Chapter 3 The Extraction #2
The treeline is fifty feet away. Forty. Thirty.
Behind us, tires on gravel.
"Go." Riot's voice drops the casual edge—pure command now, a sound that resonates in my bones in a way Derek’s flat protocols never could. “Treeline, don't look back."
I run.
My feet know what to do even if my brain is spinning. The ground is uneven—rocks, roots, pine needles slick with dew—but I've run worse terrain at elevation. I've scrambled up approaches that would break most people, and my body remembers what my mind keeps trying to forget.
I’m not fragile. I’m not cargo. I’m the woman who hangs two hundred feet above nothing and calls it peace.
The trees swallow me. I press my back against a pine trunk, chest heaving, and look back.
Riot is still in the open.
He's between me and the cabin, weapon trained on the vehicle now skidding to a stop in the gravel drive.
In the gray dawn light, I can see him clearly for the first time—the coiled readiness in his stance, the way he holds the gun like it's an extension of his arm, the absolute stillness of a predator waiting to strike.
He's beautiful. The thought is absurd, inappropriate, and possibly a sign that I've lost my mind. But it's true. He's beautiful, the way a storm is beautiful, the way a cliff face is beautiful—dangerous and elemental and completely unconcerned with your opinion of it.
Two men spill out of the vehicle—no, three—dark clothes, automatic weapons, moving like they've trained together.
The first shot cracks the morning open.
The flinch is involuntary. But my feet stay planted—I'm frozen against the tree, watching Riot move like violence is a language he speaks fluently. He drops behind a rusted-out truck, returns fire, and drops one man before the others find cover.
Go, he said. Don't look back.
But I can't stop watching.
He's methodical about it. No wasted motion, no hesitation. The second man breaks cover, and Riot puts him down before he makes it three steps. The third is smarter—stays behind the vehicle, trading shots, trying to pin Riot in place.
More vehicles on the road. The engines growl through the trees—reinforcements that are going to make this math impossible.
Riot hears them too. He breaks from cover, sprinting toward the treeline, toward me, and the third man rises to track him, and I grab a rock.
Baseball-sized, rough-edged. My arm remembers Little League, the coach who said I had a decent arm for a girl, and I throw before I can talk myself out of it.
The rock catches the man in the shoulder. Not a kill shot—not even close—but it staggers him, throws off his aim, buys Riot the second he needs to reach the trees.
He crashes into cover beside me, breathing hard, and stares at me like I've grown a second head.
"Did you just—"
"He was going to shoot you."
"With a rock?"
"It worked."
For a moment, something breaks through the operator mask—surprise, maybe, or the beginning of a laugh.
His eyes crinkle at the corners. Up close, they're brown after all.
Warm brown, with flecks of gold near the pupils.
The kind of eyes that would be easy to get lost in, if I were the kind of woman who got lost in men's eyes.
I'm not. I'm definitely not.
He's looking at my mouth.
No. He's looking at me—all of me—like I'm a puzzle he didn't expect and can't quite solve. The weight of his attention makes my skin prickle.
Then the moment breaks, and he's all business again.
"Stay with me. We've got a two-minute head start, and they'll have numbers on us soon." He starts moving deeper into the trees, and I follow. "Also, for the record, that was either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid."
"Can't it be both?"
The laugh escapes this time—short, sharp, almost startled out of him. "Yeah, sweetheart. I'm starting to think it can."
We run.
The forest is dense and unforgiving—undergrowth that catches at my legs, branches that whip across my face, terrain that slopes upward without warning.
My lungs burn. The Merrells grip the uneven ground, find traction where lesser boots would slip, and I silently thank three years of weekend scrambles for teaching my feet how to read terrain.
Behind us, shouts. More shots, but distant—they're organizing, spreading out, trying to cut off escape routes.
Riot moves as if the forest were his native territory. He picks paths I wouldn't see, avoids dead ends I wouldn't recognize, and keeps a pace that's just below my breaking point. Every few minutes, he glances back—checking that I'm still there, still upright, still moving.
I don't know how long we run. Time stops meaning anything when your world narrows to the next footfall, the next breath, the next tree trunk to dodge.
Eventually, Riot slows. Stops. Listens.
The sounds of pursuit have faded—not gone, but farther. We've bought ourselves room.
"They'll regroup." He's not winded, which is annoying. "Call in more bodies. Set up a perimeter and try to box us in."
"What do we do?"
He looks at me—really looks, like he's seeing something he didn't expect. The kindergarten teacher who threw a rock at an armed cartel soldier. The woman in hiking boots and a fleece who kept pace through miles of hostile terrain without complaint.
"We keep moving," he says. "East. Deeper into the mountains."
"What's east?"
"Right now? Nothing good." That crooked smile again, the one that makes my chest do uncomfortable things. "But nothing good is better than what's behind us."
He holds out his hand.
I look at it. Broad palm, long fingers, and calluses. The hand of someone who works, who fights, who does things that leave marks.
I take it.
His grip is warm and firm, sending a jolt of something electric up my arm. Just adrenaline. Just the aftermath of almost dying. Nothing to do with the way his thumb brushes across my knuckles before he lets go.
He starts walking. I follow.
And I definitely don't think about his hand for the next mile.
I think about it constantly.
The sun clears the ridgeline, flooding the forest with gold. The fear is still there—coiled in my stomach, sharp at the edges of every thought—but underneath it, something else is rising.
Something that is the woman I only let myself be on cliff faces, finally out in the open air.
You're going to die, Daniel's voice whispers.
Maybe, I think back. But I'm going to die being me.
I keep walking.