14. The Chase
The Chase
Kai
We’ve been watching the compound for forty minutes when the first door opens.
A woman steps outside carrying a laundry basket. Then another.
Honor comes through last.
Even from here, I can see the stiffness in the way she moves after yesterday’s beating, but she keeps pace with the others. Eight women in total cross toward the laundry lines and the collection of outbuildings, splitting up to complete the chores the guards expect them to do.
Honor and seven others. Eight in total.
Jax lies beside me behind the snow-covered rise, binoculars trained on the compound. Angus is farther west, positioned above the route between the main building and vehicle shed with a clear view of the guards and our extraction corridor.
His job is simple. Nobody gets between us and the forest.
The dogs wait behind us in harness, quiet and ready. Maskwa watches me, alert for the command he knows is coming.
Through the binoculars, Honor reaches the laundry line.
This is our window.
I pull the small rock from my pocket. The note is already wrapped tightly around it beneath two bands of black tape.
Ready. Next generator failure. Vehicle shed. Everyone.
Jax watches the nearest guard while I move through the trees to the edge of the blind spot. Honor bends over a laundry basket less than twenty meters away.
I throw. The rock drops into the snow behind the basket.
Honor freezes for one second.
Then she bends as though picking up something she dropped, palms the rock and keeps moving.
“Got it,” I whisper.
We withdraw into cover.
Through the binoculars, I watch her disappear behind the laundry building. When she emerges, the note is gone. I tell Bear to call Steve to let him know she’s got the message and we’re waiting to go in.
She takes down a sheet. Another.
Then she starts gathering the women.
Nothing hurried. Nothing that should draw attention. A basket carried toward the vehicle shed. Someone sent to collect something. Another woman crosses behind her.
One by one, they disappear inside.
They’re ready. The generator dies.
The machinery stops. Lights vanish from the buildings, and the constant mechanical noise cuts out so completely I can hear the wind moving through the spruce.
“Hike!”
Maskwa launches. The team follows.
We come through the western blind spot fast, the dogs driving hard toward the vehicle shed while I stand on the runners and Jax rides behind the sled basket, weapon ready.
A shout comes from behind us.
Then Angus’s voice comes through my earpiece.
“Keep moving.”
A guard rounds the corner of the main building with a rifle.
Angus fires.
The man drops into the snow.
Jax stays low behind the sled basket, weapon trained on the compound.
I keep the team driving straight for the shed.
The doors open before we reach them.
Honor stands inside.
Alive. Bruised. Ready.
Behind her, the other women are bundled in whatever winter clothing they’ve managed to gather.
Eight women.
Honor’s eyes find mine.
“Honor?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Kai. Quick, everyone aboard. Hurry.”
Jax is already at the doors, weapon up, covering the compound.
“Everyone on the sled,” I order. “Stay low. Hold on to each other. Nobody gets off unless I tell you.”
Honor turns immediately.
“You heard him. Move!”
The women surge forward.
A burst of gunfire cracks somewhere behind us.
Jax turns toward the compound.
“Kai.”
Right.
Reaching them isn’t the rescue.
Getting eight women out of Lockhart country alive is.
North Star Mine Compound, Northern Manitoba. 1410 hours.
The first woman is climbing onto the sled when the compound erupts.
“Hey!”
Jax spins toward the shout.
A guard comes around the corner of the accommodation block, sees us at the vehicle shed and reaches for the rifle slung over his shoulder.
Jax fires first.
The guard drops.
“Move!” he shouts.
The women scramble onto the sled, packing themselves into the basket and against each other. Honor is helping Ivy aboard when another shot cracks across the compound.
Snow spits up beside my boot.
“Contact, east side,” Angus says through my earpiece.
His rifle answers a second later.
I grab the handlebar and whistle Maskwa forward enough to straighten the team while Jax takes position between the sled and the compound.
Doors are opening now.
Shouts.
Boots hitting snow.
The generator may be dead, but the whole fucking place is alert.
“Three moving from the main building,” Angus warns. “I’ve got them.”
Another shot.
One man goes down. The other two dive for cover.
Honor grabs my arm.
“Give me a gun.”
I look at her.
“I know how to shoot.”
There’s no time to debate it.
I pull my sidearm and offer it grip first. “Safety’s here. Stay with the women. You protect them, you don’t go looking for a fight.”
“I won’t.”
She turns toward the sled.
“Everyone down! Keep your heads below the basket rim!”
The women fold lower as Honor climbs aboard beside them, positioning herself where she can see back toward the compound.
A bullet punches into the vehicle shed behind me.
“Time to go!” Jax yells.
No argument from me.
“Maskwa! Hike!”
The team surges forward.
I jump onto the runners as the sled shoots across the packed snow toward the western blind spot. Jax runs alongside for several meters, firing toward the main building before grabbing the sled and hauling himself aboard behind the basket.
“Two coming around north!” Angus calls.
I see them.
One raises a rifle.
Honor fires.
The man jerks backward and disappears behind a truck.
Her second shot sends the other diving for cover.
She doesn’t fire again.
Smart.
“Nice shooting,” Jax says.
“Later!” she snaps.
Despite everything, I almost laugh.
The fence line is ahead.
Fifty meters.
Thirty.
A pickup engine roars behind us.
Shit.
“They’ve got a vehicle moving,” Jax says.
“I see it.”
The truck swings around the building and accelerates toward us.
Angus fires.
The windshield fractures.
Another shot punches through the front of the truck. It veers hard, clips a snowbank and slams sideways into the fence.
Our opening is ten meters ahead.
“Angus, move!” I shout.
“Already moving.”
Maskwa hits the gap without hesitation, and the team follows him through.
Trees close around us.
Jax twists to cover our rear. Honor keeps the women down while I drive the dogs deeper into the forest.
Gunfire cracks behind us, but the shots are already getting farther away.
Steve’s plan.
My route.
Angus watching our backs.
Jax protecting the sled.
Honor protecting the women.
Every piece holds.
Barely.
I lean forward over the handlebar.
“Come on, Maskwa.”
His ears flick back.
Then the entire team digs harder into the snow.
We’re out of the compound.
Now we have to stay that way.
North Star Mine Wilderness, Northern Manitoba. 1415 hours.
The treeline swallows us.
Branches whip past as Maskwa drives the team onto the narrow trail we packed over the last two days. The sled bucks over frozen ruts, seven women crammed into the basket with Honor braced behind them, my sidearm still in her hand.
Jax twists behind me, watching the gap between the trees.
“Angus is coming.”
I glance back.
He bursts from the forest fifty meters behind us, rifle across his body, running hard through the snow.
“Slow down!” Jax shouts.
I ease the team just enough.
Angus closes the distance.
Twenty meters.
Ten.
Gunfire cracks behind him.
Jax fires back through the trees.
“Come on, Bear!”
Angus reaches the sled at a run, grabs the rear rail and hauls himself onto the runner beside Jax.
He looks over the seven terrified women packed into the basket.
“Ladies.”
Honor stares at him.
“Seriously?”
“Seemed rude not to say hello.”
“Save the charm for later,” Jax says. “We’ve got company.”
An engine growls behind us.
Then another.
I look back through the trees and catch flashes of headlights between the trunks.
Snowmobiles.
Of course they’ve got fucking snowmobiles.
“Two that I can see,” Jax says.
“Three,” Angus corrects. “Another left of the trail.”
The women hear him.
Fear moves through the sled.
Honor turns immediately. “Eyes on me. We knew they’d come after us. These men know what they’re doing, and Kai knows this country. Stay down and hold on.”
Her gaze finds mine.
I nod once.
She’s right about one thing.
I know exactly where we’re going.
The trail ahead splits around a stand of spruce.
“Hold tight!”
I shift my weight and send Maskwa right.
The sled swings behind him.
A shot tears through the branches above us.
Angus and Jax return fire while Honor stays low with the women, her weapon ready but her attention where it needs to be.
Keeping them together.
Keeping panic from taking over.
The snowmobiles are faster than us.
They also need a trail.
We don’t.
“Maskwa! Haw!”
He turns left off the packed route.
The team follows him straight into deeper snow.
The sled lurches violently.
Someone screams.
“Hold on!”
Branches close around us as the dogs carve between trees too narrow for a snowmobile to follow at speed.
Behind us, an engine revs.
Then comes the unmistakable crunch of metal hitting timber.
Jax laughs. “One down.”
“Still two,” Angus says.
“And a hell of a lot of Lockhart country between us and safety,” I add.
One hundred and twenty kilometers.
Yesterday, that distance protected North Star from anyone trying to reach it.
Today, it works both ways.
Steve and Janice are waiting at the other end.
Between us and them lies frozen forest, lakes, abandoned mining roads and enough wilderness to kill anyone who gets careless.
Behind us, Lockhart’s men are still coming.
I look at Maskwa.
“Let’s show them why they should’ve stayed home.”
The team drives deeper into the forest.
We found Honor.
We freed the women.
Now Lockhart has to catch us.
First Cache, Northern Manitoba. 1515 hours.
By the time we reach the first ridge, the snowmobiles are gone from earshot.
That doesn’t mean they’ve stopped.
It means they’re looking for another way around.
I keep Maskwa moving along the sheltered side of the ridge while Jax and Angus watch our back trail. The women stay packed into the sled, blankets pulled around them against the cold.
Except Honor.
She climbed off ten minutes ago.
I told her to get back on.
She ignored me.
Now she runs beside the team, matching their pace through the snow as if being locked inside North Star for thirteen days wasn’t enough to flatten most people.
“You can ride,” I tell her again.
“I can run.”
“I noticed.”
She points ahead. “Creek bed drops north beyond those spruce. If they know the old access roads, they’ll try to cut us off there.”
I look at her.
She’s right.
“How do you know?”
“I spent months mapping Lockhart land.”
Of course she did.
She was never going to sit on my sled and wait for somebody else to save her.
And right now, I need what she knows.
I change course before we reach the creek.
Honor keeps pace beside us longer than I expect, but the snow is stealing strength she doesn’t have to spare.
“Honor. On the sled.”
“I can run.”
“I know you can. You don’t need to prove it.”
Twenty minutes later, we slip into the first cache without hearing another engine.
I pull out the satellite phone long enough to send Steve a secure message.
Eight women out. All alive. First cache reached. Pursuit temporarily shaken. Moving again shortly.
His reply comes almost immediately.
Copy. We’re ready for you.
The cache is little more than a concealed shelter among dense spruce, stocked over the past two days with food, medical supplies, blankets, spare winter gear and bags of frozen beef for the dogs. Enough to warm people, rest and feed the team, patch anything urgent and keep us moving.
Jax and Angus immediately start checking the women while I secure the dogs. They’ve pulled hard since North Star, so I portion out the beef and water them while everyone gets a few minutes to recover.
Maskwa inhales his share like he hasn’t eaten in a week, then looks at me as if I’ve personally failed him by not producing another bag. Honor is still standing.
Barely.
There’s blood on her coat.
I’m across the clearing before I think about it.
“Where are you hit?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“From yesterday.”
That fucker.
My gaze runs over her, looking for anything worse. She’s favoring one side, and the bruising on her face looks darker up close than it did through binoculars.
“Your ribs?”
“Bruised.”
“You sure that’s all?”
“No. But I’m breathing. Nothing feels broken.”
Despite myself, my mouth almost moves.
Then the danger backs off just enough for something else to get through.
Honor is standing in front of me.
Alive.
Close enough that I can see the split in her lip and the exhaustion beneath her eyes.
She’s beautiful.
My hands were steady when bullets were cutting through the trees.
Steady when I put eight women on a sled and drove them out of North Star.
They aren’t steady now.
I lift one hand to her face, stopping before I touch her.
Honor closes the distance herself. Her cheek settles into my palm.
Everything between us changes.
I kiss her.
She meets me halfway, one hand gripping the front of my jacket as the last thirteen days collide with the last hour. The kiss is fierce, brief and full of everything there isn’t time to say.
She survived.
We found each other.
We’re both still here.
Maskwa gives a low warning outside.
We separate instantly.
Jax appears at the entrance. “Movement.”
Honor reaches for the gun I gave her. I grab my rifle.
Whatever just happened between us will have to wait.
I look at her.
“Ready?”
She checks the weapon and nods.
“Are you?”
Yeah.
I think I’ve been waiting five years for someone who’d ask me that.
We step back out into the cold together.