26. Gabriel
Gabriel
The trucks crest the ridge, and I see her.
Evie is running across the open field. Hair half out of her braid. One hand beneath the curve of her stomach, the other pumping hard at her side.
Three men are behind her. One is close enough to reach.
Everything Daniel said in the truck goes.
Hold position. Assess the field. Wait for Wire’s team to flank east. Do not run blind.
All of it gone.
There is only Evie.
Alive.
Running toward me.
A man reaches for her arm.
“Stop the truck.”
Daniel doesn’t.
“Daniel.”
“We’re still exposed.”
“He has her.”
“He nearly has her. There’s a difference.”
The truck tears down the slope, bouncing hard over the uneven ground. Caleb braces himself against the headrest of the front seat and points through the windshield.
“Drainage cut ahead. Go left.”
Daniel jerks the wheel. The truck drops off the rise and hits flatter ground. Ahead of us, the field resolves into pieces. The white plane sitting on a strip of scraped earth. Men spread around it. A utility truck abandoned near the edge. Falcon standing apart from the others.
And Alexander Voss at the foot of the aircraft stairs, coat moving in the wind, watching his daughter run as though the entire field belongs to him.
A man to Evie’s left raises a weapon. My blood turns to ice.
Then Voss’s voice carries across the field. “Do not shoot!”
The weapon lowers.
Daniel brakes hard. “Out.”
I’m through the door before the truck fully stops.
“Gabriel!” Daniel shouts.
I run.
The vest drags at my chest. The rifle slams against my back. My boots tear through loose dirt and flattened grass. My heart hits hard once. Then again. Fast, but steady.
Evie reaches the bottom of the ridge and sees me. Even from fifty yards away, I feel the exact second she does.
Her whole face changes. “Gabe!”
The sound rips through me. “I’m coming.”
I don’t know if she hears. I say it again anyway. “I’m coming, darlin’.”
One of Voss’s men cuts across her path.
Evie changes direction. He follows. She can’t outrun him. Not on this ground. Not carrying our daughter.
I push harder. My lungs burn. The old pressure starts beneath my sternum.
I ignore it.
Twenty yards.
The man catches Evie’s upper arm. She spins and strikes at his face. He jerks back, but he doesn’t let go.
I reach them at speed. My shoulder hits him beneath the ribs, and we go down together. The impact drives the breath out of me.
He rolls fast—trained—and reaches for the weapon at his side. I get my forearm across his throat before he clears it.
“Run,” I tell Evie.
She doesn’t.
Of course she doesn’t.
She stands three feet away, breathing hard, one hand over our daughter and murder in her eyes.
“Evie, get behind the trucks.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
The man beneath me drives a fist into my side. Pain flashes white. I slam his wrist into the ground until the weapon comes loose. Boots pound toward us. More of Voss’s men.
Then Daniel’s voice cuts through the field. “DOWN!”
Evie drops immediately. I throw myself over her. Gunfire cracks above us. Not aimed at us. Daniel and Wire’s men are putting rounds into the dirt and open space ahead of the advancing contractors, forcing them back without hitting anyone.
“Stay down,” I tell her.
Her hands fist in the front of my vest. “You came.”
The words nearly break me.
I look down at her. Dirt streaks one cheek. Her braid is gone completely now, hair wild around her face. But she’s breathing. Our daughter is protected between us.
“Always.”
Her face crumples for one second.
Then the man beneath my knee moves.
I shove Evie behind me and turn. He comes up with a knife. I catch his wrist with both hands. The strain hits my chest instantly. Not pain. Pressure. A fist closing from the inside.
I bear down harder. The knife hovers six inches from my throat.
Then Caleb’s boot drives into the man’s forearm. Bone cracks, and the knife drops.
Caleb hauls him sideways despite the bad knee, and Daniel appears a second later, kicking the weapon away and forcing the man facedown.
“Move, Evie,” Daniel orders.
I turn. Ethan has reached her. He takes her arm, gentle but firm, pulling her toward the shelter of the trucks.
She resists. “Gabriel.”
“I’m right behind you.”
Her eyes search mine. She sees the hand I have pressed flat against my chest. “No.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“Go with Ethan.”
“Gabe—”
“Evie.” The word comes out harder than I mean.
She freezes.
I soften it immediately. “Please.”
Her face changes. Not surrender. Trust.
She lets Ethan move her. I watch until she reaches the first truck and Beckett puts two veterans around her.
I straighten. The world tilts once, then rights itself.
The aircraft engine begins to turn over behind us. A low mechanical whine builds across the field. Every head turns. Alexander Voss is already moving toward the stairs. His remaining men collapse around him, backing toward the aircraft.
He’s lost Evie. Now he’s trying to leave.
Daniel lifts his radio. “East team, close the runway. Federal team, move now.”
Static answers.
Then Ethan’s voice from behind the trucks. “They’re still six minutes out.”
Six minutes is too long.
The plane’s engines rise. The strip is clear ahead of it. Nothing between Voss and the open eastern sky.
Then a new sound rolls over the western ridge. Low and heavy. Familiar.
Rotors.
I look up.
A helicopter comes over the ridge at speed, banking hard as it drops toward the field.
For one second, I don’t understand.
Then sunlight flashes across the canopy. Jacob’s helicopter.
My father brings it down between Voss’s aircraft and the open end of the runway.
Rotor wash explodes across the field. Grass flattens. Dirt lifts in sheets. Men throw up their arms and turn away.
The plane can’t move forward. Can’t take off. Can’t go anywhere without driving straight into the aircraft hovering in its path.
The man who spent thirty years flying away has come back to block the enemy.
Through the canopy, I see my father. He’s looking directly at me. For one impossible second, neither of us looks away.
Then Evie screams my name.
I turn.
Falcon is behind her. Fucker must have come around the far side of the truck while everybody was distracted by the helicopter. He has one arm around her shoulders, and he’s holding a black device in his other hand with two metal prongs.
A taser.
But he’s not aiming at Evie.
He’s aiming at me.
“Falcon,” I say.
His face is wrecked. “I couldn’t put her on the plane.” A pause. “But I can’t let you stop him either. I’m sorry.”
Then he fires.
The prongs hit me high in the chest. For one bright second, every muscle in my body locks. Pain hits fast, white and total, ripping through my ribs and down both arms, turning my hands into fists I can’t open.
My knees hit the ground.
Somewhere, Evie is screaming.
The current stops. My body doesn’t. My heart stutters hard enough that I feel it strike the inside of my chest. Once. Twice. Then too fast. Every beat lands on top of the one before it.
I try to breathe. Nothing comes. The field tilts sideways.
Evie drives an elbow into Falcon’s face and tears free.
Good girl.
She runs toward me.
Ethan reaches Falcon first. He hits him low, both of them crashing against the side of the truck. The taser skids away through the grass. Wire comes from the other direction with a sound that does not belong to any man I know, grabs Falcon by the front of his vest, and slams him against the ground.
I see it in broken pieces.
Daniel shouting.
Our men closing around Voss’s contractors.
Caleb limping hard across the field with his rifle raised.
The helicopter settling through its own wash.
Evie dropping beside me.
“Gabe.”
Her hands are on my face.
“Look at me.”
I am looking. I think I am.
Her features blur and sharpen. Hazel eyes. Dirt on her cheek. Hair everywhere.
Alive. She’s alive.
I try to tell her. My mouth moves. No sound comes out.
The flutter in my chest becomes something worse.
Not fast anymore. Wrong. Each beat comes from a different place, pulling against the others instead of together.
My heart has become a fistful of frightened muscle, every part trying to beat in a different direction.
Ethan appears over Evie’s shoulder. The moment he sees my face, he knows. “Gabriel, tell me what you feel.”
I press my palm to my chest. It’s the only answer I have.
“His rhythm’s unstable,” Ethan says. “Get the kit.”
Someone runs.
Evie grips my hand. “No. Stay with me.”
I’m trying. God, I am trying.
The plane engine rises behind her.
Voss is still moving. Still trying to leave.
Daniel shouts something into his radio.
The helicopter drops the final few feet and hits the field hard enough that the landing skids bounce. The rotors keep turning.
The pilot’s door opens, and my father jumps down. He doesn’t wait for the blades to stop. He ducks beneath them and runs. I’ve never seen my father run toward me. Not once.
He crosses the field with his head down against the wash, one hand holding his hat to his chest until the wind tears it away.
He lets it go and keeps coming.
My heart gives one final heavy blow behind my ribs.
Then nothing.
The world goes quiet.
The helicopter is still there. Evie is still saying my name. Men are shouting across the field.
But all of it moves away from me.
The sky above her is pale blue. Ordinary. I think that’s unfair. The sky should look different when a man’s heart stops.