جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 229

The moment the door clicked shut, the smell of blood and antiseptic was sealed inside the ward.Rowan's back had taken twenty-eight stitches. He'd lost too much blood. By the time Darcy reached the door, his eyes had already closed. His breathing was light and slow, his whole body sunk into the covers, too weak to move a finger. The doctor had said that as long as he didn't spike a fever tonight, he was out of danger for good.Darcy stood in the corridor, cold wind seeping through the window seams, making her shiver.Watching Rowan lying in that bed, she hadn't felt it. Now that the weight on her heart had eased an inch, every bone in her body started screaming.The old injury in her righ

"That bend caved in three years ago. Half of it's gone now. The bend's too tight for a full-size rig now. The road's barely two meters wide."Silas's voice came through the receiver, wind roaring on his end, rattling a sheet-metal door.Darcy's heart dropped. "A big truck can't get through?"Two meters and change. Heavy trucks had wide chassis and long bodies. There was no way to swing one through a bend like that. Force it, and you'd send the truck straight over the cliff.No big trucks meant only the small dump trucks, and small loads at that. One truck after another, each making the climb again. But noon the day after tomorrow was the smelter's final deadline. Small trucks were slow and carried little. Double the fuel and double the wear, and this run was guaranteed to lose money. Worse, it was snowing hard, and that half-collapsed old mountain road was probably sheeted with black ice. One wrong move and it was truck and driver both gone.But sh

The guard carried the bagged document back into the dispatch room in two strides. He set it on the desk and stepped back.Asher turned and bolted the door behind him. The killing intent still hadn't drained off him.Darcy pulled a sheet of thick, yellowed drafting paper across the desk and reached for the red pencil in the corner. Before her fingers could close on it, Asher's arm hooked around her from behind and pulled her into his chest.His military coat hung open, his hot, solid chest pressed against the thin line of her back. His other big hand came forward and laid the evidence bag flat on the desk. He pressed his thumb over the crease in the paper through the plastic, holding it still."Hands wrecked like that. What are you writing?" Asher's words came low against the base of her ear, his chest rumbling."Rowan needs to see the document format and the reference number. The original stays sealed." Darcy reached for the pencil with her thickly

Less than two hours after the gray jeep pulled away, a black sedan with capital authority plates parked outside the mine's sealed iron gate.A clerk in a dark gray wool coat stepped out, a briefcase under his arm. Kingston sentries searched him head to toe, then led him into the dispatch room.The stove was roaring. Asher sat at the head of the long table, coat hanging open, a heavy short-barreled hunting rifle laid across the table beside his hand. His boot heel was hooked on the table leg, and he was running a cloth down the barrel.The clerk came in with his chin up. Then he saw the rifle. He set his briefcase down carefully and waited for Asher to look at him."Alpha Kingston. The man in the suit at the bridge is a new field agent with the capital's Special Investigations Division. He doesn't know the north's rules. He crossed the defense zone and conducted inquiries without authorization. He overstepped into your territory."Asher didn't even

The sun had barely brushed the western ridge of bare rock when the sky went dark all at once, and the wind in the valley turned to knives, cutting straight through to the skin.With the bulldozer's last rumbling pass, the seepage pit that had been oozing mud slurry was now a solid, hard-packed platform of dry coal waste and thick pine stakes."Done!" The engineering captain wiped the black mud and sweat off his face and stomped twice on the crushed stone platform. "Solid as rock! Even a fully loaded thirty-ton dump truck won't cave this in!"Silas stood with half a cigarette between his lips, hands in his sheepskin jacket pockets, and kicked the edge of the newly packed platform. He tilted his head toward the convoy and let out a sharp whistle. "Truck three. Reverse. Put a load on it."A heavy truck loaded with coal waste rumbled backward, black smoke pouring out, its thick chains biting hard into the crushed stone. It came to a steady stop at the hopper