Page 49 of Break For Me
I sweep the shelf again. Behind the crushed transmitter, under the Cyrillic cans of stew, I find a flare gun. Heavy, orange plastic. Two cartridges. It’s not a weapon; it’s a distress signal. Or a fire starter.
I look at the propane tank attached to the potbelly stove. It’s a standard twenty-pounder, the kind you see on backyard grills in the suburbs. I tap the side with my knuckle. The sound is dull, solid. It’s full.
I file that information away. It’s not heat. It’s ordinance.
"Garrett," I say. "Perimeter."
He moves to the door. He eases the firewood barricade aside, cracks the heavy door two inches, and puts his eye to the narrow gap. His body goes rigid. The tension radiates off him in a palpable wave.
"How many?"
"Six. Maybe eight," Garrett says, his voice low and tight. "Two approaching from the east along the ravine edge. At least four holding a line in the trees to the north. I can't see the south side, which means they’re probably already at the wall."
Six to eight. An assault team. They’ll have suppressed rifles, body armor, and encrypted comms. They are professional operators who have done this before—cleared a structure, eliminated all targets, and sanitized the scene so that nothing remains but ash and bone.
Against them: Me, with a pistol and a hand that feels like it’s been dipped in boiling oil. Garrett, with a shotgun. Adrian, with a medical bag. And Killian, unconscious on a bench, incapable of contributing anything except a body that needs protecting.
The math is simple. The math is always simple when the numbers are this bad. We are dead. The only variable left is how expensive we make it for them to finish the job.
I turn. Adrian is crouched beside Killian, his fingers pressed firmly to Killian’s carotid artery. His face is composed—the clinical wall is back in place, the surgeon’s mask hiding whatever raw panic is clawing at his throat.
But his eyes are different.
Something fundamental has changed behind those lenses since the plywood wall of this shack, since his body was pressed against mine, since the wordyesfell out of his mouth.
He isn't afraid. Not in the way he was in the truck. The vibrating, rabbit-like terror is gone. It’s been burned out of him.
I pull the Makarov from my waistband. I hold it out to him, grip first.
"Four rounds," I say. "Don't waste them on suppressive fire. You wait until you see a body in the doorway. You aim for center mass. You pull the trigger. Can you do that?"
He looks at the gun. Then he looks at me. He takes it. His long fingers close around the grip with the same quiet precision he uses on a scalpel—index finger extended along the frame, thumb checking the safety, the weight balanced perfectly in his palm. He racks the slide.
"I can do that."
"If they breach the door," I say, stepping closer, lowering my voice so Garrett doesn't hear, "you put yourself between them and Killian. You shoot until the magazine is empty."
I pause. I look at him. At the blood on his shirt—my blood. At the stubborn, determined set of his jaw.
"If the magazine is empty and they’re still coming..." I stop. The sentence has nowhere to go that doesn't sound like a eulogy. "Don't let the magazine be empty."
I recite the number. Ten digits. The only lifeline I can give him that weighs nothing and costs everything.
"If anything goes sideways," I say, my voice a low rumble. "That number. Alessandro will answer."
He repeats it back to me once. His voice is flat, clinical. The surgeon memorizing a critical dosage.
We barricade the shack.
The heavy pine bench from the opposite wall goes against the door. I drag it over one-handed, gritting my teeth against the spike of white-hot pain in my left arm. We wedge it securely under the handle.
The window gets covered with plywood scraps from the shelf, nailed in place with a heavy roofing hammer I find in the corner.It won't stop a bullet. But it will stop a sight line. In close-quarters combat, sight lines are half the fight.
I position Garrett at the window. He knocks a fist-sized hole in the plywood—an observation port and a firing position. The shotgun barrel fits through it perfectly. He has a ninety-degree field of fire covering the north approach.
I take the door. The pine bench is solid, but the door frame is just plywood over two-by-fours. A sustained burst from a rifle will turn it into splinters. My job is to fire through the gaps. To force them to take cover. To buy us seconds that I can convert into more seconds until the seconds finally run out.
Adrian is in the back corner with Killian. He has the Makarov in his right hand and his medical bag at his feet. He is the last line of defense. If they get through me and Garrett, they get him.
