Page 17 of Make Them Pay

We're killing the car. It's given us everything it has and we're running on borrowed time and borrowed machinery.

A mile in, the road narrows to a point where the trees are close enough to touch from inside the car. The SUV behind us is still coming but it's taking damage too. I can hear its engine laboring, hear the crack and groan of branches against its wider body. They're committed. They followed us into the logging road and now they're stuck in the same tube we're in, unable to turn around, unable to do anything except keep pushing forward.

The mill site appears as a sudden opening. The trees pull back and the road widens into a clearing of packed mud and old concrete foundations. The ruins of the mill are just that: ruins. Collapsed walls of brick and timber, overgrown with ten years of unchecked vegetation. The river is beyond it, maybe fifty yards past the last standing wall. I can hear the water. Fast. Cold. Swollen from the recent rain.

I stop the car. The engine makes a sound like a sigh of relief and then a clunk that says it isn't starting again.

"Go," I say.

We grab the bag and run. The clearing is open ground and the SUV is going to emerge from the logging road in about thirty seconds. I put Enley in front of me and we sprint toward the mill ruins. Old concrete underfoot. Broken glass. The remains of a chain-link fence that someone cut through years ago. Past the first collapsed wall. Past a rusted piece of machinery that might’ve been a saw frame. Past a loading dock whose concrete lip is cracked and tilting toward the river.

The water comes into view. It's wider than the satellite imagery suggested. Maybe forty feet across. Moving fast, brown with runoff, the kind of cold that tells you the mountains it came from still have snow on them.

Behind us, the SUV bursts from the logging road and skids to a stop in the clearing. Doors open. I hear at least three sets of boots on the ground.

I turn.

The first pursuer clears the SUV's hood and raises a pistol. I fire twice from thirty yards. Not ideal range for a suppressed nine-millimeter but close enough. The first round catches him in the upper body and he spins sideways. The second round hits the SUV door and punches through the sheet metal with a sound like someone hitting a trash can with a bat.

The other two drop behind the vehicle and return fire. The rounds kick up dirt and concrete fragments near the loading dock. I pull Enley behind the concrete lip and we crouch there, breathing hard, the river rushing behind us.

"How deep?" I ask.

She looks at the water. "Chest height at least. Current's strong."

"Can you swim?"

"Can you?"

"Not well." It's the truth. I'm a competent swimmer in a pool. Moving water with a current this strong and a go-bag on my back is a different proposition. The cold alone will cut our efficiency in half. The current will do the rest.

"We go together," she says. "Link arms. The current will try to spin us. If we go in angled upstream we can use the flow to push us across instead of fighting it."

She knows rivers. I file that information in the growing folder labeled things Enley Cameron knows that Poe never mentioned.

More rounds hit the concrete lip. Chips of old cement sting my face. We're pinned and the pursuers are going to flank us within the next sixty seconds if we don't move.

I fire three more rounds over the concrete lip. Not aiming to hit. Aiming to buy time. Suppressive fire that forces them to keep their heads down while we move.

"Now," I say.

We scramble over the back edge of the loading dock and hit the riverbank at a run. The mud is slick. Enley goes down on one knee and I grab her arm and pull her up and we hit the water together.

The cold is a physical assault. It drives the air from my lungs in a single explosive gasp. The current grabs us immediately, pulling at our legs, trying to fold us downstream. Enley links her arm through mine and angles us upstream the way she said and the geometry works. The flow pushes against our locked bodies and drives us sideways across the river instead of straight downstream.

The water hits my waist. Then my chest. The go-bag on my back tries to float and then tries to drag. The footing is bad. River rocks, slippery and uneven, each step a negotiation between balance and momentum. Enley is shorter than me and the water is at her shoulders. She doesn't make a sound. Just keeps her arm locked through mine and keeps her feet moving and keeps her chin above the brown rushing surface.

Halfway across, the last of the gunfire reaches us. Rounds hit the water upstream, little geysers that look almost harmless from this angle. The concrete lip is providing partial cover and the distance is growing. They'd have to come to the river's edge for a clean shot and by the time they do, the angle and the current will make us a difficult target.

We make the far bank. The mud on this side is thicker, sucking at my boots, and pulling ourselves up the slope takes the last of the energy reserves I've been running on since dawn. Enley claws her way up beside me, soaking wet, shivering hard, her pink hair plastered to her face and her teeth already chattering.

My leg stings and I glance down. I’m sure I’m cut, but no time to check right now.

I look back across the river. Two figures on the loading dock, weapons lowered. They're not following. The river made the decision for them. By the time they find a bridge or a crossing point, we'll be gone.

The forest on this side is different. Denser undergrowth. Birch mixed with the pine. The ground slopes upward into a series of ridges that will give us elevation and distance from the crossing point.

I check the bag. The laptop case is still sealed. The medical tape held. The router is in the zippered pocket, above the waterline for most of the crossing. The first-aid kit is soaked but functional.