Chapter 4 The Chase
FOUR
The Chase
RIOT
The kindergarten teacher threw a rock at an armed cartel soldier, and the image of her face when she did it?
Flushed. Furious.
Absolutely fucking magnificent.
She threw a rock. Not a scream, not a freeze, not a panicked bolt in the wrong direction. She assessed the threat, found a weapon, and acted. And then she looked at me with those big brown eyes and said It worked’ like she was mildly surprised but not particularly impressed with herself.
In three years of extractions, I've seen trained operatives do worse under pressure.
Focus, Jones. She's a package. A witness. A job.
A job.
"Contact Mitzy." I tap my earpiece, keeping my voice low. "Sitrep."
Static, then her voice cuts through—sharp, alert, zero trace of the manic poker player from four hours ago. "I've got you on satellite. Three vehicles at the cabin, more inbound from the west. You've got maybe six hostiles on foot entering the treeline now."
"Only six? I'm offended. I thought I rated at least a dozen."
"Save the comedy for when you're not being hunted. The two agents?"
"Derek won't be doing much breathing without a hospital.
Travis might wake up eventually." I duck under a low branch, checking that Evie is still behind me.
She is—moving quietly, watching her footing, not wasting breath on questions.
"They'll talk when they wake up. Give Yates something to work with. "
"Copy. Your pursuit is spreading out—looks like they're trying to establish a perimeter to the north and south. East is still your best bet."
"Roger. Keep me updated on their positions."
"Always do. Mitzy out."
I slow my pace slightly, letting Evie close the gap between us.
Her face is flushed from exertion, a scratch on her cheek from a branch she didn't dodge fast enough, but her eyes are clear.
Focused. She's tracking the terrain the way someone who spends time outdoors tracks terrain—reading the slope, anticipating obstacles, adjusting her stride before she needs to.
Those boots aren't a fashion statement. They're worn in the right places, scuffed in the patterns that come from actual use. The jeans move with her instead of against her. And she's been dressed and ready since day three, waiting for a threat she could feel but not name.
This woman has been underestimated her entire life. I'd bet my coffee debt on it.
"Doing okay back there?"
She shoots me a look—somewhere between exhausted and annoyed. "Define 'okay.'"
"Upright. Moving. Not actively being shot at."
"Then I'm spectacular."
The dry delivery surprises a laugh out of me. "That's the spirit. Keep up with me, sweetheart, and I'll have you somewhere safe before lunch."
"Lunch." She ducks under the same branch I did, graceful despite her fatigue. "Is that a promise or a sales pitch?"
"Little of both. I'm very good at my job."
"Modest, too."
"Modesty is for people who can't back it up.
" I flash her the grin—the one that works on everyone, the one that says trust me, I've got this, everything's going to be fine.
It's armor, mostly, but it's also real. The grin is how I function.
How I keep breathing when the world is full of people trying to stop me.
Evie doesn't look away. Most people do—they take the charm at face value, let themselves be reassured, don't look too close at what's underneath. But she holds my gaze like she's searching for something. Like she's trying to figure out which parts of me are performance and which parts are real.
It's unsettling.
It's also, if I'm being honest, a little bit thrilling.
"Your earpiece," she says. "The person on the other end. They're tracking the men behind us?"
"Mitzy. Best tech operator in the business. She's got eyes on their positions, their movements, probably their dental records if she felt like digging."
"And she works for... Guardian HRS? Is that a real organization?"
"Real as it gets. Private hostage rescue. We handle the cases the government can't or won't touch."
"Cases like mine."
"Cases exactly like yours." I scan the treeline, checking for movement. "FBI's compromised, local law is unreliable, and the cartel's got enough money to buy anyone who isn't already bought. You needed someone outside the system."
"So you're what—vigilantes?"
"We prefer 'aggressive problem-solvers.'" Another grin. "Better dental plan than vigilantes."
She almost smiles. Almost. I count it as a win.
We keep moving. The terrain slopes steadily upward.
The forest is dense here—pine and fir pressing close, undergrowth thick enough to slow our pace.
Good for cover. Bad for speed. I push us as fast as I dare, balancing the need for distance against the reality that Evie is a civilian and civilians have limits.
Except she doesn't seem to have limits. Not the ones I expected.
She matches my pace without complaint, breathing hard but controlled. Her footwork is better than it has any right to be—she's picking her way through roots and rocks like she's done this before, like rough terrain is something her body knows how to navigate.
I watch the way she moves — efficient, sure-footed, her body reading terrain the way mine reads tactical ground. There's something about it that doesn't fit the kindergarten teacher frame.
Those jeans fit her very well. I file that away, too, mostly because I’m male and have a pulse.
"Mitzy, I need terrain options. Looking for defensible ground."
"Already on it. Two hundred meters south-southeast, there's a rock formation—natural choke point. You can control the approach, limit their angles."
"Send it to my nav."
The coordinates pop up on my wrist display. I adjust our heading, pushing harder than I should with a civilian in tow.
But Evie keeps up.
Her breathing is ragged now, harsh at the edges, but her feet don't falter.
She's running the way people run when they've run before—not the panicked scramble of someone fleeing for the first time, but the measured expenditure of someone who knows how to manage their reserves.
Someone who understands that endurance isn't about going fast. It's about not stopping.
Who the hell is this woman?
The rock formation materializes through the trees—a jumble of granite boulders, chest-high, creating a natural defensive position. I pull Evie down behind the largest one, pressing her back against cold stone.
We're both breathing hard. Her body is warm against my chest, her hair brushing my jaw, and the scent of her—sweat and fear and something soft underneath, like vanilla or clean cotton—cuts through the pine and adrenaline.
Focus.
"Stay here." I force myself to step back. "Stay down. Don't move unless I tell you."
Her eyes search my face again. That same look from before—like she's reading me, cataloging me, trying to decide what I'm made of. Up close, I can see gold flecks in the brown of her irises. A tiny scar near her left eyebrow, silvered with age.
"Be careful," she says.
The words are simple. Nothing special. But something in her voice makes them land harder than they should.
"Always am." I give her the grin again—the charming one, the easy one—but it feels different this time. Less armor, more... something else.
I move to a position where I can cover the approach. Weapon up, breathing controlled. The joker's gone now, packed away in the same mental compartment where I keep Joey's face and Deacon's last words and all the other things that don't fit inside a grin. What's left is colder. Sharper.
The forest is quiet except for the whisper of wind through pines and the distant call of a bird that doesn't know it's in a war zone.
Then: movement. A shadow between trees, forty meters out.
I wait.
The first tango emerges from cover, moving in a tactical crouch, weapon sweeping.
He's good—professional, patient, checking his corners.
Former military, maybe, or cartel-trained.
There's a difference in how they move. Military training leaves patterns, habits, and predictable behaviors.
Cartel training is wilder, more brutal, and less concerned with rules of engagement.
This one moves military. Which means he's precise. Which means he's dangerous.
But he's focused on the obvious approach, the path we should have taken if we'd kept running straight.
He doesn't see me.
Two rounds, center mass. He drops.
The second tango reacts fast—drops behind a tree, returns fire. Bark explodes near my head, splinters stinging my cheek. I shift position, use the rocks for cover, and count the seconds between his shots. Three-round bursts, then pause. Checking position, probably. Trying to locate me by sound.
Amateur mistake. In a firefight, silence is just another kind of weapon.
I wait.
Silence. More silence. The kind of quiet that makes men nervous, makes them doubt, makes them do stupid things to break the tension.
He does something stupid.
Impatience, probably. The need to confirm his partner's status, or the belief that one target hiding behind rocks isn't that dangerous. He breaks cover to move to a better angle, committed before he realizes the geometry is wrong.
I take the shot.
He goes down.
The cordite smell hangs in the cold air, mixing with pine and damp earth. My ears ring from the gunfire, but underneath it, nothing. No more movement, no more threats.
I give it thirty seconds. Then sixty. Scan the treeline twice more before I'm satisfied.
"Clear." I lower my weapon and make my way back to Evie.
She's exactly where I left her—pressed against the rock, pale but composed. But her eyes track me as I approach, and there's nothing clinical about the way she looks at me. It's hungry. Relieved. Like she was terrified I wasn't coming back.
Something twists in my chest.
"You're bleeding," she says.
I touch my cheek. The splinters from the bark. "It's nothing."