Chapter 4 The Chase #2
"It's your face." She steps closer. Her hand rises—hesitates—then lands on my jaw, turning my head so she can see the damage. Her fingers are cold against my skin. The touch is gentle. Careful. Utterly devastating.
"It's nothing," I say again, but my voice has dropped. Gone rough.
She's close enough that I can count her eyelashes. Close enough that I can see the pulse fluttering in her throat. Close enough that if I leaned forward—just a few inches—
"We should keep moving." Her voice is barely a whisper. But she doesn't step back.
"Yeah." I don't step back either. "We should."
Her hand is still on my face. My hand has somehow found her hip. I don't remember putting it there.
“Riot—“
The sound of my name in her mouth does something I don't have time to examine. I step back. Force myself to breathe. Stepping back is the hardest thing I've done today, and I dropped two men this morning.
"I know."
Unguarded. She's not performing worry because it's expected. She actually cares whether some stranger she met an hour ago is hurt.
Dangerous, I think. This woman is dangerous.
Not because she threw a rock. Because she cares. Because underneath all that careful control, all that quiet watchfulness, there's a heart that hasn't learned to stop hoping for people.
The cartel will kill her for what she knows. But that heart—that open, stubborn heart—is what's going to get me killed.
I can already feel it happening. The shift, the slide, the moment when a mission stops being a mission and starts being personal. It's the thing CJ warns against, the thing the training beats out of you, the thing that gets operators killed.
I should stop it.
I should put the wall back up, pack the charm into the same box with everything else, treat her like cargo and nothing more.
I look at her—dirt on her cheek, hair coming loose, eyes bright with fear and adrenaline and something that looks almost like wonder—and I know I'm not going to do any of those things.
You're in trouble, Jones.
Last time something became personal, I'd spent six weeks convincing myself I knew someone I'd never met. Cost me more than I want to think about.
I holster my weapon and offer her my hand.
She takes it. Her fingers lace through mine like they've done it a thousand times. Like they belong there.
We're both in trouble.
Her grip is stronger than I expected—callused in places that catch my attention. The inside of her fingers, the heel of her palm. Not a teacher's hands.
I file it away. I'll come back to that.
I start to pull her up.
But I pull too hard, or she rises too fast, and suddenly she's standing inches from me, our hands still clasped, her body close enough that I can feel the heat of her through the cold morning air.
Neither of us moves.
Her breath catches. Her lips part. Her eyes drop to my mouth and then snap back up, like she's been caught doing something she shouldn't.
I should step back. I should make a joke, break the tension, be charming, be safe. That's what I do. That's who I am—the guy who deflects, who charms, who never lets anyone close enough to leave a mark.
But she's looking at me like she sees past all of it. Like she's seeing something underneath the jokes, the grin, and the easy confidence. The terrifying thing is, I want her to look. I want her to see.
"You okay?" My voice comes out rougher than I intended.
"I don't know." Her voice is barely a whisper. Her hand is still in mine. Neither of us has let go. "Are we going to die?"
"Not if I can help it."
"That's not a no."
"It's the best I've got." My thumb traces a circle on the back of her hand. Unconscious. Automatic. Like my body is making promises my brain hasn't approved. "But for what it's worth, I don't plan on dying today. Too much to live for."
"Like what?"
The question catches me off guard.
Most people don't ask follow-up questions when you hand them a flippant line. Most people take the deflection at face value and move on.
Not her.
"I owe my tech operator fancy coffee for a week," I say. "Can't die before I pay that off. She'd haunt me."
Evie laughs. It's a small sound, barely there, but it's real—surprised out of her like my laugh was surprised out of me earlier. Her whole face changes when she laughs. Softens. Opens.
Beautiful, I think, and then immediately: Shut up, Jones.
I let go of her hand. Step back. Reload my weapon with movements that are automatic, mechanical, anything to put distance between us.
"We need to move. More will be coming."
She nods. The moment breaks. The tension doesn't disappear, exactly, but it banks—embers instead of flame, waiting for fuel.
"Mitzy, status on pursuit."
"Main group is regrouping at the cabin. Looks like they found Derek and Travis. Derek's being loaded into a vehicle—medical transport, probably. They're not happy."
"Derek lived?"
"For now. Travis too. Cartel's pulling back their ground teams while they figure out what happened. You bought yourself a window—maybe thirty minutes before they reorganize and come at you with real numbers."
Thirty minutes. Better than twenty.
"Exfil options?"
"Still working on it. The roads are compromised—they've got spotters on every route back to civilization. Helicopter extraction requires a clearing, and the nearest one is an hour east on foot."
An hour. With cartel soldiers behind us and unknown terrain ahead.
"What about the ridge route? If we can get above them—"
"Checking." Pause. Keys clicking. "There's a canyon about three klicks east. Satellite shows some cliff formations on either side. If you can get across, they'll have to go around—adds hours to their pursuit, gives extraction a much better window."
"How do we get across?"
"There was a rope bridge. Emphasis on was. Satellite shows it's been cut. Recently."
"So they knew we'd go this way."
"Looks like. Someone's doing their homework."
"Can we go around?"
"Adds four hours minimum. Rough terrain, and you'd be moving parallel to their perimeter instead of away from it."
Four hours. The cartel will have helicopters by then. Dogs. Numbers that make survival a rounding error.
"What about the canyon itself? Climbing options?"
"The walls are..." More clicking. "Significant."
"Define significant, Mitzy."
"Like, 'I hope you remembered your rope and harness' significant. Two hundred feet of granite on both sides. Near-vertical. Some routes might be climbable, but it's technical stuff. Expert-level, not weekend-warrior."
I glance at Evie. She's listening—my earpiece isn't exactly subtle, and she's clearly picking up at least my half of the conversation.
"We'll assess when we get there. Keep tracking the pursuit and let me know if they start moving again."
"Copy. And Riot?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't be an idiot."
"When have I ever been an idiot?"
"I have a list. It's alphabetized. Mitzy out."
I pocket the earpiece and turn to Evie. "You catch any of that?"
"Enough. There's a canyon ahead, the bridge is gone, and we're running out of options."
"That's the highlight reel, yeah."
"And the alternative is four hours in the wrong direction while they hunt us with helicopters."
"You're quick."
"I'm a kindergarten teacher. We have to think three steps ahead, or the finger-painting becomes chaos." She says it deadpan, and I bark out a laugh before I can stop myself.
This woman. This impossible, terrifying, rock-throwing woman.
We push east. The terrain gets worse—steeper, more exposed, the forest thinning as we gain elevation. The temperature drops as we climb, the air thinning just enough to make each breath cost more than the last. My thighs burn with the sustained effort, and I've trained for this.
Evie has to be dying.
But she doesn't complain. Doesn't slow. Doesn't ask how much farther.
She just keeps moving.
"You're handling this better than most people would," I say, when the silence stretches too long. "Most civilians fall apart the first time bullets fly."
"Is that a compliment or an observation?"
"Both."
She's quiet for a moment. "I've had practice at not falling apart."
There's weight in those words. History. The kind of thing you don't share with strangers, except we're not really strangers anymore, are we? Not after a firefight. Not after that moment by the rocks.
"Bad practice or good practice?"
"Is there a good kind?"
"Sometimes." I think about the things that made me hard. Joey. Carmen. Deacon. "Sometimes the hard stuff teaches you who you are."
"And sometimes it just teaches you to hide."
I look at her—really look, not just an assessment but I give her my full attention. Something in her expression catches. Vulnerability, maybe. Or the edge of something she doesn't show people.
"You don't seem like someone who hides."
"You'd be surprised." She says it quietly, almost to herself. "I've been hiding my whole life."
Before I can respond—before I can figure out what to say to that, how to handle the raw honesty she just handed me—the trees thin out, and the canyon opens up below us.
It's a gash in the earth—sixty feet wide, walls dropping away into shadow. The remains of the rope bridge dangle on the far side, cut clean. On the other side, the terrain levels out.
Safety.
A chance at survival.
And between us and that safety: two hundred feet of granite. Near-vertical, minimal visible handholds, the kind of wall that kills experienced climbers who get cocky.
"Shit," I breathe.
"There's another option." Evie's voice is quiet. Steady. Different.
I turn to look at her. She's not staring at the cliff with fear. She's staring at it with something that looks almost like recognition. Her whole posture has changed—shoulders back, chin up, the careful smallness she's been carrying replaced by something taller. Wilder.
"What option?"
She meets my eyes. The mask is cracking—no, shattering. Something underneath is coming to the surface, something that's been buried so deep I didn't even know it was there.
"I've climbed this wall before."