I don't look back.
Violent, branch lightning webs continuously across the bruised, purple-black sky. It's a relentless, blinding strobe that refuses to fade, illuminating the violently thrashing timber line in jagged, terrifying flashes. The massive pines are bent completely horizontal, groaning and snapping under the impossible atmospheric pressure and wind.
Addy stumbles over an exposed root. She loses her grip on my tactical belt. Freezing rain slashes down in blinding, punishing sheets. The sheer force of the wind catches the heavy fabric of her fleece jacket, literally trying to lift her off her feet and hurl her into the dark.
I grab her hand, dragging her forward and pulling her hard against my right side to anchor her to the earth.
"Keep moving!" I shout the order directly against her ear to be heard over the world-ending roar tearing through the valley. "Do not let go!"
She nods frantically, her fingers digging like claws into my scarred hand, fighting violently for every single inch of traction in the slick, freezing mud.
A massive pine tree shears completely off exactly twenty yards to our left with a sound like a heavy artillery crack. The entire upper half of the tree instantly vanishes into the dark, sucked into the vortex forming above the ridge.
I scan the devastated slope. The ground drops sharply away toward the flooded valley floor, exposing a treacherous mess of jagged limestone rocks and torn roots.
Then I see it.
There.
A washout.
Thirty yards down the steep incline. Years of violent flash floods have carved a deep, concave hollow directly beneath the massive root system of an ancient, dying oak tree. The thick, gnarled roots form a desperate cage over the deep hollow. It's not a reinforced bunker.
It's literally a hole in the dirt.
But it's three feet below grade, and right now, it's all we have.
I haul Addy toward it, fighting the treacherous incline and the sheer, physical force of the tornadic wind actively trying to push us back up the lethal hill.
The atmospheric pressure violently drops. It feels exactly like a cold ice pick being driven directly behind my eardrums.
Addy cries out in sharp pain, immediately clapping a hand over her left ear.
"Under the roots!" I shove her forward, sliding recklessly down the slick, dangerous embankment. "Get in the hole!"
We hit the muddy bottom of the hollow hard. It instantly smells of wet rot, ancient clay, and desperate survival.
The roar becomes absolute. The earth shakes in a violent, continuous shuddering that rattles my teeth.
I drag Addy deep into the narrowest part of the muddy undercut. The massive oak roots form a thick, tangled lattice directly above our heads. She curls into a tight, defensive ball, her hands locked over her ears, the encrypted hardshell drive clutched fiercely against her chest.
I drop my entire weight over her.
I cover her completely. My broad shoulders are squared directly to the jagged opening of the washout, turning my heavy canvas jacket and back into a physical shield to take the brunt of whatever the storm throws into the hollow.
I bracket her small body with my arms, driving my fingers deep into the slick clay on either side of her shoulders, physically locking myself into the earth.
Violent debris hits my jacket like shrapnel. Jagged rocks, heavy clods of dirt, and shredded, razor-sharp pine bark batter my spine.
I press my massive weight down harder, completely pinning her to the ground. The heat of her body bleeds through the freezing, wet fabric of our clothes.
Three agonizing days in that safe house. Three days of keeping a brutal professional distance. Accepting Frost's silent judgment. Swallowing the quiet, corrosive humiliation of being tolerated by his team but never trusted.
None of it matters right now.
Frost and his team are a mile away, fighting a heavily armed Ares Global kill squad. The disastrous contract, the four years of bitter exile, the fractured bloodline—it's all irrelevant noise.
This is the only thing that exists in the entire world. The dark hollow, the freezing mud, and the absolute, feral, uncompromising imperative to keep the woman trapped under my chest breathing.
