Page 79 of The Ashes of Summer

Tamara's mouth closes. For a second there's nothing in her face but helpless anger. Then she looks at me. "If he collapses out there, he becomes dead weight."

"He already is."

Kurt laughs and regrets it immediately, folding around whatever's broken in his chest. Carter catches his arm before he goes too far forward.

"I'm putting the cuffs in front," Carter says to me. "He'll move better."

"He runs, shoot him."

Kurt looks at me then, through the one eye that still opens. "I'm not running."

"No," I say, cocking a brow. "You're not."

Carter cuffs him in front, the metal sitting ugly against hospital-pale skin over bruises that were already there. Kurt sways when he stands, knees threatening to fold, and Hayes steps in and takes his other side.

Nobody makes a joke. Not now.

We move.

The corridor's too bright and too clean. Nurses glance up from the desk and look away just as fast when they see what's coming. Carter in front. Hayes beside Kurt. Vance behind. Kurt between them like a prisoner being marched somewhere final—which, depending on how tonight goes, might be exactly what he is.

Security watches us pass. Nobody stops us.

Outside, the night air hits cold enough to bite. Two black trucks sit waiting under the lights—civilian, unmarked, nothing on them that ties back to the Rosefield Sheriff's Office. Exactly what I asked for.

Groves is already behind the wheel of the second. He dips his chin when he sees me. Vance opens the rear door and puts Kurt in the middle, between him and Groves. Kurt grunts and doesn't complain.

Good.

Carter opens the trunk of the first truck and shows me what he brought. Rifle cases. Sidearms. Ammunition. Night vision. Plates and gear stacked square, because Carter doesn't do sloppiness. Weapons for a war we can't afford to announce.

He closes it quietly. "We move clean."

I nod. Clean. Quiet. Invisible until it's too late for anyone up there to do a thing about it.

Then I get behind the wheel. Carter takes the passenger seat, Hayes the back. The engine turns over and the dash lights come up faint across Carter's face, and for one second I don't move.

My hands close on the wheel.

She's ninety minutes north of me, inside a house built for secrets, tied to a bed by a man who wants to keep her badly enough to rewrite her whole life. And the last look she gave me is still sitting behind my eyes—the fear in it, the trust buried underneath, the fucking heartbreak.

I put the truck in drive.

The hospital falls away behind us. Town thins out fast. The roads narrow, the trees crowd in, and the further we climb the darker the world gets, until the headlights are carving a tunnel through black mountain road and everything past them looks like it goes on forever.

Ninety minutes.

Every mile of it feels like punishment. Every second feels stolen out of my hands.

Carter lets the silence sit a while. He knows better than to fill it too early. Hayes stays quiet in the back, checking gear by touch more than sight. The radio between the trucks crackles once and goes still.

I picture her running at me when I find her. It isn't gentle and it isn't pretty—it hits so hard my chest nearly splits with it. Her body slamming into mine. My arms locking around her. My face in her neck, breathing in proof she's alive.

Then the image turns without warning.

Summer not running. Summer curled somewhere silent. Summer looking at me like she can't find the way back into herself.

My grip tightens until my knuckles ache.