The girl in the cellar barely looked human at first.
Her hair had grown long and wild. Her clothes were filthy and torn. Shackles had rubbed her wrists and ankles raw.
When I unlocked her chains, she threw herself at me and broke down sobbing.
I asked if she could walk.
She tried.
She collapsed immediately.
The skin around her ankle wounds was badly inflamed. She needed treatment fast.
Then she lifted her head, looked past me at the chief, and said in a cracked voice, “Kill him. Please kill him.”
He tried to scramble away.
I pinned him down.
“Not yet,” I said.
On my way down into the cellar, I had spotted a security camera mounted in the corner.
There was no monitor in the chief’s house.
Which meant someone else was watching.
Jonah.
If he wasn’t asleep already, he had seen me free her.
Maybe all of it.
I half-carried the girl outside and laid her against the courtyard wall. Then I tore through the house until the bound woman on the bed started urgently signaling with her eyes.
I followed her direction and found alcohol, gauze, and basic supplies.
After I cleaned the rescued girl’s wounds as best I could, I knocked out the chief’s son and cut the woman loose.
“Were you taken too?” I asked.
She nodded so hard tears spilled down her face.
Her name was Wendy.
And when she looked at the chief and his son, hatred lit her whole expression.
From outside came barking dogs, men shouting, boots pounding on dirt.
Jonah had made his move.
The rescued girl—her name was Bella—leaned weakly against the wall and said, “Can we still get out?”
I looked toward the gate and stayed silent a second too long.
Because the truth was ugly.
I didn’t know how many men they had.
I didn’t know how many guns.
I knew the terrain, but not enough.
And I had already lost the advantage of surprise.
Bella let out a small bitter breath and looked up at the sky.
“I haven’t seen stars in so long,” she said. “Look. They’re blinking.”
I glanced up.
She was right.
The stars were flickering through unstable air.
A weather shift.
Fast.
Rain.
A lot of it.
That changed everything.
I stood in the center of the courtyard and listened to the approaching footsteps.
Twenty at least. Maybe more.
Probably every able-bodied man in the village.
Fine.
That saved me the trouble of hunting them one by one.
I dug through my backpack and used the remaining alcohol and whatever I could salvage in the house to put together a few improvised incendiaries.
Just as I finished, pounding shook the gate.
I dragged the village chief in front of me, blade at his throat, and said, “Open it. We have guests.”
The gate opened.
Jonah stood outside with over twenty men behind him.
Shotguns raised.
Barrels black in the darkness.
The chief started begging immediately.
Jonah didn’t even pretend to care.
A shot cracked through the rain-heavy air.
Pain burned across my right hand.
The chief dropped to his knees screaming, clutching his shoulder.
Jonah calmly reloaded and said, “Oops. Missed.”
I had planned to use the chief as leverage.
But Jonah was colder than I’d hoped.
From the moment I entered the village, he’d suspected me.
They had found the hidden car.
They knew the men who brought me there were gone.
Now there was no point in pretending.
One of the men from the crowd came toward me grinning and talking about making sure I stayed alive for later.
I kicked him so hard he folded.
Then I slapped him twice across the face when he tried to curse at me.
The others lifted their guns again.
Jonah smiled.
“I like you,” he said. “Maybe too much. You should’ve been sent to my house the first night.”
I spat at him.
His face darkened.
I raised one of the improvised firebombs where they could all see it.
Several men immediately backed up.
I retreated into the courtyard and slammed the gate shut.
Behind me, Wendy was trying to steady Bella.
Wendy saw the blood on my right hand and rushed over with what little gauze was left.
“What do we do now?” she asked.
I looked up again.
The stars had vanished.
“We stall,” I said. “And then we get lucky.”