Page 42 of Break For Me
The truck makes it another quarter mile up the steep, wooded slope. Then the engine coughs. It stutters violently. The temperature gauge is buried deep in the red. The radiator must have taken a round during the fence breach. I remember hearing the ping of metal on metal and seeing the spray of coolant in the headlights. The gauge has been climbing steadily since we hit the tree line. The coolant is gone. Thick, white steam pours from under the warped hood.
The engine dies. The truck rolls backward two feet before I slam on the emergency brake.
The silence is immediate and heavy. The only sound is the metallic tick of the cooling engine and the wind moving through the bare branches overhead.
We’re done. The truck is done.
I open the door and step out onto the soft earth. The air is raw—mid-thirties and dropping fast. The sky is a solid, unbroken sheet of grey that sits on the treetops like a heavy lid. My breath fogs in the cold. My left hand throbs inside itsthick bandage. My body is a ledger of accumulated debt, and the interest is compounding.
"Everybody out," I grunt. "We walk."
Garrett carries Killian. I carry the gear—two heavy duffel bags, one with weapons and ammunition, the other with Adrian’s medical supplies and what’s left of our food. Adrian carries his own bag and a thick blanket he stripped from the back seat.
We move uphill. The terrain is steep, rocky. Dead leaves crunch and slide under our boots. The trees are dense enough to block sight lines from below but thin enough that a drone would easily spot our heat signatures.
I keep us moving under the thickest part of the canopy. We follow a low ridge that runs roughly north, away from the road, away from the industrial strip.
The sky gets darker. The temperature drops. I can feel the biting cold working its way through my clothes—the borrowed flannel Garrett gave me, the thin sweatpants, the heavy boots that are holding up better than the rest of me.
My left hand has gone stiff and useless inside the gauze. The fingers refuse to flex. The infection pushes a sick heat up my forearm even as the rest of my body begins to chill.
We walk for what feels like miles. It could be one. It could be three. Distance becomes a different unit when you’re carrying sixty pounds of gear uphill on a body that’s been running on fever and pure stubbornness for a week.
The first snowflake hits my cheek.
I look up. The solid grey sky has fractured into silent motion. A dense curtain of white descends through the canopy. The flakes are fat and wet. The kind that accumulate fast and erase everything: tracks, landmarks, visibility.
Good for hiding. Bad for surviving.
"There." Garrett stops, pointing through the trees.
A large rock formation juts from the hillside. A natural overhang where the stone shelves out over a shallow depression in the earth. Not a cave. Not a real structure. Just a roof of solid granite with three walls of rock and one open side facing downhill.
It’s enough.
We duck under the low overhang. The space is tight—eight feet deep, maybe twelve feet wide. The ceiling is low enough that I have to crouch. The floor is packed dirt and dead leaves. The wind cuts across the open side, but the heavy rock breaks the worst of it.
Garrett sets Killian down carefully against the back wall. I drop the duffel bags. Adrian is already crouching beside Killian, checking the dressing on his abdomen, the capped IV line, the drain. His long fingers move quickly despite the biting cold. His clinical efficiency is undimmed by the fact that his operating theater is now a hole in a rock.
Killian’s eyes open. He looks at Adrian. He looks at me. His gaze is clearer than it’s been since the cabin. The fog of sedation is receding, replaced by the hard, suspicious awareness I remember.
He tries to speak. His voice is a dry rasp.
"Where—"
"Shut up," I say. "You’re alive. Stay that way."
He closes his eyes. The corner of his mouth twitches. It might be pain. It might be amusement. With Killian Kavanagh, the difference has always been academic.
The snow thickens. The temperature collapses. The wind finds every gap in the rock overhang and drives the cold through it like a sharp blade. I can feel it deep in my bones—my ribs, my spine. The deep structures of my body radiate cold the way they radiated fever twelve hours ago.
We have one blanket. I wrap it tightly around Killian. He’s the most vulnerable—post-surgical, malnourished. His body is burning every available calorie just to repair the damage Adrian fixed. If his core temperature drops below thirty-five degrees, his clotting factors will fail and the internal repairs will start to bleed. He gets the blanket.
Garrett positions himself at the open side of the overhang. His back is against the rock, the shotgun resting across his knees. He’s wearing a thick field jacket over his flannel. He’ll survive the cold. He’s built for this kind of discomfort.
Adrian is not built for any of this.
He sits with his back against the far rock wall, his knees drawn up tight to his chest. His arms are wrapped around them. His precious medical bag is pressed against his side like a shield. The flannel shirt he’s wearing—mine, the one I wasn't using—is far too big for him. The shoulders droop. The long sleeves hang past his wrists.
