Annie’s room was empty, and the old wooden window stood wide open. Cold fall wind snapped the curtains and blew wet sleet into Boris’s face. The girl had climbed out onto the narrow ledge three stories up and was clinging with numb fingers to the rusted drainpipe.
Boris lunged to the window, suddenly realizing that if the child died, his whole plan would collapse. He caught her by the hood just in time and hauled her back inside. Furious and shaken, he threw her to the floor and hammered the window shut, driving nails into the frame.
At the same time, on a rain-slick highway outside Harrisburg, the old volunteer Jeep tore through the night. Mike gripped the wheel so hard his knuckles whitened, ignoring the pain ripping through his barely stitched side. Every pothole felt like a knife.
The bandages on his right side were soaked through again, sticking to his torn uniform. He drifted in and out from blood loss and exhaustion. But the thought of his daughter kept him upright and moving.
Then bright floodlights and concrete barriers appeared ahead—a military checkpoint. A young lieutenant raised a hand for him to stop. Mike slammed the brakes, and the Jeep skidded on the wet pavement.
The lieutenant approached with a rifle and shined a flashlight into the driver’s window. The beam caught Mike’s death-pale face, the sweat, the scars, the blood. The officer took an involuntary step back.
“They’re sending my daughter away. I need to get home,” Mike said, his voice raw. He held up the crumpled printout of Boris’s email, marked with his own blood. The lieutenant looked at the paper, then at the bandages, and lowered his weapon.
Without another question, he waved the guards aside and cleared the road. Then he tossed his own field medical kit through the open window. Mike gave a short nod, hit the gas, and disappeared back into the dark.
The road became a blur of wet asphalt, trees, and headlights. Mike tore open a painkiller syringe with his teeth and injected it through his pant leg into his thigh. A few minutes later, the medicine dulled the edge just enough to keep him going.
