After a few minutes, we were heading toward the mountains and were almost to the edge of the tree line. I stopped and turned around for a minute to listen and look over my shoulder.

“What are you doing?” Adam asked, looking slightly panicked that we weren’t still running at full throttle.

“Making sure that we aren’t being followed,” I answered.

“Are we?”

“No,” I said as I turned back around and resumed pace.

We wove straight into the woods and disappeared into the mountains. It was snowing, and a fresh dusting of powdery white was falling in thick layers onto the ground, which was also good for us. By the time they figured out that we might have escaped into the mountains, the tracks would be completely covered. The more that we walked into the woods, the more my muscles and bones ached from carrying Rob’s dead weight, and the more I realized that our plan might not have been as bad as we feared it might have been.

“That must have been quite a hit,” I said to Adam, as Rob’s weight started to bury our feet in the deep snow and make the journey twice as difficult as it was before. “I can’t believe that he’s still unconscious from one hit.”

“It’s something I learned on the streets,” Adam said as we both huffed and tried to talk at the same time while we dragged Rob along between our shoulders. “There’s a spot on the temple, that if you hit it just right, it can knock someone out for hours. Not a good idea to try it unless you know exactly what spot you’re aiming for though.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you hit them wrong, you can completely fracture the skull.”

“You’re more of a badass than I even thought,” I said as I glanced over at Adam with a healthy dose of respect.

We walked until it got so dark that we couldn’t even see our feet beneath us, and then we kept walking even after that. The night was too cloudy to let much of the moon’s light through, but we had no supplies to stop and spend the night in the woods, so we had no choice but to keep on walking. Fortunately, we had walked this path multiple times now and could probably find our way back to the cave blindfolded, which was good because that was equivalent to our current situation. We only stumbled once, and that was because of a fallen tree log. It was a big enough stumble that it sent us both reeling onto the ground, which surprisingly didn’t wake up Rob. When we got back to our feet, we were covered in a cold, wet snow that seeped into our clothes and made our muscles stiffen and ache. But I didn’t give any thought to the cold, or my screaming body that was ready to lay down and give up. Even when the night winds picked up and made it feel as though my skin was being scraped off with a vegetable peeler, I only thought about getting back to the cave and to Lisette. I knew that she would be worried—panicked even, until we got back. I needed to get there in time before she let her worries consume her and made a rash decision to come looking for us or something equally as dangerous.

“How close are we?” I asked Adam.

He stopped walking for a minute, and it felt like he was looking around, although I doubted that there was any possible way that he could have seen anything in the dark.

“It should be right around here,” he answered.

We walked on a bit more. After just a few minutes had passed, the smell of burning wood and a very soft amber glow appeared in the near distance—the cave. We hastened our steps and nearly ran on numb and frozen feet toward the light. I pushed my limbs to the point that I could feel my rigid and frozen tendons tearing. It was worth it. Anything was worth it in order to finally have made it back to the cave with Lisette.

As soon as we got to the mouth of the cave, I could see the small, dying bonfire and the tent. But it wasn’t Lisette’s tent.

“Lisette?” I called out as Adam and I carefully set Rob down on the floor of the cavern.

In a flurry, Lisette came out of the tent and ran up into my arms with such force that it nearly knocked the wind out of me when she threw her arms around my neck.

“Oh my god!” she cried as I hugged her back as tightly as I could. “You’re half-frozen to death!”

She looked over my shoulder to see Adam standing there in the opening of the cave with lips the color of the ocean, and Rob slumped against the backpack on the floor that Adam had used as a makeshift pillow for his head. I let her go for a second even though I felt like I was living off her body heat, so that she could give Adam a hug too.

“Is he okay?” she asked, looking at Rob on the ground.

“Yeah,” Adam answered. “I sort of had to knock him out in order to get him to come with us.”

She looked at him in shock, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the fact that Adam had knocked Rob unconscious or because she couldn’t believe we had been able to drag him all the way here in a single venture. When someone else suddenly walked out from the tent, I grabbed my gun reflexively since I wasn’t expecting anyone else to be here except for Lisette, but my frozen fingers clumsily clamored to hold onto the gun as it slipped through my fingers and hit against the ground, letting out a shot that thankfully didn’t hit anyone. The noise was enough to startle everyone and finally wake up Rob, who sat up quickly and heaved in a great breath as if he had thought he was drowning. Lisette dropped down on her knees beside him to calm him down, and I turned to face the woman standing at the opening of the tent.

“Stacy?” I asked in surprise.

Everyone turned to look at her, even Rob who seemed to be the most shocked that she was here.

“What are you doing here?” Rob asked her. “Fuck, what am I doing here?”

He rubbed the side of his temple, which I bet was still throbbing after the blow that Adam gave him, and Lisette handed him some water out of a canteen.

“I thought that you had taken off already,” I said as I turned back to Stacy. “We figured you would be long gone by now.”

“I couldn’t just run away and leave my partner behind,” she said as she glanced over toward Rob.

He was looking pretty rough, between the remnants of bruises that still remained from whoever gave him a beating at the cop station, and then the disoriented and glazed-over look that lingered from Adam’s wallop; Rob looked as though he needed about ten days of solid sleep. He also looked frozen since we had pulled him right from the precinct in his uniform and didn’t have the foresight to bring him anything more than just a winter coat. Hopefully his toes survived being dragged through miles of snow.

“I told you to leave,” Rob said. “You were supposed to be long gone by now and living a new life somewhere else.”

He looked a bit exasperated with her, but he also had a touch of fondness in his eyes.

“That was our rule,” he said.

“Oh come on,” Stacy said as she walked over toward him with a blanket in her hands to wrap around his shoulders. “You know as well as I do that you would have broken the rule too if the situation were reversed, so don’t even try to make me feel guilty about it.”

“You’re right,” Rob smiled at her. “Thank you.”

“Eh, nothing to thank me for, just doing my job,” Stacy winked.

“What about the rest of you?” Rob asked as he looked at Lisette, Adam, and I. “I did everything I could to let you guys know to stay away from me and leave me there. You were supposed to come here, find the information, and get out with Stacy while you still could.”

Lisette made an angry huffing sound as she added more wood to the fire and took a steel mug out of a nearby pack to fill with hot water for tea.

“How dare you even think that we would do that and leave you behind. I’m angry with you for trying to act like a lone martyr instead of working with us,” she said as she tried to warm all three of us with blankets, dry socks, and hot drinks. I knew that she didn’t pack all of this from the cabin, so I assumed that Stacy had a trove of supplies in her tent. She was mad, not at me but at Rob, which was something unexpected. I had thought she would just be happy that we were all back safely. I hadn’t stopped to think about the fact that our current frozen and exhausted condition, along with the fact that we probably should have been shot or lost in the woods by now, might have upset her to the point of anger.

“Lisette,” Rob said as gently as he could through shivering teeth. “If I hadn’t stayed at the police station, none of us would still be alive right now. Those cops were microseconds away from figuring out everything and coming for you. Every time they were about to come for you, I concocted something else for them to stick their noses into instead. It was a necessary sacrifice to make.”

Lisette looked at him without saying anything, and for a minute I thought that she was getting ready to scream. But then, tears welled in her eyes and she threw her arms around his shoulders to hug him.

“Don’t you ever do anything like that again,” she said as she pressed her cheek against the side of his face.

10

Rob told us a lot about what had been going on inside the police force and how deeply it was rooted and how far it stretched up the east coast. It was even worse than what Stacy had told us before. It also seemed as if they were trying to corrupt as many precincts and jurisdictions as possible in order to have enough force to attempt some sort of martial law in exchange for sizable sums.

“Damn,” Adam said as we all finally started to warm up around the fire. “It sounds a little bit like the mayors are trying to form their own little individual armies.”

“Yes,” Rob said. “That’s almost exactly what they’re trying to do. They infiltrate the precinct and buy out all the dirty cops. Then once the precinct is corrupted, they approach the city governance and offer unilateral protection and allegiance in exchange for large sums of money.”

“How large?” Michael asked.

“Large enough that they are able to keep spreading their reach. The entire eastern coast is under their influence. Granted, there will be rogue counties here and there who have declined involvement with something as shady and immortal as this. But those counties will be few and far between, and they won’t last long before they are either swayed to give up their principles and join them or be eliminated. Either way, this is much bigger than any of us thought,” Rob said as he planted his forehead in his palm. “We need to leave now before the rest of them come for us and find us here.”