Wrecker peeled left toward the creek; Ranger slipped off the right like he’d oiled the ground; Ghost vanished down the side of the building. Doc already had a hand on Amanda’s arm and the other at my back. We ran bent into the kind of wind that has fingers.
Gunfire ate the morning.
It wasn’t TV gunfire. No long bursts for show. Short, ugly pops that got work done. The first one took bark off a trunk six inches above my head; the second hit the metal post to my left and spit bright sparks into my cheek.
“Down!” Doc shoved us behind a concrete parking stop. He pulled Amanda with him into the shadow of a wheel well and I found the other side, cold and slick.
The spotlight started to walk. Cap moved with it, not away from it, off-angle, faster than the light could guess. He sighted on the second truck’s headlight, exhaled, and fired.
The bulb blew with a satisfying crack and a white pop that flashed the whole front bay into a stuttering freeze-frame. Men flinched. Every single one. That bought seconds. He did it again to the first truck. Two dead eyes. They went half-blind.
“Move!” Wrecker shouted. “Use it!”
We moved.
Doc hauled Amanda toward the tree line, both of them swallowed in diesel smoke and that hot-iron smell headlights make when they die ugly. I ran the angle Cap had created, low and fast. Someone behind the third truck saw us and put three rounds into the space where my stomach had just been. Cap answered with two of his own and the man remembered other problems.
The floodlights hiccupped, Ghost had found the breaker box. Half the yard went dim, a gray shaky light that felt like a dirty promise. It was enough.
“Ariel!” Amanda’s voice, close, then gone under the engine noise.
“I’m here!” I yelled, then bit it back because yelling was stupid. “I’m here,” I said again, closer to the ground, like that made it true. I found Doc’s shape in the churned mud and the darker shape of my sister’s jacket hunched against his.
“We go now,” Doc said. Calm, like the room wasn’t on fire.
“We can’t yet.” Amanda’s hands were inside her jacket again, busy. The portable drive was a hard rectangle against her chest. She fumbled it higher under the zipper like she could hide it from a bullet. “If we leave now, they’ll scrub it. The manifests, the sublease, all of it.”
“Amanda,” I snapped, didn’t mean to snap, did it anyway. “Leave it. We don’t die for a spreadsheet.”
“It’s not a spreadsheet,” she said, fierce and small. “It’s proof.”
Someone in a security jacket ran from the side door toward the trucks, radio at his mouth, eyes on the bay. He tripped over a fallen pallet strap and kept going like embarrassment wasn’t a thing that could live here. Two men in vests took cover behind the third truck and shot toward the tree line like it had personally offended them. I could feel bullets making decisions in the air.
Cap slid into the space next to our concrete bar and put his shoulder to mine like we’d planned it. He scanned, sharp and quick. “We break on my call. Doc, you take Amanda. Ariel covers. Wrecker and Ranger have the flanks.”
“Copy,” Doc said. He had Amanda’s elbow again, but she still had the drive clenched like a rosary.
“Leave it,” I told her, eyes on the trucks. “We come back for it.”
“It disappears if I drop it,” she said. “They’ll burn every server and throw the ashes in the creek. They know what they’re doing.”
“So do we,” Cap said, not looking at either of us. He was watching the spotlight swing back, the way the man behind it was braced. “Ready,”
The spotlight found us. Too slow this time. I had the rifle up before my head finished yelling at my hands about not being thisperson. I put two rounds into the square of light the same way Cap had done with the truck and felt a mean thrill when glass blew, and metal screamed.
“Go!” Cap barked. He put a third shot into the floodlight above the dock, and the yard went gutter-dark, streetlamp glow and engine fire and the kind of dawn that doesn’t help.
Doc yanked Amanda into the dip where the apron met dirt and moved. I stayed at their left shoulder like a dog that finally learned heel at the worst possible time. Cap covered our right, one step back, his body between us and the trucks whenever there was a choice to be that.
We hit the fence. The gate was chained open now; the chain sagged like it had regrets. The opening was a mouth that could bite. We went through anyway.
Trees grabbed at my sleeves. Mud went slick underfoot, then roots lifted like ankles waiting to be turned. Doc hauled Amanda over a trunk with his whole arm. I started to think maybe the plan could work; then the wind changed and brought the fire back in our faces. Not fire-fire. Not yet. Headlight smoke. Oil. Powder. The kind of burn that eats up the soft parts of your lungs.
“Left,” Cap said. “Creek cut.”
I veered, trusting his compass more than mine. Someone yelled behind us, the sound you make when you see a goal and want credit for it. Another spotlight licked the trees and found only bark. Ghost had done his job ugly and thorough.
We crossed through a low fog of it and burst into the thin strip of trees that meant creek. The water made small noises like it didn’t care who lived and who didn’t. It never does.
