The storm hadn't let up.
Lena's boots slipped in the mud as they moved through the woods behind the athletics field. Jovic leaned on Dora's shoulder, blood still dripping from his temple. Jace trailed a few feet behind, his thoughts still replaying that night with Emma.
Lena hadn't said a word to him since they left the shed.
Ahead, the chain-link perimeter fence loomed—ten feet high, topped with twisted coils of rusted barbed wire.
Dora cursed under her breath. "They reinforced it."
"There's a gap," Lena said. "Near the boiler outflow. Emma showed it to me last year. It's how he used to sneak off-campus."
Jovic grunted. "Bless that paranoid genius."
They moved fast, ducking behind trees whenever flashlight beams sliced through the trees behind them. Voices were closing in.
"There!" Lena pointed.
The boiler vent hissed hot steam into the night, and just beside it—hidden behind shrubs—was a section of loosened fencing. Bent outward. Just wide enough to crawl through.
One at a time, they slipped through.
Dora went first. Then Jovic. Then Lena.
Jace paused at the gap, listening.
Heavy boots, maybe twenty yards behind.
"Jace!" Lena whispered. "Come on!"
He crawled through just as the first searchlight beam hit the fence behind him.
They sprinted into the trees beyond the perimeter—into the open woods past the edge of campus.
They didn't stop running until the lights faded and all that remained was the sound of their breath and the storm.
They were out.
But not safe.
They collapsed near a back road, hidden by thick brush. Jovic leaned against a tree, Dora checking his pulse.
Jace sat alone, staring into the dark.
Lena finally approached.
"You knew he trusted you," she said quietly. "And you didn't say anything."
He looked up. "I thought I was protecting you."
She shook her head slowly. "Maybe you were protecting yourself."
Jace didn't argue even a bit.
Because she might be right.