“Means he’s moving people,” I said. “Here.”
“Here as in ‘nearby’ or here as in,”
“Here as in he found our ridge,” Ghost said, looking past all of us toward the tree line beyond the window. “He knows someone’s up.”
The radio spat again. A different voice, younger. “Unit A, hold till bay’s cleared. B through D, push to tree line. No marks on the humanitarian. Repeat, no marks. Patrols sweep outbuildings.”
Amanda’s face went white in the lines and red everywhere else. She reached for Ariel without looking. Ariel found her hand like it was a rope thrown off a boat.
Wrecker didn’t waste the pause. “Positions,” he said, already moving. “Ranger, back door. Ghost, lights. Doc, you’re glued to those two until I say otherwise.”
The ranger kid found his courage fast when someone told him what to do. He snapped the interior deadbolt and checked the window latches. Good instincts. Panic is loud; work is quiet.
I went to the window on the east side and slid the shade with two fingers. Daylight had climbed the ridge in a mean, gray band. The access road down below was empty. The lot was empty. The woods weren’t. You couldn’t see people in them, but the trees told on them, little tremors, a bird that decided not to land, the way cold air carries sound when nobody’s breathing.
“They’ll try to clock who came and who goes,” I said. “We’re a station. We have a truck. We have a radio. We have warm bodies. We look like a problem and a prize.”
“Can we run?” the ranger kid asked, honest.
“We don’t run,” Wrecker said. “We leave.”
“Difference,” Ranger said, deadpan.
“Yeah,” Wrecker said. “One’s blind.”
Amanda looked from the map to the door to the radio. She was doing the math of how many choices you can make at once before they all count as one. “He’s fast,” she said. “How did he find us this fast?”
“Because we told the world we were here,” I said, not loving the answer. “We lit up a radio and called our people. He owns more ears than we do.”
“So, he heard me,” Amanda said, like she wanted to fight the air for the right to take it back.
“He hears everything,” Ghost said. “Doesn’t mean he understands it.”
The radio hissed. “Bay clear,” the young voice said. “Ridge units advance.”
Every head turned to me like I was supposed to have a lever to throw that would drop a wall between us and an idea. I didn’t. What I had was exit routes; the way the gravel slid off the accessroad; the fact that the Crew doesn’t leave a mess in a place that feeds locals.
“Pack it,” I said. “No evidence you were ever here. Ranger, you lead with the ranger kid. Doc, you take the sisters. Ghost, lights out on a thirty count. Wrecker, you’re with me.”
“Where,” Wrecker asked, because he likes to make me say my bad ideas out loud.
“West path,” I said. “Creek bed, ten down. We break line of sight and cut south to the fire road. Two trucks split east and west. Nobody drives the main for a mile. If they want the station, they can have the empty box.”
“Copy,” Ghost said. He already had the light switches mapped in his head. It’s his thing.
Ariel stood. Not smooth. Purposeful. She pulled the parka tighter and scanned the pile on the desk with one sweep. Water bottle. The printout stack. The folded map. She grabbed the map and shoved it into Amanda’s bag without asking.
“Hey,” Amanda said, not fighting, just making sure she’d remember where it went.
“We don’t leave proof on the table,” Ariel said. “That’s your line.”
Amanda blinked like she’d just been quoted to herself. “Yeah. Okay.”
Doc moved them toward the back door, hand on Amanda’s elbow, then Ariel’s shoulder. He didn’t herd. He just made a lane. Ranger opened the door to a crack and did the look a man does when he learned to count in places where counting saves lives, breath fog, wind direction, nothing moving that shouldn’t, everything moving that should. He nodded.
“Go,” Wrecker said.
They went.
