Page 45 of Break For Me
ADRIAN
We are being herded.
The realization hits me the way a diagnosis arrives. Not as a single moment of clarity, but as a convergence of data points assembling into a pattern too coherent to be accidental.
The boot prints we’ve been tracking for the past hour don't diverge. They don't sweep wide. They maintain a consistent bearing that pushes us northwest, away from the road and the river. Deeper into terrain that narrows as the ridgeline compresses against a series of rocky outcrops.
They aren't trying to find us. They know exactly where we are. They are channeling us.
"We’re being funneled," Rocco says. His voice is low, right against my ear.
He’s carrying one of the duffel bags on his right shoulder. The Makarov is tucked into his waistband. His damaged left hand is cradled against his ribs, the gauze stark white against his black shirt. He sees it too—the geometry of the pursuit. The way the tracks appear and disappear at intervals calculated to keep us moving without making direct contact.
"Where are they pushing us?" I ask.
"Doesn't matter. Whatever’s at the end of this corridor, they built it for us."
Garrett is fifteen yards ahead, Killian draped across his shoulders. Killian has been conscious for the last hour—awake, alert. His green eyes scan the tree line—sharp, practiced. He’s survived ambushes before. He can't walk. He can't fight. But he’s reading the terrain with instincts honed in a world where the landscape is always trying to kill you.
"Left," Killian rasps. His voice is sandpaper. "Down the ravine. They won't expect us to descend."
Rocco looks at me. I look at Killian. The ravine drops steeply to our left—a V-shaped cut in the hillside choked with deadfall and loose shale. Descending it with a post-surgical patient is a controlled disaster. Ascending the other side is worse.
"His incision?—"
"Will hold or it won't," Killian says. "But if we keep walking their corridor, we end up in a box. I’ve built enough boxes to know one when I see it."
We descend.
The ravine is brutal. Garrett slides on the shale, catches himself, adjusts Killian’s weight, keeps moving. I grab tree roots and rock edges to lower myself hand over hand. My medical bag bounces against my hip, a constant, annoying rhythm.
Rocco comes last. His bulk makes the descent a controlled avalanche. Each step sends stones clattering into the dark below. His right hand grips saplings that bend and snap under his weight.
At the bottom, a frozen creek. We cross it. The ice holds under Garrett and Killian. It holds under me. It cracks under Rocco—a sharp, percussive report that echoes up the ravine like a gunshot. He’s across before the fracture spreads, landing on the far bank with a grunt that carries pain he refuses to acknowledge.
We climb. The opposite wall of the ravine is steeper. The rock face is broken by ledges and root systems. Halfway up, through the bare trees, I see a structure.
A cabin. Smaller than the Garrison safehouse—more like a shed. Single-room. Corrugated metal roof. Plywood walls darkened by weather. A stovepipe juts from the roof at a crooked angle. No vehicle. No tracks in the snow around it. The door is closed.
"Hunting shack," Garrett says.
Rocco circles it. He checks the walls. The window. The sight lines. He pushes the door open with his boot, the Makarov raised. The interior is dark. Cramped. Cold. He disappears inside for ten seconds.
He comes out.
"Clear. One room. Woodstove. No back exit."
Garrett pauses at the threshold. He runs his hand along the door frame, fingers finding a notch cut into the wood.
"Kavanagh dead drop," he says. "My old man built a network of these in the '90s. Supply caches for runners moving product through the mountains. Some had comms equipment."
He doesn't say more. The information is delivered the way soldiers deliver all information—functional, without sentiment, discarded once received.
We go in.
The space is eight feet by ten. A plywood box with a potbelly stove, a wooden bench along one wall, and a shelf holding canned goods with labels so faded they’ve gone blank. The floor is plywood over joists, warped and creaking. A single window, small, covered with a sheet of clouded plastic. The cold has settled into the walls like a permanent resident.
Garrett lays Killian on the bench. I check his dressing—intact. His vitals—stable. His pupils—equal and reactive. The descent didn't kill him. The anastomosis is holding. The drainoutput is minimal. He is, against every reasonable probability, improving.
