Headlights explode through the cracks in the boarded windows—blinding white, violent. Tires scream across gravel as the truck slams into the porch with a splintering crash that shakes dust from rafters. The door explodes inward. Lila stands silhouetted against the glare, shotgun raised, hair a wild halo around her face. “Move your fucking asses!” she bellows. “We’ve got twenty seconds before that bird is overhead!” She doesn’t wait. She’s already grabbing children, hauling the nearest girl up by her arm, shoving her toward the open back of the black Chevy visible through the shattered doorway. “Truck’s open! Sterling, drive! I’ll cover!”
Sterling moves like lightning, scooping up two of the smallest kids, one under each arm. The room erupts into controlled chaos. Seventeen small bodies surge toward the exit like water through a broken dam. I grab two more of the babies and hand them to Lila. My mom stands frozen by the window, her hand creeping toward her pocket like a snake. “No,” I snarl. I lunge, ripping the phone from her dress with enough force to tear fabric.
The phone screen cracks under my grip, but not before I see that last text bubble sent—three little pulsing dots that vanish into a read receipt. Whoever she’s reporting to now knows where we are. “Move!” Sterling roars. He doesn’t wait for me to process the betrayal. His hand wraps around my upper arm, hauling me toward the shattered doorway where the truck’s engine screams. The children flow past us in a silent river ofsmall bodies, guided by Lila’s frantic gestures. She stands braced in the glare of the headlights, a shotgun against her hip, face pale but jaw locked with feral determination.
Mom doesn’t struggle when I drag her toward the truck. She simply lets herself be pulled, that serene, maddening smile still curving her lips, making me want to put a bullet through her teeth. “You can’t escape them, Sunshine,” she says softly. “They’ve been tracking you since you breached the facility.”
Shut up.” I shove her toward the truck bed. “Get in. Lie down.” The helicopter rotors thump closer, a mechanical heartbeat growing louder, drowning out the forest. Searchlights sweep the ridgeline, white beams shredding the darkness.
Sterling lifts two kids into the truck; one of the boys clings to his neck, terrified but silent. “Kiera!” Lila’s voice cuts through the chaos. She’s perched on the hood of the truck like a goddamn sentinel, scope locked on the tree line. “East ridge, two hundred yards. Six moving in!”
I don’t look. I don’t need to. I can hear them—the crunch of boots on pine needles, the soft click of safeties disengaging. Wade’s mercenaries. Ghosts he hired to erase every trace of his mess. “Drive,” I demand.
He shakes his head and tosses me the keys. His gun is already in his hand, barrel smoking from the shots I didn’t hear him fire. “You drive,” he commands. “I’m riding shotgun.” He pauses. His eyes drop to my midsection for half a second—quick, protective, almost feral. I would have missed it if I weren’t watching for it. The cramp twists again, sharp and low, a warning. “Can you?” he asks.
“I’m not fucking fragile,” I snap, but the words taste like a lie. My hands shake on the wheel. Adrenaline, fear, or something far more dangerous—Idon’t know anymore. I haul myself into the driver’s seat, kicking a rusted toolbox out of the way. The engine roars to life as I slam my foot on the gas. The truck lurches backward, tires spinning wildly in the mud before they catch. I throw it into drive, and we rocket down the mountain path, branches screeching along the sides like nails on a chalkboard.
Gunfire erupts from behind us. Sharp cracks from the rifles. Lila answers with two thunderous booms from her shotgun, firing from the bed, using the cab as cover. “Hold on!” I scream. The path is barely a path, more like a scar carved into the mountain decades ago. The truck bounces violently over roots and rocks, the suspension screaming in protest. In the rearview mirror, I see my mom curled into a ball, her face pressed against the metal, but she’s smiling.Always fucking smiling.
The scarred girl crawls between the seats, her small hand sliding over mine on the gear shift. Her fingers are ice-cold, sticky with pine sap. “Left,” she whispers, her voice barely audible over the engine. “There’s a service road. Left.” I don’t question her. I yank the wheel hard left. The truck slews sideways, nearly tipping before it slams back down onto a narrow gravel fade, too low to follow us into the canopy.
“Clear?” Sterling asks, his eyes scanning the dark trees whipping past us.
“For now,” Lila pants, dropping back into the bed. She’s already slamming fresh shells into her shotgun, movements fast and brutal. “But they’ve got thermal. We’ve got maybe twelve minutes before they circle back.”
“We don’t need twelve minutes,” I say, my eyes locked on the GPS glowing on the dash. Twelve miles to the safe house that Cam sent.Wecan make it. We have to. In the rearview, Mom shifts in the truck bed. Her hand creeps toward her pocket. “Don’t,” I warn, locking eyes with her reflection. Icey anger running through me.
“Or what?” Mom laughs, the sound bitter and wrong, like glass cracking underfoot. “You’ll shoot your own mother?”
The words hit like a physical blow. The truck swerves. Sterling’s hand slams down on my thigh—not a gentle caress but a hard, bruising anchor. “Focus,” he growls, voice low and rough against my ear. “She’s baiting you.”
“Am I?” Mom leans forward. “Wade wanted you sedated, Kiera. Compliant. I told him no, too risky at 8 years old. But I gave him the method.”
My knuckles whiten from my grip on the wheel. The forest streaks past in green and black blurs. I can smell the hot gun oil from Sterling’s weapon. He twists in his seat. One fluid motion without warning. His fist cracks across Mom’s temple with brutal precision. Her head snaps back, slamming into the wheel well. She slumps instantly, unconscious, a thin line of blood trickling from her lip. “She was talking too fucking much,” Sterling grunts, settling back into his seat. He doesn’t look at me. “Drive faster.” Eleven pairs of eyes watch from the bed, silent, cataloging. Learning how violence works.
We hit a paved road ten minutes later. I don’t slow down. The Appalachian backroads twist and coil like a serpent’s spine. I drive them on pure instinct, pushing the truck to its limits. The safe house appears—a cabin tucked deep into a cove, lights already burning warm against the dark. Cam stands in the doorway, rifle raised, until he recognizes the truck. I kill the engine. The silence that follows is deafening. For a longmoment, nobody moves. Then the kids begin to stir, uncoiling slowly from their terror like small, wounded animals testing the air after a storm.
Lila drops from the bed, boots hitting gravel. Blood runs down her arm from a fresh graze, but she doesn’t slow. She’s already herding the children toward the cabin like a sheepdog. “Inside. Come on. Hot food, showers, no questions tonight.”
I sit frozen in the driver’s seat, hands locked on the wheel, unable to release it. My whole body vibrates with leftover energy. The cramp hits again—sharper, deeper—and a gasp rips out of me before I can swallow it. Sterling is there instantly. His door hangs open, but he leans across the console, his large hand covering both of mine on the wheel, warm and steady. “Kiera,” he says, voice low and rough, thick with something darker than worry.
“I’m fine,” I whisper. The words come out hollow, scraping the back of my throat.
“You’re not.” His other hand finds my chin, tilting my face toward him with careful force. His thumb brushes my cheek and comes away wet from tears I didn’t even realize were falling. “The cramps,” he says, eyes dark and searching. “How long?”
“I don’t know what…”
“Don’t.” His voice is soft. Terrifyingly soft. “I saw you. At the station. The way you held your stomach when you thought no one was looking.” His thumb strokes my cheek again, gentle but unrelenting. “How long have you been hurting? We need to get you checked. You could have internal bleeding.”
The question hangs between us, heavy and intimate. And so fucking wrong for this blood-soaked truck, with my unconscious Mom in the bed and seventeen traumatized children. “We don’t have time for that right now,” I whisper.
Sterling goes still. His eyes widen slightly. The predator in him, the killer, the ghost—all of it flickers out for one heartbeat. Replaced by something raw, terrifying, and unbearably warm. He leans his forehead against mine. His breath is hot against my lips, carrying the sharp copper tang of blood and adrenaline. “If it gets worse,” he whispers, voice low and final, “you get seen.” No room for arguments in his tone.
“Okay.” The word slips out small and broken.
“Good girl.” Sterling exhales against my lips, the sound of rough relief and something darker, hungrier. His forehead stays pressed to mine for one more second, like he’s branding the promise into my skin. He pulls back just enough to look at me, eyes burning. “You are mine,” he says, low and absolute. “You will not be dying on me. Do you understand?”
I close my eyes, letting Sterling’s words sink into my bones. In the truck bed behind us, Mom groans, stirring awake. Cam approaches the truck at a jog, rifle raised and ready, eyes scanning the tree line.
