Page 54 of Break For Me
He chose me. Not Alessandro. Not the arrangement. Not the order from his brother. He chose me.
The weight of that choice is heavier than the man I’m dragging.
I hook my arms under Killian’s shoulders. I lock my hands across his chest. I lean back and pull.
The first ten yards take everything I have. My boots slip on the frozen ground. My back screams. My arms are not built for sustained gross motor exertion. I am a surgeon with thin arms dragging a dying man through a forest while men with rifles search above me.
I pull. Rest. Pull. Rest. The rhythm is crude. But it moves us. Yard by yard. Tree to tree. Each pause spent listening for the sound of boots on snow.
I keep to the densest cover. The stands of pine where the canopy blocks the view. The branches hang low enough to catch a drone’s camera.
I drag Killian through a frozen creek bed. The ice cracks under our combined weight. Cold water soaks through my pants and into my boots.
The water will obscure our tracks. The cold will accelerate hypothermia. I choose the tracks over the temperature. Tracks are a certainty. Hypothermia is a probability.
The forest is a maze of identical trees and identical silence. I have no compass. No landmarks.
I navigate by the smoke column—keep it behind us. Keep moving downhill. Find water. Follow water to civilization. The logic is crude. The logic is all I have.
Killian stirs. A groan—deep, guttural. His eyes open. Green. Unfocused.
"Don't talk," I say. "Conserve your energy."
"Where—"
"We’re moving. You’re alive. That’s all that matters."
His eyes find my face. He looks at me with that sharp, feral assessment.Can this person keep me alive?
"Rocco?" he asks.
I don't answer. I adjust my grip under his arms and pull.
The phone is in the pocket of a dead man.
I find him at the bottom of the ravine. A Russian soldier, thrown by the blast. His body is crumpled against a boulder.
The tactical vest is shredded. The balaclava is pulled down over his face. A mercy I don't investigate. His right leg is bent at an angle that indicates a comminuted femur fracture. He’s been dead since he landed.
I check his pockets. A spare magazine for a weapon I don't have. A protein bar. A radio—earpiece attached, channel open, Russian chatter bleeding through the static.
And a phone. A cheap burner. The screen is cracked but functional.
I take the phone, the protein bar, and the radio. I leave the magazine. I don't see his weapon. It’s buried in the snow somewhere.
I power on the phone. One bar of signal. Thirty-one percent battery.
I need a number.
I don't have numbers. I don't have a phone, a wallet, an identity. Everything I owned is in an apartment on East 63rd that the Russians have certainly cleaned out by now. I don't know Alessandro Falcone’s number. I don't know Rory Kavanagh’s number.
Rocco gave me a number. Ten digits, recited in the dark while he prepared the propane tank. A lifeline that weighs nothing. I said it back to him once. He nodded. The nod of a man transferring a weapon.
I dial the number.
The phone rings. Once. Twice. Three times. The signal is weak.
Click.
