Flashlight beams swept the stairwell leading down to the archives. Time was up. Her fingers found the keypad lock beside the emergency door. Four digits. Standard building code would use the station's founding date.
She punched in 1 1958 and the lock clicked open. Shouts echoed from the stairwell. Check the basement. She has to be down here. Trina gripped the taser tightly and took a deep breath. the door would trigger an alarm, but that didn't matter now.
She could hear Rusk's heavy breathing as he descended the stairs. Outside, crickets chirped in the pre-dawn darkness. A 100 yards of open ground separated the station from the tree line. Red and blue lights began strobing in the distance as backup units responded to the call. Meanwhile, on a lonely stretch of county road, Agent Monroe's sedan crawled to a stop behind what appeared to be a drunk driver weaving across both lanes.
Standard procedure would be to call it in, but something felt off. The driver's movements were too deliberate, too calculated. Monroe reached for his radio, but before he could key the mic, headlights blazed to life in his rearview mirror. A truck roared out of the darkness, engines screaming. His last thought was that he should have waited for backup.
Back at the station, Trina pressed her shoulder against the emergency exit. The metal groaned in protest. Decades of rust fighting against her. Behind her, flashlight beams danced across the walls as officers searched the basement room by room. "Where are you, you sneaky [ __ ]?"
Rusk's voice echoed off the concrete. "Come out, and maybe we won't have to hurt you too bad." Trina threw her full weight against the door. It burst open with a shriek of tortured metal, triggering alarms throughout the building. Cold night air rushed in as she stumbled out into the darkness.
Sirens wailed to life, painting the world in alternating red and blue. Dogs barked in the distance. The woods beckoned, offering cover less than a hundred yards away, but her injuries slowed her down. Each step sent fire through her ribs and bare feet. There, by the emergency exit, someone shouted.
Flashlight beams swept toward her as she ran. Taser clutched tightly in her bloody fingers. The pre-dawn mist clung to the ground as Trina moved through the dense pine forest, each step calculated and precise despite her injuries. Blood had soaked through her black t-shirt, where Faulner's questioning had reopened a wound in her side. The fabric was sticky and warm against her skin.
She paused behind a thick tree trunk, listening intently. Distant sirens still wailed back at the station, but out here only the earliest bird song broke the silence. Her bare feet were cut and bruised from running across rough terrain, leaving a trail she needed to hide. Fast. Trina dropped to one knee beside a fallen log, scooping up handfuls of dark mud.
The cool earth felt good against her burning skin as she methodically covered her arms and legs, breaking up her silhouette. She lifted her shirt carefully and packed mud against the bleeding wound, gritting her teeth at the sting. It wasn't sterile, but it would help slow the blood loss until she reached her cache. "Just like Ranger training," she muttered, remembering similar exercises in Georgia's swamps. "Use the terrain. Become invisible."