Chapter 109
The engines grew louder as the vehicles slowed down.
Boots crunched on the gravel, and voices called out in Russian, sharp and assured, the sound of men who expected to find something and were determined to search thoroughly.
Charlotte held her breath as the mare shifted against the rock wall.
She pressed her palm to its flank to calm it.
Beside her, Mason remained motionless, one hand on the gelding’s neck and the other on Jack’s muzzle.
A flashlight beam swept across the entrance of the draw.
It paused on the ground, then moved away, then returned with focused attention.
Someone had discovered their tracks. The beam swung toward the recess where they were hiding.
For a moment, it grazed the rock face above their heads, and Charlotte thought they might remain unnoticed.
Then the beam dropped. It illuminated the mare’s front legs first, her chestnut hide gleaming in the artificial light, and continued downward to where Charlotte crouched with a knife resting across her knees.
She spotted the soldier before he saw her fully.
He stood at the entrance to the recess, carbine held at the ready, his body silhouetted against the headlights of the vehicles behind him.
He appeared to be young, perhaps around twenty-five.
His eyes adjusted to the darkness of the recess, and he raised his rifle.
Charlotte moved quickly, knife in hand, lunging for the gap between his plate carrier and his hip where the armor ended.
He was faster with his rifle. The barrel slammed into her chest, forcing her back against the rock wall.
Although she held on to the knife, her footing slipped on the loose stones.
The soldier’s face registered surprise. His finger found the trigger, and Charlotte saw the movement and understood what it meant.
She was still reacting when Mason moved.
The boy emerged from the gelding’s shadow, where he had been virtually invisible.
He stepped forward, grabbed the rifle’s barrel with both hands, and pushed.
The soldier was already leaning forward, and Mason’s weight hit at the right angle, causing the barrel to swing wide as the trigger was pulled.
The shot rang out, reverberating through the recess and bouncing off the stone, impossibly loud after the long silence.
The bullet struck the rock wall behind Charlotte, sending chips flying into her hair.
The soldier staggered. Although his grip remained firm, his balance had shifted, and Mason continued to pull.
He was too focused on the rifle to notice the pull drawing him off-balance into the recess, and when his heel caught on loose stones, his weight went backward.
His helmet struck rock, and his body went slack at once.
Mason stood over the soldier with his hands still extended, and his chest rose and fell in rapid, shallow pulls.
“Down,” Charlotte said.
The recess went quiet. Jack was pressed against the rock wall, trembling.
The horses had flinched at the shot but held their ground.
The mare’s nostrils flared, and the gelding’s ears pinned flat.
Charlotte reached for the rifle. It was heavy, military issue, and the safety was still off.
She engaged it with her thumb and set the weapon against the rock wall.
The soldier hadn’t moved. His eyes were open.
A dark stain spread beneath his helmet where the back of his skull had met stone.
Charlotte turned to Mason. The boy was still on his knees, his hands resting palms-up on his thighs, and his eyes were fixed on them with the unwavering attention of someone studying an object that had suddenly become foreign.
She knew what she should say. There were words for it, phrases adults offered children after violence, reassurances about necessity and protection that were partly true and partly the kind of lie people told when the truth was too heavy.
She said none of them. Mason deserved better than comfort dressed as wisdom.
“You saved my life,” she said.
He nodded without looking up. His hands remained open on his thighs, and Charlotte saw them shaking, a fine tremor that started in the fingertips and moved up through the wrists. His knuckles were white where he’d gripped the rifle.
“They’ll have heard the shot,” Charlotte said. “We need to move. Right now.”
Mason nodded again. He looked up, and what Charlotte saw in his face broke something in her chest that had been holding since the farm.
It wasn’t the hollow distance he’d carried through the ridge country.
It was something older and more complicated: the expression of a child who had just crossed a line he couldn’t uncross.
“I killed him,” Mason said.
His voice was small and perfectly steady. Charlotte reached for his hands. She covered them with her own, feeling the tremor against her palms, and held them there while the engines beyond the draw revved higher and voices called out in urgent Russian.
“We don’t have time for this right now,” she said. “But we will. I promise you. Later. When we’re safe.”
He looked at her hands covering his, then at the soldier on the ground, then back at his own hands as if they belonged to someone else.
The tremor continued. His fingers curled slowly inward until they made fists, and when he uncurled them again, the shaking hadn’t stopped. Charlotte released him and stood.
The rifle went into the saddlebag’s outer pocket, where she could reach it quickly.
She helped Mason onto the gelding with careful hands and mounted the mare.
They rode from the recess into the predawn where the vehicles waited, and the search had become something else entirely.
Behind them, the soldier lay still in the shadow of the rock where a child’s hands had changed something forever, and Mason didn’t look back.