Page 55 of Flames and Blood

“And us?” Kent says.

“The barrier is the only break in the line. When it lifts for the truck, the road through the gate is open ground for as long as it’s up. You two are on foot in the dark, tight behind the truck, through the gap while it’s open. Then you’re inside with me, and we go up the mountain off the road.”

“How long is the barrier up?”

“I timed it yesterday. Long enough for a truck to roll through slow. For the two of you, moving in the dark at your speed, it’s enough.”

Meyer studies the hood.

“That’s how we get in,” he says. “How do we get out?”

I purse my lips, then tell them, because they’ve earned a straight answer.

“Getting in is a problem I can solve. Getting out is the one I can’t. The wall works in both directions. The moment anything goes wrong up there—an alarm, a body, a missed radio check—they close that gate, and nothing gets out after that. Not her, not us. I don’t have a solution for that, and I’m not going to pretend I do.”

Kent looks at Meyer. Meyer looks at the gate.

“So we’d be locked in a sealed valley with a private army and whoever bought her,” Kent says.

“Yes.”

“With no way out.”

“Yes.”

“Just checking.” He cracks his knuckles. “When do we take the depot?”

Neither of them says anything else about it. I look at the two of them for a moment, and then I look back at the map, because the appropriate thing to do right now is thank them, and I don’t think either of them would know how to handle that.

And then it happens again: Heat, and her voice, and her voice is wrong, slow and slurred. Hands are holding her down again, and this time there’s something being poured—

The map is crumpled in my fist.

I flatten it back out on the hood. Both of them are watching me.

“Change of plan,” I say.

“We just made the plan,” Kent says.

“The run is three days out. We’re not waiting three days. We take the truck tonight, from the yard where it parks, and we go up tonight.”

“On the wrong day.” Meyer’s voice doesn’t change. “The gate man knows the schedule. A food truck on the wrong day is a question.”

“Then I’ll have an answer ready. A missed delivery. A spoiled load being replaced. It only has to hold him for as long as it takes to lift the barrier. He reads paperwork. I’ll give it to him.”

“You said we weren’t doing this again,” Kent says. “Rushing in without a proper plan. You said that at the mine.”

“I did.”

“So what changed? How sure are you that tonight’s the night?”

There’s no answer I can give him. If another man gave me a reason this thin, I wouldn’t take it either. What I have is a feeling sitting behind my ribs, pulling up that mountain harder every hour. I am not going to stand in the snow and describe it to anyone. They’d think I was out of my mind.

“Take the map,” I tell him. “Mark the depot. We leave in ten minutes.”

Kent looks at me. Then he takes the map.

“Ten minutes,” he says. “Their deliveries come from a town a few miles north of here.”