Chapter 4
Four
Oliver’s scream sliced through the argument, sharp and terrified.
Magnus’s head whipped toward the sound, his tirade against Annie dying in his throat.
A man in tactical gear had Oliver, one thick arm wrapped around the boy’s middle, lifting him off his feet like he weighed nothing.
Oliver’s sneakers kicked at empty air as the man dragged him toward a black van idling at the curb.
Magnus was running before he knew he’d moved. A sound tore out of him — not a word, just raw noise. Oliver’s small body twisted and struggled against the man’s grip, his Transformers jacket bunching up around his shoulders.
Get to his son.
The harbor master was down near the van, not moving. Magnus registered him and dismissed him in the same stride.
Magnus’s boots hammered against the dock planks, then hit pavement with a jarring shock that shot up his legs. Twenty feet. The distance stretched like miles. His lungs burned, pulling in salt-tinged air that tasted of diesel and fear.
Oliver’s eyes found his through the chaos, wide with terror, tears streaming down his face. One small hand reached out, fingers splayed.
“Dad!”
The word detonated in Magnus’s chest. Not Magnus. Dad.
For the first time in ten months, and Oliver chose now.
Magnus’s legs pumped harder.
A second man stepped from the passenger seat. Slim, unhurried, wearing a suit under an open overcoat like he’d just come from a business dinner. He didn’t raise his fists. Didn’t need to.
Magnus didn’t slow. He dropped his shoulder and drove into the man with everything he had — two hundred pounds of muscle built hauling gear up burning mountainsides.
The man shifted his hip. That was all. One small movement, and Magnus’s own momentum carried him past, slamming him into the van’s side panel hard enough to dent it.
Magnus came up swinging. His fist cut through empty air where the man’s head had been a half-second before.
A hand met Magnus’s wrist mid-swing, closed around it the way you’d field a tossed baseball, and twisted.
Magnus’s elbow locked. A precise strike to his exposed kidney dropped him to one knee.
He wrenched free, threw a cross. The man redirected it with his forearm and delivered a short, almost casual palm strike to Magnus’s solar plexus.
Air left Magnus’s lungs. His diaphragm seized. He folded.
His knees cracked against wet pavement. Crushed asphalt bit through his jeans. Through the haze of pain, through the roar of blood in his ears, he heard Oliver’s voice, muffled from inside the van.
“Dad!”
Magnus fought to rise, but the man’s shoe connected with his ribs. Hot agony spread across his left side like spilled acid. Magnus’s arms gave out. He caught himself on his palms, gasping, tasting copper.
Through the blur of rain, Magnus saw Oliver inside the van, fighting to get back out. Kicking, clawing at the door frame, making himself as difficult as fifty pounds of terrified kid could be. Their eyes locked, Oliver’s hand stretching toward him, fingers splayed.
The first man yanked Oliver back by the collar of his jacket.
The door slid shut.
The second man looked down at Magnus with mild interest, dropped a phone in front of his face, and stepped over him the way you’d step over a crack in the sidewalk. He climbed back into the van, brushing rain from his sleeve.
Tires squealed. The van pulled away, heading north toward the harbor road, and Magnus lay on wet pavement watching his son disappear.
For a heartbeat, Magnus lay on the cold pavement, rain soaking through his shirt, blood from his split lip pooling against his cheek. One job. He’d had one job. Keep Oliver safe.
Movement yanked him back. Annie ran flat-out, chasing the van on foot. Her feet slipped on the wet dock planks, but she didn’t slow.
The sight snapped something back into place. Adrenaline overrode the screaming from his ribs, his knee, his wrist. Magnus shoved himself up, stumbled, and caught himself against a piling.
He half-ran, half-stumbled toward the parking lot where Astryde’s battered Ford was parked, leaving blood on the asphalt. The harbor master was pushing himself up to sitting, cradling his arm.
“You okay?” Magnus’s voice came out rough.
“Go!” The harbor master waved him on. “Go get the boy!”
Magnus hauled himself into the driver’s seat, biting back a scream as his ribs ground against each other. His hands shook so badly he dropped the keys twice before managing to jam them into the lock.
The engine caught on the first try. Magnus threw it in gear, didn’t bother with his seatbelt, and tore out of the lot. The truck’s worn tires struggled for purchase on the wet road before finally gripping.
He spotted Annie two blocks up, still running but slowing now, her sprint deteriorating into a stumbling jog. Her body listed to one side, favoring a turned ankle or cramping muscle. The van grew more distant with each second, then vanished around a corner.
Magnus pulled alongside her, reached across to wrench the passenger door open from inside. The hinges shrieked in protest.
Annie grabbed the door frame and hauled herself into the truck, her chest heaving like a bellows. Water streamed from the hair she’d chopped short and bleached onto the cracked vinyl seats. Her hands left prints on the dashboard as she braced herself.
“Go!” The word ripped from her throat, raw and desperate. She pointed north, toward the outskirts of town. “Go, go, go!”
Magnus floored it. The old truck’s engine screamed, protesting the abuse. The speedometer climbed past forty, fifty, sixty. The whole frame shook, threatening to rattle apart. Buildings blurred past.
They took the next corner too fast. The back end slewed sideways, tires shrieking. Magnus corrected without thinking, years of driving rough forest roads taking over. Annie’s knuckles went white as she gripped the door handle.
“The airstrip.” Her voice carried that same chilling certainty. “It’s the only other way off the island.”
He didn’t question her. Not now. Not with Oliver’s terrified voice still echoing in his skull.
He yanked the wheel right, took the turnoff toward the rural airstrip so hard the truck went up on two wheels for a heartbeat before slamming back down.
The gravel access road stretched ahead, cutting through sparse spruce forest that gave way to open tundra.
Magnus pushed the truck harder, the speedometer needle buried at its limit. The suspension groaned over every pothole, every frost heave. Gravel sprayed from the tires like shrapnel, pinging off the undercarriage. His ribs sent fresh spikes of agony with each jolt, but pain meant nothing now.
Only Oliver mattered.
The road dropped toward the harbor, and the airstrip appeared ahead.
A single strip of asphalt ran along the spit between the bay and the town, mountains pressing in on both sides.
No terminal to speak of or fences. Just 3,900 feet of cracked runway with a windsock and a couple of ramps where bush pilots parked their Cessnas.
At the far end of the strip, Magnus saw them.
The black van sat beside a sleek private jet on one of the ramps, engines already spinning up, heat shimmer distorting the air behind them. The jet looked obscene next to the battered float planes and prop aircraft. It probably cost more than every boat in Dutch Harbor combined.
As they watched, the van’s door slid open. The first man emerged with Oliver draped over his shoulder. Limp. Arms dangling.
His jacket had ridden up, exposing the red shirt underneath that Magnus had helped him pick out last week at the thrift store. Oliver’s head bobbed with each step the man took, the way it used to bob when Magnus carried him to bed after he’d fallen asleep on the couch.
Magnus pinned the accelerator to the floor. He could make it. He had to make it.
The man climbed the jet’s stairs with Oliver, disappearing into the dark mouth of the aircraft. The second man followed, pulling the door shut with a smirk and a salute to them. The stairs retracted. The engines’ whine pitched higher, from a whisper to a scream.
The jet began to roll.
Magnus kept the accelerator down, chasing the accelerating aircraft across the tarmac. It pulled away, gathering speed for takeoff. Forty yards became fifty, fifty became a hundred. The truck’s engine knocked, protesting the abuse. Steam rose from under the hood.
The jet’s nose lifted.
“No, no, no!” Magnus slammed his palm against the steering wheel, horn blaring uselessly at the sky.
The main gear left the ground. Magnus hit the brakes, the truck sliding to a stop, rocking the vehicle on its suspension. The smell of jet fuel filled the cab, thick and choking. He watched, helpless, as the aircraft climbed steeply into the gray morning, banking north toward the mainland.
In seconds, the clouds swallowed it whole. The engine sound faded, thinned, and then there was nothing but rain on the truck’s roof.
Gone.
Magnus’s hands stayed locked on the steering wheel. His breathing came in ragged, shallow pulls against his broken ribs.
Beside him, Annie sat rigid, staring at the empty sky. A single sharp inhale, almost a gasp, and then nothing. Her face emptied. Went completely still. Locked down.
Magnus had just watched his son disappear into the sky, and this woman — this woman who’d left them both — sat there like she’d flipped a switch.
The rage found its target.
He turned and looked at her.
“Who is he?”
She didn’t move. Her eyes stayed fixed on the clouds.
“Who. Is. He?”
“Lars Eriksson.” Barely a whisper. “His name is Lars Eriksson.”
“And you know him.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
She finally turned to look at him. The expression on her face put ice in his stomach. He’d seen that look once before on a sawyer’s face the moment a wildfire crowned and turned back on the crew. The look of someone who knew exactly what was coming and couldn’t stop it.
“He’s Oliver’s father.”