CHAPTER 26 #2
He crossed to the snowmobile and pulled the tarp down. “If we can start this, we can cut below the lodge and draw them away from the repeater.”
“Can it run?”
“Maybe.”
“I adore a plan with confidence.”
The relay box coughed when she turned the crank. Once. Twice.
On the third rotation, the little green lamp came alive.
Rian heard Mara's voice burst through the handset on the shelf. “Clara? Rian?
“I have law enforcement routing to the county road but they cannot get up yet. Tell me you are not dead.”
“Clara grabbed the handset. ”Not dead. Moving.
“Greer's pickup team is at the lower shed.”
“Greer is calling every channel dirty. The packet is spreading.”
“Good. Keep the courier channel open if you catch it.”
“Rian looked at her. ”Courier?“
“Men like Greer always send one person whose job is to keep the crime tidy.”
The shed door shuddered under a blow.
The helicopter's rotor thudded closer again, lower now, hunting for a place to set down near the road.
Rian pulled the snowmobile starter cord with his left hand.
Nothing.
Again.
The engine coughed and died.
The door shuddered harder.
Clara set the laptop on the shelf and connected it to the relay with numb, steady fingers. “Second ping going out.”
“We need to leave.”
“Ten seconds.”
“We may not have ten.”
“Then buy me eight.”
He went to the door.
There had been a time, not long ago, when he would have taken that as permission to command the whole room, the whole mountain, her choices included. Now he braced his good shoulder against the crossbar and understood the gift for what it was.
She trusted him with eight seconds.
He gave her twelve.
The door cracked inward. Rian drove his boot into it and heard someone curse outside. A gun barrel shoved through the gap.
He trapped it against the frame with the bar and wrenched down. The weapon fell into the snow outside.
“Done!” Clara shouted.
The snowmobile engine caught on the next pull, loud and rough and glorious.
Rian turned.
The rear service panel of the shed was open.
Clara stood half through it, laptop bag across her chest, key ring in one hand. Beyond her, a man in a black winter shell appeared from the road ditch. He moved faster than Rian expected, slipping behind the shed while Rian held the front.
“Clara!” Rian lunged.
Too late.
The man caught her around the shoulders and dragged her backward into the white glare of the lower road. Clara drove an elbow into his ribs, twisted, and nearly broke free. Another man came from the trees.
Rian hit the service opening hard enough to tear the stitches in his shoulder wider. He got one hand through. Caught only empty air.
Clara's eyes found his through the swirling snow.
Not panic.
Instruction.
Trust me.
The snowmobile shed gave them walls, but not safety.
Rian knew the difference. Every inch of him wanted to treat the crossbar as a fortress, to put Clara behind the snowmobile and hold the front until the county road cleared.
But the rotor was lowering again, the ground team had angles on the door, and the shed had been built for machines, not people under fire.
Clara stood at the relay box with the laptop open on the shelf, blood darkening the wool at her left side. Her breath came thin. Her eyes stayed clear.
“We need a decoy signal,” she said.
“Mara already has the packet.”
“This is not for the packet. This is for position.”
Rian listened past the door. Boots in snow. One man at the cedar stack.
One cutting wide toward the rear service panel. The helicopter pilot was fighting the wind and losing patience.
“Explain,” he said.
Clara glanced at him, quick and bright despite the pain. Asking instead of ordering changed the air between them.
“The shed relay can still ping the repeater,” she said. “If I make it look like the laptop is hardwired here and still transmitting, they think I have to stay with it. They push the door.
“You wake the snowmobile. We leave through the service panel before they understand the machine is louder than the signal.”
“They will hear the engine.”
“Only after they commit to the wrong side.”
“He looked at the old rear panel. Hinges rusted. Snow drift packed along the bottom.”
Enough space if forced. Not enough time if it jammed.
“Panel may stick.”
“Then unstick it.”
There was no fear in the order. No softness either. Partnership did not always sound tender.
Sometimes it sounded like trust with edges.
Rian crossed the shed and hooked his left hand into the rear panel latch. His right shoulder punished the reach with a white-hot pulse. He let the pain show on his face because hiding it from Clara helped no one.
“Can you pull?” she asked.
“With my left.”
“Do that. Do not tear your shoulder trying to impress me.”
“I stopped trying to impress you on Night Two.”
“Lie.”
“Yes.”
Her mouth twitched. Then she bent back over the laptop and sent the false ping.
On the screen, a progress wheel spun beside a dummy file path she had named GREER_RETRIEVAL_ACTIVE. Even hunted and bleeding, Clara could make a trap petty.
The first strike hit the front door.
He hauled the rear panel. Nothing. He braced a boot against the wall and pulled again.
Rust shrieked. The panel gave two inches, then stuck.
“Rian.”
“Working.”
“That is my bad category.”
“It is the category we have.”
He drove his elbow into the frame and paid for it in sparks behind his eyes. The panel broke free, dumping a wedge of packed snow into the shed.
Cold flooded in.
Clara shoved the laptop bag over her shoulder and crossed to him. She did not let him lift it for her. She did not let him put his body in front of the opening until she had checked the drop outside herself.
“Clear enough,” she said.
The door shuddered again. A gun barrel punched through the gap near the crossbar.
Rian trapped it with the bar as Clara slid one leg through the rear panel. For one second, they were both exactly where they needed to be: her moving the evidence chain, him holding the line she had assigned.
“Eight seconds,” she said.
“Take twelve.”
She looked back at him.
He did not tell her to hurry. He did not tell her to hide. He gave her the seconds and trusted her to spend them.
Then the snowmobile engine caught, rough and loud, and the shed became motion.
Then Greer's men hauled her toward the barely passable lower road as the helicopter dropped behind the trees, and Rian was left with the idling snowmobile, a restored relay, and the first true terror he had ever had to obey.