Page 33 of Hollow State

He’d already lost Prewit.

He couldn’t lose her too.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Wynn jammed the tablet against her thighs as the SxS came off a shelf of exposed granite and slammed down hard enough to rattle her teeth. The harness bit into her collarbones. Cold water, shaken loose from the cedar boughs overhead, streamed down the back of her neck.

Zadie threaded the vehicle through the pines, driving in the churned black ruts Coulter and Neve had left. The exhaust rose, warm through the floorboards—the scent of a four-stroke, hot oil, and under that, the wet rot of the forest. Ahead, through a gap in the trunks, she caught a flash of the other SxS—a wink of roll cage and Neve's dark braid—then the pines swallowed it whole.

Wynn glanced at the tablet. Three green markers pulsed against the topographical overlay. The two smaller vehicles crawled west. The larger one followed a northeast trajectory, toward the bunker—toward safety. Kane needed rest and a medical workup. He'd been through a lot in the last few hours, and while she was confident he hadn't suffered a setback, she knew Darwin would need to focus his attention on something other than the loss of his best friend.

As long as the path to the bunker was clear, that was all that mattered.

The helicopter icon tracked the same general heading, but farther south, finishing the top of a sweep before it banked west. That was a good thing. Finch was betting on the idea that Darwin and whoever was helping him were taking the trails across the BC interior. The gap between the chopper and the big SxS kept widening. Two hundred meters. That was the only number on the screen worth a damn.

A ditch cut the terrain sideways. Zadie dropped the left tires into it, caught the far lip, and launched them high enough that Wynn's butt came off the seat. The harness snapped her back down like a dog hitting the end of a chain. She got an arm over the tablet before it became a high-grade military Frisbee.

"Anything I should be concerned about?" Zadie asked.

"All's good, so far." Wynn looked up. Water ran off the end of Zadie's nose. She had both hands high on the wheel, thumbs hooked over the top, driving like someone who'd had lessons and had ignored them ever since. "But I'll feel better when they’re in the bunker and this bird is flying somewhere else."

"You and me both."

The sound of the rotors came through the trees in bursts—loud, then gone, then loud again. At first, it was impossible to tell the direction. Wynn had learned to distrust sound in country like this. Two ridges over and directly overhead registered exactly the same until the source of the noise broke the canopy, and the truth was revealed.

She glanced back at the tablet. A narrow box unrolled across the bottom. "Message from Gideon coming in."

"Read it."

"Used team coordinates to overpower weak satellite signal. Bullied my way into the flight management system."

Zadie laughed. "Gotta love that man."

"Do you want me to tell him you're proud?"

"I'm sure he knows."

The right front of the SxS climbed a root the size of a femur and the tablet jumped off her lap and smacked down on her thigh bone. Wynn hauled it higher and got her forearm across it.

"He said he's gonna spy a little and cause some problems with their computer system."

"I'm sure he'll enjoy that."

Zadie ducked as a branch came over the hood. It caught the roll cage and snapped. The broken end spun past Wynn's shoulder close enough to comb her hair.

"I'm beginning to feel like you're enjoying trying to launch me like a rocket out of this thing."

"I’ve been working on my driving skills." Zadie stole a quick glance. "What do you think?"

"You don't want to know my thoughts." Wynn went back to the screen. She loved Zadie like a sister, but she preferred someone—anyone else—driving.

The helicopter finished its westward pass, banked, and started south. Wynn's pulse kicked up a notch.

She watched the green dot move slowly across the screen. It blinked on, off. On, off. And then stayed off.

Her stomach dropped through the floorboards. She gasped, and the air got trapped in her lungs. She started counting, and when she got to six, the light blinked back on, and she let out a long breath.

"Everything okay?" Zadie asked.