18. Hazel #2
"I'm not going outside," I say. "But I'll do something better. I'll get a marshal to escort us both to your car. That way you're protected, I'm protected, and we can bring the evidence straight back inside. Let me get Brock."
I turn toward Mason's office.
She moves fast.
Her hand closes around my wrist and yanks me sideways, hard, toward the emergency exit at the end of the hall.
The door has no alarm, just a push bar, and she hits it with her hip while pulling me through.
The cold air hits my face and then we're outside, in the narrow alley between the building and the adjacent lot. The door swings shut behind us.
I dig my heels in and twist against her grip the way Brock taught me. Step in. Rotate against the thumb. Pull free. Her grip breaks and I stumble backward, my shoulder hitting the brick wall of the building.
Alice isn't alone.
A dark sedan is idling against the wall. Dale Weathers is leaning against the driver's side door.
"There she is," he says. His voice is flat. Unhurried. The voice of a man who’s done this before.
Behind him, a second man I don't recognize steps out of the driver's side. Tall. Young. The kind of muscle that gets hired for exactly this purpose.
I have maybe two seconds.
I spin toward the emergency exit door. It's a push bar from the inside, but from this side there's no handle. Just flat metal. I slam my palm against it. It doesn't move. The door locked behind us when it closed.
I open my mouth to scream and Dale's hand clamps over it from behind.
The grab is exactly the one Brock trained me for. Arms pinned. Weight pressed forward. Hand over mouth. I don't think. I react. Drop my weight. Stomp down on his instep. Drive my elbow backward into his ribs as hard as I can.
He grunts. His grip loosens for half a second. Not enough to break free but enough to get one arm out. I claw at his hand on my mouth and bite down, hard, on the web between his thumb and index finger. He swears and jerks his hand away.
"brOCK!" I scream his name once, as loud as I can, before the second man reaches me and they drag me toward the car.
I fight. I fight the way Brock taught me, using my whole body, making myself heavy and difficult and loud.
I stomp. I elbow. I twist. I manage to kick the tall man in the knee and he stumbles.
But there are two of them and one of me, and Dale's arms are like iron bands around my torso, lifting me off the ground while Alice holds the back door of the sedan open.
They shove me into the back seat. My head cracks against the door frame and pain bursts white behind my eyes. Dale slides in beside me, pinning my arms. The tall man rounds to the driver's seat. Alice is already in the passenger side, her tears gone, her face calm and blank.
"Drive," Dale says.
The car moves. Through the alley. Onto the side street. Past the front of the Marshals office where my notebook is still sitting on the conference room table and my text to Brock is still sitting unread on his phone.
I stop struggling. Not because I've given up. Because struggling in a moving car with a man twice my size holding me down is a waste of energy I'm going to need later.
I focus instead.
The driver turns left on Main Street. Then right on the road out of town. South. Toward the mountains. The speedometer climbs. We pass the last house, the last streetlight, the last sign of the town that was supposed to be safe. The trees close in.
Dale is looking at his phone, not at me. Alice is staring straight ahead. The driver is focused on the road.
I work my right hand slowly, carefully, into my back pocket where my phone is still sitting.
My fingers find the smooth glass. I can't see the screen.
I can't unlock it with my fingerprint because Dale's weight has my arm at the wrong angle.
But I can feel the side button. I press and hold it, counting three seconds, then press again.
Emergency SOS. If the phone registered the input and if there's enough signal, it will broadcast my location to emergency services and to every contact I've set as an emergency contact.
Including Brock.
I don't know if it worked. I can't check. But the attempt is all I have right now, and I hold onto it the same way I held onto the sound of his heartbeat that first night in the cabin when I was too scared to sleep.
Dale finally looks at me. His eyes are flat and cold, the eyes of a man who has moved people and cargo through these mountains for years without a single indictment.
"Your article cost me everything," he says.
"The camp. The inventory. Four of my men.
And now the marshals think they've won." He smiles.
It doesn't reach his eyes. "They haven't.
There's always another shipment. Another route.
Another buyer. The only thing that changes is who disappears. "
"The women in Storage Building Three," I say, forcing my voice to stay level even though I'm shaking.
"They're alive. All eight of them. Haven 7 has them.
Your operation is gutted and everyone you left behind is talking right now.
Jeffrey Pruitt, Commissioner Tate, all of them.
Whatever you think you're going to do with me, it's not going to change that. "
Something moves behind his eyes. Not fear. Irritation. The irritation of a man whose plans keep being disrupted by a woman with a notebook and too many questions.
"You talk too much," he says, and turns back to his phone.
Alice hasn't looked at me once since we got in the car. I study the back of her head. Dark hair, pulled back. The same woman who smiled at me in the Lucky Moon and asked if I needed help finding the bathroom. The same woman who cried in the hallway and begged me not to leave her alone.
She's good at her job. She almost had me. Even knowing what I knew, even with Silas's warning and the conversation I overheard and every advantage I had, she still got me through that door.
I won't make the mistake of underestimating anyone again.
The car climbs into the mountains. The road narrows.
The trees thicken. And somewhere behind us, in a conference room at the US Marshals office, my phone sits on a table with a text that says Alice is here, and a notebook full of every name, every connection, every piece of evidence that will bring these people down whether I survive this or not.
The story lives. Even if I don't. That's what I told myself last night at the outpost with the pen in my hand and the fire burning low.
I'm going to make sure it stays true.