“Stay down no matter what you hear,” I instructed. “Nothing that happens in the next thirty seconds is a reason to come up. Nothing. Do you understand me?”
Two affirmatives came from the back. Good enough.
My hand tightened on the wheel. The gap between the two figures ahead was narrow enough to demand absolute commitment. The engine idled beneath me.
They stood at their positions, rifles raised and weight balanced, watching the Suburban sit in the middle of the bridge. They were doing exactly what organized, experienced men did when they expected compliance: waiting without rushing, confident in the math of six weapons against one.
Let them be confident.
I shifted into drive. Drew one slow breath. Let it out.
Then I floored it.
The Suburban surged forward with a roar that bounced off the bridge frame and came back doubled. For one fractured second, the three figures ahead of us didn’t move—a moment ofpure disbelief, the pause of men whose protocol hadn’t included the possibility that someone would actually do this.
Rifles came up. Voices shouted something I couldn’t parse over the engine noise. Two of them broke left and right, and the third—either slower or more committed to holding the line—stayed in the center of the lane for a beat too long.
“Hold on!” I shouted, and the first shot cracked across the bridge an instant later, the sound enormous and immediate.
The side window exploded inward, glass detonating into the cab in a spray of fragments that hit every surface and scattered across my arm, the seat, and the dash. The cold air outside rushed in immediately, and the sound of everything happening outside was no longer filtered.
More shots. Rapid now. The controlled precision of the first exchange gave way to the urgency of men who had miscalculated and were adjusting.
The Suburban caught the one who’d held his position; the impact sent a solid, sickening jolt through the frame. The two who’d broken to the sides hit the hood and the fender as we pushed through—one down, one clear.
I kept the wheel straight. Kept my foot on the gas.
Then something hit my shoulder.
Not like anything I’d been expecting. Not sharp. Not precise. A sledgehammer impact snapped my head back, pushing me into the seat. My vision went white at the edges, then slammed back with nauseating clarity. The impact came first, a brutal shove. The understanding that I’d been shot followed a half-second behind.
Heat. Then pressure. Then the burning started, deep and immediate.
My right hand nearly came off the wheel.
I put it back, gripping harder than before.
“Almost—” The word came out between clenched teeth, pushing through what my body wanted to do and what I needed it to do.
We hit the open road on the far side of the bridge with a lurch as the tires found asphalt again. I didn’t touch the brake, didn’t ease anything, just pushed the engine harder.
The bridge disappeared in the rearview mirror.
I drove on.
“Finn?” Libby’s voice came from the footwell, shaky and thin, trying not to be both.
“We’re through,” I said, concentrating hard on delivering the words at something close to a normal register. “Stay down one more minute.”
I drove another hundred yards before I let my foot ease off the accelerator fractionally. Then another two hundred, putting distance between us and any follow-up that might be coming, scanning the treeline out of reflex while the burning in my shoulder intensified with every second.
“Okay,” I said finally. “You can—”
My voice faltered.
My arm had gone heavy in a way that had nothing to do with the wheel or the drive or anything I’d done with it in the last thirty seconds. I looked down at my shoulder the way you look at a bill you already know the number on.
Blood. Dark and spreading. The whole left side of my shirt had gone wet and heavy with it.
