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PROLOGUE: The Line
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2025-12-20 20:24:41Today
We ran across the tarmac, winded and desperate as we escaped the marsh into the daylight. Open ground, with nowhere to hide.
We were vulnerable, exposed, and fully committed; there was no turning back now.
Fifty feet away, the fuel truck sat double-parked near the hangar wall, the massive wing of the Gulfstream V looming overhead like a steel guillotine.
Guards patrolled the hangar entrance, their attention fixed on the aircraft and the human cargo being unloaded inside, blind to the two figures racing across the tarmac in the long, stretching shadows of the evening.
We reached a stack of equipment crates twenty feet from the fuel truck and ducked behind them, our chests heaving with exertion. My heart thudded against my ribcage like a frantic bird trapped in a cage.
Elena produced the road flare we had purchased at the sporting goods store, her hands trembling, while I gripped the lighter in my sweat-slicked palm.
We had one chance to do this right, one singular opportunity to keep that plane on the ground.
“I’ll get their attention,” I whispered, scanning the perimeter. “Make a ruckus over there, on the far side. When they come running after me, you head for the truck. Cut the valve. Light the flare. And then run like hell.”
“Adrian—”
“No time for this,” I cut her off, my voice sharp with urgency. “We need them looking in the wrong direction for thirty seconds. Thirty seconds is all we need.”
She nodded, pale but resolved. In the brutal, industrial lighting of the hangar, I could still see the woman I had married on a whim six months ago.
Covered in mud, her designer clothes ruined beyond recognition, she was about to commit federal arson to rescue women she had never even met. I squeezed her hand, needing to feel her anchor me one last time.
“Okay, together?”
She squeezed back, her grip hard and desperate. “Together.”
I moved. Staying low, I took a wide circle around the fuel truck, snatching a fist-sized rock from the ground. With all my might, I hurled it at a window on the side wall of the hangar.
The glass shattered with a sharp CRACK, the sound shockingly loud in the still evening air.
“Hey! Who’s there!” The guards were already running toward the noise, their flashlights cutting chaotic arcs across the darkness. “Intruder! North side!”
I ran on into the shadows, allowing myself a split second of exposure—just enough to let them know I had moved. I had ten seconds at most before they converged on my position.
Ten seconds for Elena to get underneath that truck.
A sudden whoosh tore through the air—fuel under pressure. Elena had found the valve and opened it.
The acrid smell of jet fuel hit my nose immediately, chemically sharp and almost caustic, burning the back of my throat. I poked my head out from behind the shipping container just in time to see her.
She was on the ground next to the truck's back wheels, which had already been jacked up on hydraulic lifts.
She struck the flare against the pavement, and the magnesium head ignited with an intense, white-hot burst before leaping to life with a beautiful, terrifying red glow.
She tossed it into the expanding puddle of fuel pooling beneath the truck, and then she ran.
For one second, nothing happened. Then—BOOM.
An instant fireball leaped from under the fuel truck, consuming it before racing across the tarmac in an advancing wave of orange and yellow flame that turned the night into day.
The concussion from the blast knocked me back, making my ears ring with a high-pitched whine.
I stared up at the inferno we had just created. We had crossed the line. We were no longer a CEO and a graphic designer; we were criminals.
And as I heard sirens wailing in the distance, I knew there was no way back to the life we had had before.
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