Chapter Twenty-Six
847 Words
The radio screamed.
A burst of static exploded from Ghost's hand. Then came Kayne's voice. "River!" Gunfire drowned the rest.
Ghost was already moving. The pause from moments earlier vanished.
The hesitation.
The confusion.
The impossible woman.
All of it disappeared beneath something older.
Training.
Urgency.
Family.
"River." Ghost hit the transmit button. Nothing. Only static.
Nadia's binoculars swung east before she'd processed the sound. The quarry suddenly seemed much larger. Much darker. Far less controlled.
Ghost snatched up the rifle. Something worse had happened. River.
"River," Ghost repeated. Still nothing.
"East wall!" Kayne's voice again, breathing hard, angry. "Move!"
A thunderous explosion rolled through the quarry. The ground physically shook beneath Nadia. Dust cascaded from the granite ridge. The shockwave hit half a second later. Enough to tell everyone something had gone very wrong.
Ghost was already looking through the scope. Nadia grabbed the binoculars.
The eastern side of the quarry disappeared behind a cloud of dust and pulverized stone. Visibility dropped instantly.
"What happened?"
"Secondary charge." Ghost's voice was flat. The answer came too quickly, too automatically, as though he'd already calculated it.
The dust continued spreading. A dirty gray wall crawling across the basin. The kind that swallowed vision. Swallowed certainty. Swallowed people.
Then Nadia saw movement near the eastern wall. A silhouette. Running.
She adjusted the focus. River.
He emerged from the dust cloud at full sprint. River was in pursuit.
Nadia blinked. "What is he doing?"
Ghost didn't answer. He saw it too.
The second figure appeared moments later. The woman. She was running, or trying to, her hands still bound. She stumbled repeatedly across the broken gravel.
A third silhouette emerged behind her. Reaper.
Walking.
Nadia stopped adjusting the focus. The pace was wrong. Predators didn't run after wounded animals. They walked. Because they knew the distance belonged to them.
"River sees them." Ghost's voice had gone dangerously quiet.
Nadia nodded. The answer was obvious. River was closing the gap. Fast. Too fast.
A burst of rifle fire erupted from somewhere inside the dust. River threw himself behind a rusted excavator bucket. The woman vanished behind another pile of debris. Reaper disappeared completely.
Ghost swore. She looked at his rifle hand first, then at him. Ghost never sounded like that.
Then she saw it. A tiny movement below, near the woman. A hand. Someone grabbing her arm. Dragging her. The dust obscured everything else.
"Ghost."
"I see it."
The rifle shifted. Micro-adjustments. Calculations. Wind. Distance. Probability.
He was looking for a shot, and there wasn't one. Too much dust. Too much movement. Too many unknowns.
Ghost held his standard. The woman was in the field of fire, and so was River. A lesser shooter might have tried. Ghost wouldn't.
The radio came alive again. River this time. Breathing hard. Running.
"Ghost." A gunshot cracked. Close. Very close. River kept talking anyway.
"Tell Kayne." The transmission cut before he could finish.
Ghost's entire body went still. The stillness of a man listening for bad news.
The radio remained silent. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen.
Nadia kept the binoculars on the last place she'd seen River and didn't move them.
"Tell Kayne he's buying breakfast."
River's voice returned. Nadia nearly laughed. She said his name quietly to herself, just once, not into the radio.
Ghost exhaled. Just once. A single breath.
River continued. "I've got the girl."
Everything stopped.
Ghost's head lifted from the scope. "What?"
"I said I've got the girl."
The words echoed through the radio. The quarry. The ridge.
Nadia stared into the dust cloud, trying to find him, trying to verify it. Then she saw them.
River emerged first. The woman stumbled beside him, one arm wrapped around his shoulder, the other still bound. They were moving together, toward cover, toward safety, toward the Riders.
Nadia took one step toward the ridge edge without thinking.
It lasted until the woman looked up.
Toward the ridge. Toward Ghost.
And she froze. Completely froze.
River almost lost his balance. "What?"
He turned toward her. She was staring at Ghost.
Even from this distance, through the binoculars, the woman's stillness was the wrong kind for fear.
The certainty.
The disbelief.
Then the woman smiled. A tiny smile. Broken. Exhausted. Painfully real.
Ghost made a sound. Just breath, but wrong.
The kind that survived long after the event that created it. The kind people carried for years. The kind that changed the shape of them.
Then the woman opened her mouth. The distance swallowed the words. Nadia couldn't hear them. Neither could Ghost. But somehow that made it worse.
Because Ghost immediately began moving toward the trail. Again.
This time Nadia didn't stop him. Because she had seen the woman's face.
And for the first time, she wasn't entirely sure Reaper's trap was the most dangerous thing in the quarry. The most dangerous thing might be hope.
Behind them, the radio crackled one final time. River's voice, confused now, concerned.
"Ghost..."
A pause. Then:
"You know her, don't you?"
And down in the quarry, hidden somewhere inside the dust and darkness, Reaper started laughing.
- Writer
