Page 56 of Crosscurrent

Diego had ten feet on him and a planned exfil. Gabe had longer legs and a leg that wasn't bleeding through a sock. He closed to six feet on the second stride.

Five feet.

Diego clipped a trash can hard enough to send it spinning into the chain-link fence. The crash made Gabe gain half a step at the same time it made his ears ring. Close enough now to see the darker patch of fabric above Diego's left ankle. Close enough to take him.

Four feet.

Then Diego hit the fence.

Not the panel. The seam. Wire peeled back along a vertical line — cut earlier, bent open, the kind of seam you'd only see if you knew to look. Gabe had not known to look.

Diego turned sideways and went through.

Gabe lunged. His fingertips caught fabric. The fabric tore. Diego was through the gap and into the marina access road and gone — wet pavement, dock lights, a fishing boat rocking against its lines, and no Diego anywhere along it.

Gabe hit the fence panel with his shoulder hard enough to make the whole run of chain-link sing. Pain came up in a hot line. He stayed on his feet and went sideways through the same gap a beat behind, but the marina access was empty in every direction. He stood there for one breath at the end of the lane with his hand against the fence post and the harbor wind cold against his sweat.

"He's out," he said into the channel. "Marina side. Planned exfil."

"Copy." Tom. "Harbor cams."

"He'll be off them."

"Yeah."

He pulled his hand off the post and walked back.

The service door had swung shut on its hydraulic hinge. He pulled it open again and stepped into the corridor.

Stale air. Institutional carpet eating the sound of his boots. The motel's fluorescent fire-exit sign humming. He moved past 116, past 115, came up on 114.

Door open.

Wade in the doorway.

Skye in the corridor behind him.

Wade had positioned himself between her and the room — not in the way of a man stopping her from going back inside, but in the way of a man who had instinctively put himself between his teammate and the place she'd just come out of. He wasn't moving. He wasn't going to move until somebody told him to.

Cara came up at Gabe's shoulder.

Skye saw them.

For a second her face didn't do anything. Then her eyes went from Cara to Wade to Gabe, in that order, and the smallest thing happened — not surprise, exactly. Closer to recalculation. The kind of recalculation Diego had done in the alley but smaller and quieter and on a different axis. A woman noticing that the math she'd been running for the last four minutes had not been the right math.

She had blood on her right hand. Knuckles split. Two fingers tracking red down her wrist. A cut at her temple was already darkening along the line of her jaw. Her sleeve was torn near the shoulder. She had her weight balanced over the balls of her feet in the way a person did when they had been hit recently and were managing not to show it.

"I had a plan," she said.

Her voice was perfectly level.

"He came out the bathroom faster than I estimated. I recovered."

Cara crossed the distance between them at a walk and caught Skye lightly by the elbow before Skye could step away from it.

Skye blinked once like the contact surprised her.

"You're bleeding," Cara said.