Chapter 12 - Wren
TWELVE
Wren
The darkness of the tunnel ends not with light, but with a different shade of black.
My hands hit wood—the exit hatch. I stop, listening. Behind me, Kade's breathing is ragged, wet, and terrifyingly loud in the confined space.
"Push it." A wheeze. "Slowly."
I put my shoulder against the wood and push. The counterweights do their job, the heavy door lifting with a groan muffled by the layer of glued-on rocks and moss camouflage.
Midway through the tunnel, before the hatch, I stopped.
Not fear—a different kind of cold. The laptop. When the cabin blew, it was on the table. Whatever is left of it is evidence, wreckage, gone. And the transmission lives on a remote server I can't touch without my authenticated device.
"My laptop's destroyed." My voice is flat, working the logic in real time. "The dead man's switch—I can only cancel from my hardware. Biometric plus rotating token. Both on the device."
Kade's breathing fills the silence.
"Which means I can't cancel it." I turn this over, making sure it's true. "It doesn't matter what happens to us in the next few hours. The packet fires on its own. Thirty-one hours from when I armed it—no intervention required."
"You built a safety net," Kade says, his voice rough, "before you knew you'd need one."
The weight of that lands. I armed it at the kitchen table while he watched, because it was the right tactical move. Because I wanted to fight. Not because I thought we'd end up bleeding in a tunnel with a team of operators above us, tearing the cabin apart.
But the math is the same either way.
"FBI, DOJ, Homeland," I say. "Times and ProPublica. Staggered fifteen minutes apart. There's no single intercept that stops all five."
"Then Black Helix's network burns whether we make it out or not."
"Yes."
He doesn't say anything else. He doesn't have to. We move.
Night air rushes in—crisp and cold, smelling of pine and damp earth. It stings my eyes, still streaming from the lingering gas.
Through the hatch opening, the granite boulder stands above us. Down the hill, the cabin is a disaster. Smoke pours from the front, illuminated by the tactical lights of the assault team sweeping the interior.
"Tree line," Kade hisses. "Now."
I scramble out, staying low, and pull him up after me. He stumbles, boots slipping on pine needles. When his hand grips my shoulder, it's dead weight.
"I got you."
His Henley is soaked on the left side. In the moonlight, the blood looks black and slick.
We sprint for the trees, our noise swallowed by the wind. We make the shelter of the pines just as a high-pitched whine cuts the air.
ZZZZZZZT.
"Down." Kade drags me into the dirt.
We collapse into the brush. Above the boulder we just cleared, a drone hovers—camera gimbal swiveling in mechanical jerks, looking for heat.
Kade presses me into the freezing earth, covering my body with his good side. "Stay cold." His skin is clammy, burning with fever heat.
The drone buzzes and scans. It lingers on the boulder, then sweeps the treeline. My lungs burn.
Finally, it banks away toward the cabin.
"Move." Kade rolls off me and struggles to get his feet under him. Slipping in the mud.
"Kade." I grab his right arm. "You're losing too much blood."
"We have to make the ridge. Extraction point is two miles east."
"You can't walk two miles."
"Watch me."
He takes a step and nearly goes down. I catch him, bracing my hip against his.
"Lean on me. We move together."
He doesn't argue. He can't.
We move through the forest like a three-legged animal. The undergrowth tears at my jeans. Branches whip my face. Every step is a negotiation with gravity.
Kade is fading. His steps are heavier, breathing shallower. The strongest man I've ever met, and he's dying on my shoulder.
Steel, Wren. Use the steel.
We make it maybe half a mile before snapping twigs stop us cold.
Not behind us. Ahead.
"Patrol." His voice is slurring. "Flanking maneuver."
He tries to raise the Glock. His hand shakes so badly the muzzle wavers.
"Cover." To our left, a massive pine has fallen, its root system torn up into a shallow earthen cave. "In there."
I drag him toward the deadfall. We slide into the hollow beneath the trunk, the smell of damp soil and rotting wood closing around us. I push Kade to the back and curl my body in front of his, blocking his sightline from the trail.
Boots crunch on the forest floor. Close. Twenty feet. Maybe less.
A light beam sweeps the trees overhead.
"Sector four clear." Low. Professional. "Moving to the ridge."
"Copy." Radio static. "Sweep wide. Target is wounded. Follow the blood."
Follow the blood.
We lie frozen. Kade's head is heavy on my chest. His heart is beating too fast—a fluttery, frantic rhythm that doesn't belong in a body this size.
When the footsteps fade, I still don't move. Not yet.
"Wren." Barely a breath.
"Shh."
"Listen to me." He grips my hand, fingers slick. "You need to go."
"Shut up."
"I'm slowing you down. Leaving a trail. Take the gun. Head east. The ridge—"
"I said shut up." I sit up and pull the trauma kit from his belt.
"Wren. Look at me."
I snap the infrared glow stick and hold it close—dull ghostly purple, invisible from a distance. In its light, Kade is the color of old paper. Lips nearly blue. The left sleeve of his henley saturated, blood dripping steadily onto the dirt.
"You're going into shock."
"If they find us, we both die. If you run—"
"If I run, I survive?" The trauma shears are in my hand. I cut his sleeve open from cuff to shoulder.
"Yes."
"And you die."
"That's the job," he whispers. "Even if... even if it kills me."
The wound is ugly. The bullet tore through the bicep, nicking the artery—bright red blood pulsing with every heartbeat. Arterial. This doesn't slow on its own.
I dig into the kit. Behind the clotting gauze and the pressure dressings, my fingers close on a hard plastic case. Orange and black. CAT tourniquet, with a folded instruction card tucked inside the band.
Of course a paranoid operator who digs sixty-yard tunnels in his spare time carries a tourniquet in his trauma kit with printed instructions for the person who might have to use it on him.
I unfold the card and hold it close to the glow stick.
Route the band above the elbow—two inches proximal to the wound. Feed it through the buckle and pull it tight. Secure the hook-and-loop. Then the windlass: twist until the bleeding stops.
I work fast, sliding the band up his arm, threading it through.
"This is going to hurt."
"Everything hurts." His jaw is set. "Do it."
I cinch the band tight and start turning the windlass.
He makes a sound low in his throat—compressed agony, forced through clenched teeth. His free hand drives into the dirt, knuckles white. I keep turning. One rotation. Two. The blood flow slows. Another half turn.
Stops.
I lock the windlass into the clip and hold it there, watching the wound. The bright arterial pulse is gone.
"Okay." My hands are shaking. "Okay. It's holding."
I slump against the dirt wall, bloody palms on my thighs.
"Why?" Kade asks. His voice has gone thin.
"Why what?"
"Why stay? You could make it. You're fast. You're smart."
"Because I love you, you idiot."
The words hang in the cold air, heavier than the gun, sharper than the knife.
Kade blinks. His gaze clears. "Wren..."
"I love you," I say again, angry now. "I love that you make me coffee.
I love that you taught me to shoot." I grab his face, forcing him to look at me.
"I’ve known you for three days, and still I love you.
So you don't get to die. You don't get to be a tragic hero in my story.
You have to live so I can yell at you for getting shot. "
He makes a sound that might be a laugh or a sob. His good hand comes up, thumb brushing the dirt from my cheek. "I thought I was supposed to be the one saving you."
"We save each other." I press my forehead to his. "That's the deal."
He pulls me down, his lips finding mine. He tastes like copper and shock. Underneath that, he tastes like Kade. Like the boulder in the sun. Like home.
"Okay," he whispers against my mouth. "Okay. We save each other."
"Can you walk?"
"For you?" The steel comes back into his eyes, slow but unmistakable. "I'd crawl."
"Good." I check the tourniquet one last time. Holding. "Because we can't stay here. They're sweeping east."
"Ivan." Kade's voice sharpens. "The patrol was following blood trail. But Ivan won't. He'll predict the destination."
"The extraction point."
"He'll be waiting. Between us and the ridge."
"So we go around?"
"No time." He checks the Glock—the last magazine is already seated. "We go through him."
He looks at me. Not the protector looking at the principal. A partner looking at a partner.
"Do you still have the shotgun?"
It's in the dirt beside me. I dragged it without thinking, the way my hands found the safety in the dark.
"Yes."
"Seven rounds. Make them count."
"I will."
He nods. "Help me up, little bird. Let's go finish this."
I haul him to his feet. He sways, but stays upright. We stumble out of the deadfall and back into the exposed night. The wind has picked up, howling through the trees.
We move east. Toward the ridge. Toward the extraction.
Toward the killer waiting in the dark.