31. Rowan #2
At thirty-eight minutes, another car passes from behind and slows.
I leave the road immediately, moving behind a line of brush and crouching low enough that my shoulder protests.
The sedan rolls by at maybe thirty miles an hour, then continues without turning around.
I stay down until I can't hear it before getting up again and starting my count from zero.
Erik will be looking. I know that with enough certainty to be useful. He knows now that I'm pregnant because Evelyn knew, and Harper would have told him the moment she understood I was missing. Serena would confirm the rest if she had authorization.
I gave him that authorization.
I almost laugh again, because apparently some version of me knew exactly what I was doing long before I admitted it.
The road bends through more trees. At forty-six minutes, I see a brown sign ahead through the branches.
STATE FOREST ACCESS.
Below it, another smaller sign points toward an old ranger station. A building means a landline if I get lucky, a radio if I get very lucky, and at minimum a door I can put between myself and the road, so I follow the access lane.
The ranger station is a few hundred yards back from the highway approach, an old single-story structure with weathered wood siding and a porch that has sagged slightly on one end. No state vehicle is parked outside. Brown leaves have blown across the steps.
I check the watch. Fifty-one minutes since I left the van. For fifty-one minutes, I have been free, and I stand at the bottom of the porch long enough to let myself believe I've done it. I don't believe I'm safe forever or that Erik is five minutes away. I believe something smaller and better.
I got out.
Orell had me behind a locked door with guards, cameras, a keycard system, and Rahil watching the building. I am four miles from a state route wearing somebody else's jacket because I beat his system.
I climb the steps and find the ranger-station door locked, but one window beside it has an old metal latch. I take the empty pistol from the jacket pocket and use the base of the grip against it. The first strike bends the latch, and the second loosens one screw.
A vehicle turns onto the access road behind me. I stop when the heavier engine reaches the clearing, then move off the porch and around the side of the building before the vehicle comes through the trees.
A black SUV appears. I recognize Rahil before he opens the driver's door, and he gets out alone.
For one stupid second, I can't understand how he found me.
Then he looks toward the woods instead of the ranger station, checking the surrounding ground like a man following a signal rather than guessing.
The van.
There was something in the van I didn't know to disable. An emergency transponder, fleet tracker, or GPS locator makes no difference now.
Rahil walks toward the porch while I stay beside the building. "Rowan."
I step into view with the pistol pointed at him. He stops, and the change in his posture is small but real. His weight shifts back while his right hand moves away from his coat. "You stay there."
Rahil looks at the gun, then at me. "You checked it."
My stomach drops. He knows, but I don't give him the rest. I keep the pistol centered on him. "You can test that theory if you want."
For four seconds, he doesn't, and that's enough. I close the distance instead of retreating. The empty pistol strikes his cheek before he can get his arm up. I drive my knee into his ribs and use the surprise to shove past him toward the porch.
He catches the back of the borrowed jacket. I twist out of one sleeve and keep moving, but Rahil pulls harder. The jacket turns me sideways before I get free, and he reaches for my shoulder. I grab the broken window latch from the sill and swing.
The metal edge catches his face across the same cut I gave him at the conference center. Blood appears immediately, and Rahil curses before recoiling. I run for the access lane, but he catches me before I make ten feet.
One arm locks around my middle above my abdomen, high enough that he doesn't put pressure where it would matter. He lifts me enough to take my balance, then turns and puts me down into the wet leaves rather than the gravel. I hit with my hip and shoulder, and pain flashes through both.
I swing the latch backward and catch his forearm. He takes it away from me before I kick, twist, and get one heel against his thigh. Rahil traps my leg and shifts enough of his weight to keep me from rolling away. "You're done."
"I disagree." I try to drive the empty pistol into his face again, but he pins my wrist against the ground and takes it.
The difference between us isn't technique. Erik gave me enough to make Rahil bleed twice. The difference is forty pounds and a lifetime of doing this for real.
Rahil gets one knee beside my hip, never across my stomach, then waits until I stop wasting energy trying to throw him off. I glare up at him. "You look worse every time I see you."
Blood runs from his cheek to his jaw. He wipes it against his shoulder without releasing me. "You're difficult to transport."
"That sounds like a staffing problem."
His mouth almost changes before he looks toward the SUV, and I hate that I got a reaction.
Rahil pulls me upright and keeps one grip above my elbow. I can walk, which means I do. Fighting while he has full control of my arm and my body between him and the car would accomplish nothing except another fall.
The back door opens from inside, and Evelyn is there. She looks at my wet socks, the missing sleeve of the borrowed jacket, and the blood on Rahil's face before she looks at me. I climb into the SUV because being shoved into it won't improve anything. Rahil gets in beside me and closes the door.
The ranger station disappears behind the trees. For fifty-one minutes, I had done it. Now I know exactly how close freedom can get before somebody takes it away.
The second property is smaller than the rehabilitation estate and considerably less interested in pretending to be anything respectable.
We arrive after dark at a two-story house surrounded by woods and a gravel lot large enough for four vehicles.
No sign identifies the place, while exterior lights cover the doors and little else.
Rahil takes me through a side entrance into a room with a medical table, metal cabinets, a utility sink, and enough supplies to make the purpose obvious.
Evelyn follows with a bowl, gauze, and a bottle of antiseptic she must have taken from somewhere else in the building.
I sit because my legs have started shaking now that I'm no longer using them to escape.
Evelyn pulls a stool closer and sets the bowl on a rolling tray. "I need to clean your hands."
I look down. The skin along one palm is scraped, and dried blood covers two fingers. Some is mine, while some is Rahil's. I let her take my hand because infection would be an idiotic way to make the situation worse. "You've had a busy day." My voice sounds rough.
"You nearly reached the state route." Evelyn wets gauze and starts cleaning my palm.
"Fifty-one minutes." When she pauses, I hold one hand over the bowl while she wipes dirt from the other. "I checked the watch. For fifty-one minutes, I was outside Orell's control."
Evelyn drops the stained gauze into the bowl and reaches for another piece. "The van had an emergency transponder."
"I figured that out when Rahil arrived." I watch her clean the cut near my thumb because seeing the person who betrayed me perform first aid feels appropriately stupid.
After a while, Evelyn turns my hand to check the scrape near my wrist. "The escape changed the schedule."
I look at her. "Whose?"
"Orell's." She sets my hand down and reaches for fresh gauze.
"How unfortunate for him."
Evelyn meets my eyes this time. "For you."
I pull my hand away before she can touch it again. "You don't get to do that."
She stops with the clean gauze between her fingers. "Do what?"
"You don't get to sit here cleaning blood off me and speak as if this is a difficult professional problem you're managing.
" I put both feet on the floor and straighten despite the ache running through my shoulder.
"You made one choice ten years ago. You chose Blackthorne over the people being hurt by what Blackthorne was doing. "
Evelyn drops the unused gauze onto the tray and sits back. Her expression changes, but she doesn't interrupt.
"You've spent a decade calling it complicated because that sounds better than what it became.
You kept choosing the institution. You chose your career and your reputation, then you chose Orell every time he asked for one more thing.
" Evelyn looks down at the bloody water, but I keep going because I've earned the right.
"You keep telling yourself Richard put four hundred students in front of you and forced a hard decision.
Maybe the first one was hard. The next ten years weren't one decision. "
She stands so quickly that the stool rolls backward and hits a cabinet. "That's enough."
"No." I stand too, forcing my tired legs to hold me. "That is what you taught me. Conduct doesn't become ethical because the person doing it can explain the pressure."
Evelyn looks at me, and the composure I've seen in classrooms, hearings, meetings, and a kidnapping finally disappears. She grips the edge of the rolling tray before pushing it away from herself. "I know."
The words come louder than anything she has said since I woke at the estate. She turns toward the utility sink and stays there for several seconds before facing me again. "I know what I did."
"Then stop talking about it like something that happened to you." I stay beside the medical table because moving closer would make this feel like comfort, and I don't have any for her.