regroup." He's not winded, which is annoying. "Call in more bodies. Set up a perimeter and try to box us in."
"What do we do?"
He looks at me—really looks, like he's seeing something he didn't expect. The kindergarten teacher who threw a rock at an armed cartel soldier. The woman in hiking boots and a fleece who kept pace through miles of hostile terrain without complaint.
"We keep moving," he says. "East. Deeper into the mountains."
