Cade POV
The nurse stared at the sheriff's unconscious body, then at the gun in Riley's hand. Her mouth opened to scream again.
"Don't," I said from the bed, pushing myself up on my elbows. The pain in my leg was a white-hot spike, but I kept my voice low and calm. "Please. He's not a good man. He was going to hand me over to the people who shot me. They'll kill me and my sister."
The nurse, a woman in her fifties named Shirley according to her badge, looked from me to Tessa's tear-streaked, terrified face. She saw the truth in it. The screaming fear in the room wasn't about the sheriff. It was about us. She slowly closed her mouth, her eyes wide.
"What do you want?" she whispered.
"A way out of here that isn't the front door," Riley said, tucking the gun away. "And five minutes before you call this in."
Shirley swallowed hard. She looked at the sheriff on the floor. "He's a bully. Everyone knows it." She made a decision. "There's a service elevator at the end of the hall. It goes down to the loading dock. Delivery hours are over. It should be empty."
"Keys," Riley said, holding out her hand. "For your car. We can't use ours. It's sitting right out front."
Shirley hesitated, then fished a key fob from her pocket. "Blue Honda Civic. Parked in staff lot B, space 22. Don't… don't wreck it. It's my daughter's."
"You'll get it back," I promised, swinging my legs off the bed. Fresh blood soaked through the bandage. I gritted my teeth.
"You need stitches!" Shirley protested.
"No time." Riley was already moving. She grabbed a nearby wheelchair. "In. Now."
I fell into the chair. Tessa grabbed our bags. Riley threw a blanket over my lap, hiding my bloody leg. She pushed me out of the bay and into the hallway, turning away from the main waiting area.
"Code Blue, Curtain 3," Shirley called out behind us, her voice suddenly loud and professional. "I need a crash cart!" It was a diversion. Nurses and a doctor sprinted past us toward the bay we'd just left, ignoring us.
Riley found the service elevator. The doors slid open. We got in. She hit 'B' for basement.
The ride down felt like forever. My heart hammered against my ribs. Any second, I expected the elevator to stop, the doors to open on a squad of deputies.
The doors opened on a dark, concrete corridor smelling of disinfectant and laundry. The loading dock was ahead, a roll-up door closed for the night. A single emergency exit glowed green.
"Through there," Riley said.
We burst out into the cool night air. Staff Lot B was to our left. Riley spotted the blue Civic. We piled in Tessa in the back, me in the passenger seat clutching my leg, Riley behind the wheel.
She started the car and drove slowly, calmly, out of the parking lot. She didn't speed. She used her turn signal. We were just another car leaving the hospital.
Once we were three blocks away, she pulled over behind a closed hardware store. "We need to deal with your leg for real. And we need a new plan. Everything is blown."
She was right. The cabin was known to Ian, who might crack under pressure. The farmhouse was a target. The hospital was a crime scene. We had no home, no safe base, and I was bleeding.
Riley popped the trunk and came back with a small, rugged-looking black case—her personal go-bag. Inside was a real first aid kit, the kind with suture supplies and surgical glue.
"This will hurt," she said, pulling on gloves.
"Just do it."
She cleaned the wound with a burning antiseptic wipe. The bullet had gouged a deep trench along my calf muscle. It needed stitches. Without anesthetic, she pinched the skin together and began. Each puncture of the needle was a bright, sharp agony. I bit down on the leather strap of my duffel bag to keep from crying out. Tessa held my hand, her face as pale as mine.
"They'll be watching every road out of the county," I grunted between clenched teeth.
"They'll expect us to run," Riley agreed, tying off a stitch. "So we don't run."
"What?" Tessa breathed.
"We hide in the one place they'd never think to look for us now." Riley finished the last stitch and applied a heavy bandage. "The Colter compound."
I stared at her like she'd gone insane. "We just escaped from there!"
"Exactly. Their security will be a mess. They're sending men out to hunt us. The compound itself might be lightly guarded. And they have that barn full of supplies, vehicles, maybe even a place to lie low. It's the last place on earth they'd search."
It was the most dangerous, reckless idea I'd ever heard. It was also brilliant. A perfect reverse ambush.
"How do we get in?" I asked, the soldier in me already analyzing the problem.
"The same way you got out. Through the hole in the fence. They'll be focused on the roads, not their own backyard. We wait for the hunting party to leave, then we slip back in."
"And then what? We just live in their barn until the Fourth?"
"No," Riley said, her eyes glinting in the dark car. "Then we use their own resources against them. We sabotage their vehicles. We raid their armory. We turn their fortress into a trap for when they return. We even the odds."
The audacity of it took my breath away. Go into the lion's den and chew on the bones.
"Tessa can't come," I said firmly.
"No," Riley agreed. "We need a safe place for her. Somewhere public, somewhere they'd never drag her from." She thought for a moment. "The 24-hour truck stop diner on the interstate. It's always busy, full of cameras and witnesses. We get her a booth in the back, tell the manager her husband is abusive and she's waiting for a sister to pick her up. We pay for coffee and pie all night. She stays visible until we come back."
It was a risk, but less of a risk than taking her into a gunfight.
Tessa nodded bravely. "I can do that. I'll just sit and drink tea."
We drove to the truck stop, a bright oasis of light in the dark countryside. Riley gave Tessa cash and whispered instructions to the night manager, a tired-looking woman who nodded sympathetically. We settled Tessa in a corner booth with a clear view of the door.
"Do not leave this seat," I told her, kneeling beside her despite the pain in my leg. "For any reason. If you see a Colter, you go straight to the manager and ask for 'Susan.' That's the code Riley gave her. She'll hide you in the office."
Tessa grabbed my hand. "Please come back."
"I will." I kissed her forehead.
Riley and I left, a sick feeling in my gut. We were abandoning my sister in a diner. But it was the safest of all our terrible options.
We drove back toward the compound, but miles away, we hid the Civic in the woods off a fire road. We continued on foot. My leg screamed with every step, but the stitches held.
From our same vantage point in the trees, we watched the compound. Just as Riley predicted, it was a changed place. Most of the trucks were gone. Only two vehicles remained. A single yard light was on. One man, looking bored, leaned against the porch post of the main house with a rifle. The dogs were locked in a kennel, quiet.
The hunting party was out searching the roads. The den was almost empty.
"Now," Riley whispered.
We moved like shadows down the hill. The hole in the fence was still there, untouched. We slipped through. The lone guard was facing the front driveway, watching for his friends to return. He never looked back.
We made it to the big metal barn. The side door was unlocked. We slid inside and closed the door.
The smell of oil, gasoline, and hay hit us. It was dark, but light from the yard filtered through dirty windows. We saw a treasure trove. Four ATVs. A wall of tools. Shelves of motor oil, spare parts. And in a locked metal cabinet that Riley picked in thirty seconds, an arsenal. Rifles, handguns, boxes of ammunition. Marcus was preparing for a small war.
"Jackpot," Riley murmured.
We got to work. We siphoned gas from the ATVs and poured it into the dirt. We loosened distributor caps on the two trucks left behind. We took all the ammunition from the cabinet and hid it under a pile of rotten hay in the back. We were crippling their mobility and their firepower.
Then, in the hayloft, we found our hiding spot. A small, cramped space behind a stack of old tires, invisible from the floor below. We could see the barn door through a gap in the wallboards. We had water from a rusty sink in the corner. It was perfect.
We settled in to wait. The plan was to let the hunting party return, frustrated and tired. Once they were asleep, we'd slip out, get Tessa, and disappear into the national forest to regroup.
But plans never survive.
Hours later, engines roared and headlights flooded the yard. The hunting party was back. We peered through our crack in the wall.
Men spilled out of trucks, angry and shouting. Marcus stood on the porch, listening to reports, his face a thundercloud. They hadn't found us.
Then, a familiar, beaten-up blue sedan the one I'd wrecked pulled in. The driver, his head bandaged, got out and ran to Marcus. He was talking fast, pointing back toward town.
Marcus's head snapped up. He barked orders.
Two men ran to the barn.
Riley and I froze, hardly breathing. Had they seen us? Had we left a trace?
The barn door slammed open. The two men didn't look around. They went straight to the locked gun cabinet. One of them cursed. "Boss! The ammo's gone! All of it!"
Marcus appeared in the doorway, his massive frame blocking the light. He looked at the empty cabinet, then his eyes slowly scanned the dark barn. They passed over our hiding spot.
He took a deep breath, his rage a physical thing in the air.
"They're not running," he said, his voice low and deadly calm. "They're hiding. And they're close." He turned to the men crowding behind him. "Tear this county apart. Check every shed, every cellar, every hunting blind. But first…" He smiled, a cruel, chilling sight. "Bring me my son."
Ian was dragged from one of the trucks. He looked terrified.
"You called them," Marcus said, almost gently. "You warned them. Where would they go, boy? Where would your scared little wife feel safe?"
"I don't know!" Ian cried.
Marcus backhanded him across the face. "Think! If not the house, the hospital, the cabin… where?"
Ian sobbed, blood on his lip. "I… I don't…"
Then his eyes, wide with fear, suddenly shifted. They darted toward the road, toward town. A thought had occurred to him. A terrible, obvious thought.
He was thinking of the busy, public place a scared person might go. The truck stop diner.
And I saw the moment he decided to save himself. To trade Tessa's location for his father's mercy.
His shoulders slumped in defeat. "There's… there's a truck stop," he whispered. "On the interstate. She… she always liked the pie there."
Marcus's smile returned. He patted Ian's cheek. "Good boy."
He turned to his men. "Harlan, Dale, take three men. Go get my daughter-in-law. Bring her home."
Five armed men broke off from the group and ran to a truck.
From our hiding spot in the hayloft, Riley's hand clamped onto my arm like a vise. Her eyes met mine, filled with the same horror I felt.
We were trapped in the enemy's barn, hidden and safe.
And we had just listened as they sent a team to capture my sister.