Page 10 of Echo: Line
0400 hours. I escape or die trying.
The tremors in my hands have stopped completely now. Good. I'll need steady hands for what comes next.
Outside my cell, guards change position. Footsteps echo in the corridor. Routine sounds of a black site facility operating on night protocols. Everything normal. Everything secure. They think I'm contained, controlled, counting down the hours until transport.
Tomorrow they'll learn what happens when you underestimate a man who's already lost everything except his team and his principles.
Tomorrow at 0400, Victor Kessler's perfect plan falls apart.
Somewhere in Wyoming, an FBI agent named Ward is heading into a trap she doesn't know exists. A trap I'm going to make sure never springs.
4
ALEX
At 0400, the generator kicks over with a mechanical groan that vibrates through the floor. I count. One. Two. Three.
The electronic lock on my cell clicks. I move.
Muscle memory takes over where conscious thought can't follow. The door opens. The corridor is empty—both guard teams in the break room during shift change, just like the three previous mornings. Turn left. Seventeen steps. The drugs from yesterday's interrogation still fog the edges of my thinking, but my body knows the route.
Emergency exit ahead. Red sign. Crash bar. My hands find it in near darkness.
Behind me, someone shouts. The ninety seconds are up. Cameras coming back online.
I hit the door at full speed. Cold air slams into my face. I'm outside. Trees surround me. I start running.
Something tears in my side—probably the partially healed wound from the staging facility reopening. Doesn't matter. Blood loss matters later. Right now, only distance matters.
Gunfire erupts behind me. They're shooting blind into the forest, hoping to get lucky. I drop, roll behind a tree trunk, keepmoving. More shots, but the spacing is wrong—panic fire, not tactical. They didn't expect me to make it this far.
I put ten yards behind me. Then twenty. The facility disappears, swallowed by pines and darkness. My legs want to stop. My body is screaming that I've already used up reserves I didn't have. But there's a structure somewhere to the north—I saw it on satellite reconnaissance during mission planning months ago. If it still exists. If I can find it. If I don't bleed out first.
Voices behind me. Organized now. They're coordinating pursuit.
I run faster.
The escape becomes fragments after that. Dawn breaking through trees. Drinking from a stream. Falling twice. Getting up both times. A structure ahead through the trees—salvation or death, I won't know until I reach it. The cabin appears like a mirage. Real walls. A real door that opens under my bloody hands.
A first aid kit in a cabinet. Basic supplies—gauze, tape, antiseptic. I use what I can reach before my hands stop working right.
Then darkness. Hours lost to pain and blood loss.
When consciousness returns, there are footsteps outside. The door opening. A federal agent with a weapon raised.
Eyes that see more than they should.
DELANEY
The rental Tahoe smells like pine air freshener and stale coffee. I grip the steering wheel tighter than necessary as the GPSrecalculates for the third time. Mountain roads don't translate well to satellite navigation, apparently. The tactical team follows two vehicles behind, maintaining distance per my request. I want time to assess before they roll in with overwhelming force.
My phone buzzes. Patterson.
"Status?"
"Twenty minutes out from the coordinates." I navigate a hairpin turn, the Tetons rising like granite teeth against a sky going purple with dusk. "Local PD confirmed no movement at the location for the past six hours."
"Mercer's injured according to our source. Probably can't move even if he wanted to." Patterson's voice carries that edge it gets when he's under pressure from above. "This is straightforward, Ward. Isolated fugitive, alone, compromised. Make the arrest."
