was sure I’d laugh about it someday. Just not right now.
I opened that door, and we headed out.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
It’s a peaceful feeling.
I know that sounds ridiculous, but it is.
Running in the woods, with just the person beside you, knowing time is running out, knowing the day is coming, knowing you have one goal: to get where you need to be before they find you.
It calmed me in a way I hadn’t felt in so long.
The part of my soul that needed to know my purpose, to understand the why or why not, the part of me that reared up if I wasn’t following my morals, that part was quiet. That part was content, because it was right to run free. It was right to go to Milwaukee. It was right to confront the man who’d been the first monster in my life.
There was no longer any confusion in my head or heart.
But Brooke’s breathing was already uneven behind me.
She’d let me take the lead, and I was using the age-old way to find our path: following the North Star. Once we’d cleared where I last saw guards standing before, we turned so it was on our left side.
Using the map Brooke had showed me, I’d memorized the myriad of roads near the house. There was one main paved one that went alongside the lake. It wound all around it, but Blade wouldn’t be waiting for us on that road. He would pick a gravel one, and not the second- or third-best gravel road. He’d pick the fourth one, one that looked like little more than a long driveway, and he’d park just on the other side of a hill. So he’d see the oncoming lights from a car, but they wouldn’t see him.
This was part of being a Hider that we rarely utilized, but we had training for it.
I enjoyed this part more than the others in my unit. I took to the outdoors better than they did, though even I didn’t know why. It rarely mattered. We usually drove from motel to motel. At some points, we’d have to meet someone. They would lead us through a hotel, or a restaurant, or a school to the back, where we’d get in another vehicle. That was how we’d travel once we got the person who needed saving. Going through was rarely a straight shot. They liked to have us use two or three different routes, in case someone tried to track us.
There were a lot of rich and powerful abusers out there. They had access to main road security footage, to dirty cops, to almost anyone who would take a few extra bucks for a peek at their camera systems. Which made relying on trusted allies and assets already certified through the Network so important.
My mind continued to turn as we ran.
If Brooke had notified Blade, and he was already here, that meant she had known about Kai’s travel plans days ago. It would’ve taken that long to get Blade here and for him to have a cover story in place to hide his whereabouts from the Network.
I was banking on the fact that he’d have a plan ready. We didn’t have the Network’s allies and assets, which meant we’d have to keep to back roads as much as possible—as off the grid as we could be, using the least visible roads, which meant it’d take us so much longer than Kai to get to Milwaukee.
I bent my head forward. One foot after one foot. Keep going. That’s what I had to do.
“Agh!” A twig snapped, and Brooke cried out.
I whirled, grabbing her arm before she crashed into a tree.
“Oh, shit shit shit! Oh no.” She moaned, grabbing for her ankle. “I think I broke my ankle.”
Our hour was slipping away. I could see it shortening before my eyes.
She knelt down, wrapping her hands around her leg, as if to prevent the pain from spreading. “Riley! It hurts so much.” Tears streamed down her face, and she gasped for breath.
By my calculations, we had a little over a mile, more likely a mile and a quarter yet to go. I looked around, but even if we’d had rope for me to build her a crutch, we wouldn’t make it. They would find us.
“Can you make it?”
She looked up, her face pale and getting whiter by the second. She shook her head. Her eyes were dazed, half panicked. “I think I broke my ankle! For real.” Her voice hitched on a