Chapter 17
Seventeen
Silas
The ground drops away—twenty yards, maybe thirty—a shallow depression, snow banked up along the windward side, and I angle left, off the straight line, away from the smoke already pulling northeast.
Everything hurts in a specific, informative way that means I'm still functional, still here, still able to be afraid of exactly the right things. Still too aware of how blood loss and fatigue are muddying my thoughts.
Lord, keep my legs under me, keep my hands steady, get me to those trees — and if this is the hour You've chosen, then let me meet it moving forward, not face-down in the snow. Amen.
My legs are giving me the bare minimum. The tree line swims in and out of the white. I’m close now—close enough to smell the pine—when I veer left, away from the trees, toward the slope. My body commits before my mind catches up.
I don’t climb high, just high enough for partial concealment through branches and a clean downward angle into the gully edge.
The pine bark chews into my spine, a cold reminder that I’m still upright.
My left hand is a slick mess on the Glock’s grip; I pulse my fingers against the polymer, desperate for a dry patch that isn't there. My bicep is screaming—a heavy, rhythmic throb that turns my fingers into dead wood. I can feel the wool of my sleeve turning into an icy cast where the blood has saturated the fiber. It's stiff. It’s heavy. It’s failing.
Down the slope, the "funnel" of the crashed snowmobile is a graveyard of shifting shadows. I watch the oily black smoke from the gully drift between the trunks, but the gray shape I’m expecting never appears.
The wreck burns, the orange glow mocking me, but the white static of the falling snow remains unbroken.
Empty.
A cold prickle that has nothing to do with the temperature crawls up my neck. I’ve staged the perfect kill box, but the woods have gone deathly silent. My ears ring with the roar of the burning fuel, but underneath it—closer—there’s a sound that shouldn't be there.
The dry, rhythmic crunch of snow compressing. Not in front of me.
Behind.
I shift my weight, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
The snow under my heel gives a treacherous, high-pitched squeak.
I don’t turn—not yet. I brace my left wrist against the tree, the iron sights blurring as a snowflake lands on the slide.
I blink it away, but my peripheral vision is already swimming, a slow, dark pulsing at the edges of the frame.
He didn't take the bait. He circled the ridgeline.
I’m not the one holding the funnel anymore; I’m the target sitting in the center of it.
I slowly begin to pivot, the movement sending a white spike of pain down my ruined arm, my breath hitching in my throat.
I keep the Glock leveled at the empty air, waiting for the gray shape to step out of the timber and finish what he started.
I don’t turn my head. I don’t give away my position with a panicked jerk. I move by inches, letting my center of gravity shift while the Glock stays leveled at the empty funnel—a decoy for whoever is watching my back.
The crunch happens again. Closer. Ten o'clock. He’s circling my blind side, staying just outside the periphery of the tree trunk.
My arm is a useless, throbbing anchor, but I let it hang limp, intentionally projecting the image of a broken man. I slump my shoulders, letting my chin drop toward my chest. I need him to think I’m fading. I need him to see a corpse-in-waiting so he stops being careful.
The shadow breaks the white static.
He’s tall, a jagged silhouette against the snow, moving with a predatory, high-stepping grace that doesn't disturb the drifts. He doesn't have a rifle out; he’s got a combat blade reversed in his grip, silvered by the firelight from the gully. He thinks he’s here for a finishing move.
My heart is a frantic, wet thud against my ribs, but I force my breathing to go shallow. I count his steps.
One. The snow squeaks. Two. He’s five feet away, the copper tang of my own blood thick in my nose. Three.
I don't aim. I don't have the strength for a tactical stance. I just fall.
I drop my weight backward, using the tree trunk as a pivot point. As I hit the snow, I snap the Glock up with my left hand, firing through the gap between my own knees.
The muzzle flash is a blinding white strobe in the gray woods. Crack. Crack.
The recoil jars through my spine, sending a fresh wave of nausea rolling over me. Through the smoke, I see the gray shape jerk. One round catches him in the thigh; the second skips off the ceramic of his vest with a spark.
He lunges, the knife coming down in a silver arc. I roll, my ruined arm screaming as it's pinned beneath me, and I scramble for the frozen mud, trying to find enough traction to stand before he recovers. My vision swims—darker now, the edges of the frame closing in like a shutter.
The gray shape lunges, the knife a silver streak in his hand, but my legs are gone. I don't try to catch my balance. I stop fighting the vertigo and let the darkness take me, collapsing backward into the drifts. I’m a dead weight, a heap of meat and wool sinking into the powder.
He buys it. He follows me down, dropping his guard to pin my chest for the kill.
As he reaches for me, I hook my good hand behind his heel and yank.
The horizon flips. It’s a blind, vertical rush of gray sky and choking white as the shelf collapses into a river of scree. I haul him into the tumble; if I’m going down, he’s going down under me.
We slam into the bottom. The Glock is gone, stripped from my hand.
I scramble to my feet, fueled by pure adrenaline. And swing my good arm, a blind arc through the falling flakes. My knuckles crack against his tactical helmet, a solid, jarring connection that snaps his head back. He staggers, but dives low, tackling my waist to negate my reach.
His hands lock onto my injured arm. He twists the limb, trying to use the slope to pin me, but I don't let him have the leverage. I bridge my hips, slamming my skull into his.
The pain isn't a flash anymore—it’s a solid, vibrating wall that steals my breath. He transitions his weight, a shin crushing down on my windpipe. His full body weight channeled into the lever he’s made of my arm.
Breath locked in my lungs, I don't waste energy clawing at his vest; I find the gap in his armor near the armpit.
I dig my fingers in, pulling him down into my space, making it impossible for him to get the clean break he wants.
Every time he tries to solidify the choke, I wrench his head toward the snow, forcing him to choose between the kill and his own balance.
My lungs burn. The sky is a dimming gray circle, narrowing, but my fingers are buried in his throat gaiter, twisting, robbing him of as much air as he’s taking of mine.
A sudden concussive pop shears through the muffled hiss of the snowfall.
The pressure on my throat vanishes. Reagan’s weight shifts as he rolls off my chest. He doesn't retreat; he resets, snapping into a low crouch, his head whipping toward the sound.
I gasp, an uneven intake of freezing air that scrapes my throat like broken glass, already reaching into the snow with my good hand, searching for a rock, a branch—anything to keep the fight going.
Through the curtain of falling white, a shape bleeds into existence.
I blink, but the image doesn't dissolve.
Standing ten feet away from us, her silhouette stark against the pines, half-obscured by the veil of descending flakes, is Ava.
In her arms is the .308 bolt-action rifle I stashed under the bunk bed.
Lord help us, she’s barely standing, shaking like a leaf, missing her coat and gloves, and wearing a pair of men’s boots two sizes too big.
“Get away from him, Reagan!” she yells. “That was your only warning shot.”
Reagan lets fly a slew of profanity. “Get back in the cabin! You aren’t supposed to be out here. This isn’t how it goes.”
“This is how it ends,” she says, her eyes locking with mine.
His hand moves to a chest pouch. I recognize the threat instantly. Fragmentation grenade. But I’m not the target anymore.
His eyes are locked on Ava. “I warned you,” he roars at her. “You brought this on yourself.”
Before he can aim, I bridge the gap in a single, lunging stride.
I hit him at full tilt, lead shoulder first, catching the hard corner of his body armor with an impact that should have leveled a wall.
The joint gives way with a sickening pop. My shoulder slips out of place, something tearing deep inside as it goes. A white-hot bolt of electricity rips from my neck down to my fingertips, and my arm goes half-dead at my side. We hit the slush and roll. The grenade skitters away into the snow.
“Ava! Take cover!” I yell.
Reagan is on me before I can clear the haze.
He drives a heavy boot into my side, pinning me into the frozen mud, and launches a short, brutal hook.
My head snaps back. The world splinters into a kaleidoscope of gray.
My jaw shifts, a sickening grind of bone on bone.
I don't pull away; I collapse into him, using my weight to smother his next strike.
I jam my chin down, trapping his hand against my collarbone, and drive my forehead into the bridge of his nose.
The cartilage collapses. He grunts, blood spraying across his goggles, and tries to buck me off with a frantic surge of his hips. I stay heavy, grinding my shin into his thigh to kill his leverage.
He lunges for the knife on his thigh. I catch his wrist mid-draw, slamming it into the ice, then grind my knee into his forearm until his fingers splay and the steel drops. He counters by slamming his free fist into my neck.
I find the hilt of my own knife with my working hand. One smooth, reverse-grip draw.
Reagan bridges, but I drop my chest onto his, killing the space, and drive the blade upward under the rim of his ballistic vest.
I piston the steel into the gap between the ribs, twisting. I pull back and drive it in again, and again, threading the needle through the tight space of his chest.
As he collapses, a heavy, muffled vibration echoes from within the snow, shaking the ground around us.
I sink to my knees. I can’t feel my right hand. I can’t close my mouth. I just kneel, watching the flames lick the sky, my breath coming in ragged, shallow shudders.
"Silas!"
Through the haze, Ava reaches me, falling to her knees. Her hands are shaking as they touch my neck, checking for a pulse that’s hammering like a panicked bird.
"Don't move," she gasps. "Silas, look at me."
I try to speak, but my jaw won't track. I just look at the slump of my shoulder. It’s an ugly, hollow gap.
"It’s dislocated," she whispers. "I have to fix it. Now."
She braces her foot against my chest, right under the armpit. She grips my wrist with both hands.
"Breathe, Silas. Let go."
She pulls. The bone slides back into the socket with a wet, heavy jar that vibrates through my entire ribcage. The world goes white for a second, a wave of nausea rolling over me so hard I nearly retch. Then it settles into a dull, leaden throb.
Ava sags against me, her forehead on my chest, her breathing just as broken as mine. “Is it really over?” she whispers.
I stare at the black smoke rising into the white sky. We’ve missed a check-in. Caleb will be rallying and already in the air.
Thank you, Jesus for the good men you have guarding my back.
I glance at the blood pooling into the snow around Reagan, lean down and press my lips to her frozen skin. “Yes, my love, it’s over,” I say.