“Doc?” Wrecker again. His voice had a steel core now, the kind that makes you want to stand straighter.
“Smoke pocket,” Doc said. “Northeast of the bend. I have one.” He meant Amanda. He didn’t say her name on air. “Moving to you on count.”
“Copy,” Wrecker said. “Creek is hot. Push west if you can.”
We held. Sometimes that’s the entire job. We held until the gunshot rhythm changed and the trucks stopped trying to help and the men with vests remembered they didn’t get paid extra to die. We held until my lungs burned and my hands shook less because they’d run out of shake.
Then, the quiet.
Not real quiet. The fake kind that means reloads and regrouping and someone on a radio lying about how well it’s going. It was enough to take stock.
“Amanda?” I said into my sleeve.
Doc didn’t answer. The channel hissed.
“Amanda,” I said again, louder. “Answer me.”
Static. And then the nothing that tastes like metal.
I stood up too fast and Ranger caught the back of my jacket. “Wait,” he said, low. “Smoke’s still a liar.”
“I have to.”
Cap’s hand landed on my wrist, not hard, but the kind you feel in your elbow. “We sweep,” he said. “We don’t sprint into a net.”
“She had the drive,” I said, and swallowed the rest because it wanted to come out in a noise that wasn’t words. “She had it.”
“We’ll find her,” Cap said. “Doc’s not the losing type.”
We moved slow along the crease of the bank, heads below the line. Ghost scouted ten feet ahead and made a short chopping motion that meantclear enough. We edged into the spot where the smoke had been dumbest, and the ground was torn up like a small war had lost interest and left.
There was a footprint in the mud that wasn’t ours. A heel print that said hurry. Boot treads that didn’t match Wrecker’s or Ranger’s. Two sets, dragging. The marks scuffed out halfway like someone had thought about leaving breadcrumbs and then remembered they weren’t in a story.
My throat did that hot sting thing. I crouched and touched the place where a jacket had brushed a rock and left a thread. It was Amanda’s color. It could’ve been anyone’s. It wasn’t.
“She took the drive,” I said. It came out flat because the other choice was something that would break me in half.
Cap looked toward the tree line where the creek spat out toward the fire road. He listened like he listens to walls and hinges. His jaw went hard.
“And they took her,” he said.
