Chapter 2. The Burned Raven #3
For the first time, the man smiled.
“That’s what Hale thought too.”
Grant filed the wording. Not loyalty. Distance.
“Hawthorne?”
No response.
“Crowe?”
Still nothing.
Behind him, Maren whispered, “Grant.”
He heard the warning too late. The man with the syringe case was not the immediate threat. A fourth person had circled through the trees. Grant turned as movement entered his peripheral vision. Something struck the side of his injured knee.
The leg collapsed. He hit the ground hard.
Maren moved before the attackers expected her to.
She drove one elbow backward into the fourth man’s throat, twisted free of his grip, and grabbed the loose strap of the syringe case as the medic—or whoever he was—reached for her.
She yanked hard enough to pull him forward, then slammed the case into his face.
The rifleman shouted. Grant caught the fourth attacker’s ankle from the ground and pulled. The man fell. For three chaotic seconds, the controlled operation became human. Maren ran.
Not toward the road. Toward the trees opposite the vehicle. Smart.
Grant pushed himself upright against a stump and shouted, “Maren, go!”
The rifleman did not shoot her. Confirmation.
Alive. Two men went after her. Grant grabbed the fallen attacker by the jacket and drove the folding knife toward the gap between vest and shoulder—not trying to kill, only forcing him to recoil.
The man slammed a fist into Grant’s injured side, but Grant held long enough to reach the radio clipped to the man’s vest.
He tore it free. A boot hit his wrist. The radio landed in mud. Grant lunged for it. A second boot struck his ribs.
Air left him. The world blurred. Through the trees, he saw Maren reach a steep rise beside the old road. One pursuer caught the back of her jacket. She twisted, slipped partly free, lost the canvas satchel from beneath the outer shell, then caught it before it hit the ground.
She chose the evidence. Of course she did. That half-second cost her. The second man caught her around the waist. Maren kicked backward, heel connecting with a knee. He cursed but held.
The syringe man reached them. Grant tried to stand. His knee folded.
“No!”
Maren saw him. Their eyes met across thirty yards of rain.
For a moment, Grant was back on Old Silver Road twenty years earlier, hearing a fragment of radio traffic and allowing authority, fear, and uncertainty to tell him someone else would make the next decision.
Not again. He crawled toward the fallen radio.
The rifleman stepped into his path. Grant looked up.
“If you kill me,” he said, breathless, “the sheriff disappears the same night Maren Vale comes back. How long do you think that stays quiet?”
The man’s expression barely changed.
Grant continued. “Federal agents know I left the rescue base. Declan Vale knows it concerned Maren’s case. My vehicle tracker puts me here. You need this to look like something other than exactly what it is.”
A pause. Enough. Grant reached past the man’s boot and closed his hand around the radio. The rifle butt came down. Pain exploded across his shoulder.
But his thumb had already hit transmit.
“Officer down,” Grant shouted into the channel. “Mile Eleven west spur. Maren Vale alive. Multiple hostile—”
Static swallowed the rest. The radio was ripped from his hand. But something had transmitted. Maybe. The man stared down at him with real anger now.
Grant smiled through blood at the corner of his mouth.
“Complicated your paperwork?”
The blow this time came from a fist rather than the rifle. His vision narrowed. He heard Maren shout somewhere beyond the trees. Then another sound. An engine.
The utility vehicle. Grant rolled onto one elbow. Maren was still fighting. The syringe man had one arm around her shoulders while another attacker pinned her wrist. She drove her head backward, caught someone in the face, and nearly broke free again. The satchel remained strapped across her body.
They needed it too. One attacker reached for the buckle. Maren twisted away and shouted something Grant could not hear through the rain. Then the syringe went into her upper arm. Everything inside Grant stopped.
Maren jerked hard enough to nearly pull free. The medic depressed the plunger.
“No!”
She looked at Grant again. There was terror in her face now. Not helpless terror. Recognition. The past repeating with chemical precision.
Grant forced his injured leg under him and stood. The rifleman hit him from behind. He went down on both hands. By the time he looked up, Maren’s movements had changed. Slower.
Her legs no longer fully obeyed. She still fought.
She managed to tear something from the satchel and fling it toward the brush before one of the men forced her arm down.
Grant could not see what it was. He fixed the location in his mind anyway: three yards north of the road, beside a split alder, below a pale granite stone.
A clue. Even while being taken, she was leaving a trail. One of the men saw the motion but not the object.
“Move.”
They loaded her into the utility vehicle. Not gently. Not brutally enough to injure what they still needed. The distinction sickened him. Maren’s head lifted once from the rear seat. Her eyes found Grant through the open door, unfocused now but still conscious.
He saw accusation there. Maybe he imagined it. Maybe it was only fear. Then the door closed. The vehicle accelerated down the hidden road.
Grant tried to rise again and failed. The rifleman crouched beside him. For the first time, Grant could see part of his face beneath the cap. Nothing familiar. That almost made it worse.
“You should have stayed with the version of the story you were given,” the man said.
Grant breathed through pain. “You people have been saying that for twenty years.”
The man stood.
“People like you always mistake survival for victory.”
Then he walked away. The remaining men withdrew uphill toward the turnout. They did not kill Grant. They did not need to.
An injured sheriff left behind served several purposes. He could be blamed for losing control of a witness. His decisions could become the story. The missing woman could once again become an operational failure instead of an abduction. Grant watched their lights disappear through the trees.
He lay still for perhaps thirty seconds. Maybe a minute. Pain distorted time. Then training took over. Breathe.
Assess. Move.
His left knee was unstable but not useless. Ribs hurt on the right side without obvious crepitus. Shoulder bruised. Temple bleeding but vision equal. No major arterial injury. No loss of consciousness he could confirm.