All Chapters of THE LAST GRAYMAN : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

The rear suspension collapsed with a final, violent crack.The truck slewed hard to the right. Kennedy fought the wheel one-handed, left arm clamped uselessly against his body. Gravel and dirt sprayed across the windshield. Fiona’s shoulder slammed into the door. The sealed case flew from her grip and struck the dashboard before she dragged it back against her chest. For a sickening second the vehicle tilted toward the ditch; then the front tires caught and the truck slammed to a stop half on the road, half in the soft shoulder, engine still screaming in the wrong gear.“Out!” Kennedy’s voice cut through the noise. “Now!”Fiona shoved the door open and dropped into the weeds, the case clutched tight, her injured leg nearly folding under her. Reyes was already clear of the rear seat, short rifle up, scanning the dark road behind them. The pursuit headlights had closed the distance fast. Two vehicles. No lights of their own beyond the low running lamps, but the engines were loud and com

The running lights to the south held their spacing and stopped moving.Fiona stayed low in the rear seat, the sealed case locked against her chest. The soft red glow of the instrument panel painted Kennedy’s profile in the front passenger seat, pale, set, left arm bound and useless. Reyes kept both hands on the wheel, engine idling, the truck pointed north toward the cache that was still four miles away through mixed cover. Behind them the helicopter continued its wider orbit, rotor noise a constant low pressure in the night. Ahead, the gravel road ran into darker trees. To the south, the two pairs of low-intensity lamps sat like patient eyes, blocking the only route they had just used.“They’re not closing,” Kennedy said quietly. “They’re sealing.”Reyes’s voice remained flat. “Standard. They want us to commit north so the helicopter can walk the box in from above while the ground teams hold the southern and lateral edges. Sunrise is the hard stop. They only need to keep us inside th

The helicopter light swung across the ridge like a white scythe.Fiona dropped into a crouch beside Kennedy as the glare swept the upper trunks and then locked on the slope they were descending. Rotor wash followed a second later, heavy and directional. Behind and below them the new engines climbed the farm lane in the same measured spacing that had defined every team since the first ridge in Texas. The net had not broken. It had simply adjusted its lines and begun to tighten again.Reyes’s voice was low and urgent. “Straight to the gravel track. No more pauses. Once we are on it we run the vehicle hard and accept the noise. Standing still is the same as surrender now.”They moved.Fiona’s leg had progressed past ordinary pain into a deep, systemic cold that made each step feel delayed and unreliable. She kept the sealed case clamped under one arm and used the other for balance against the steeper sections of the slope. Blood had soaked through the newest bandage and was running warml

The calm voice at the mouth of the culvert did not repeat the offer.It simply waited.Fiona remained on her elbows and knees in the cold, standing water that filmed the concrete floor of the pipe. The sealed case was clamped under her chest, the plastic edges digging into her ribs with every breath. Behind her she could hear Kennedy’s controlled, shallow breathing and the soft scrape of Reyes adjusting his position near the entrance. The heavy metallic sound continued for another few seconds, something being locked or braced into place, then stopped. The quiet that followed was worse than the noise.Kennedy’s whisper reached her through the dark. “They’re sealing the entrance. If they do the same at the far end before we clear it, this pipe becomes a closed box.”Reyes’s voice was tighter. “The quiet way means smoke or gas, not explosives. They still want the case intact if they can get it. That is the only reason we are not already dead. Move. Now.”Fiona forced her numb leg under h

The single pistol shot still echoed in Fiona’s ears as she moved deeper into the dark outbuilding.Outside, the operators had resumed their advance with no remaining restraint. Boots crossed the gravel. Low voices coordinated angles on the door and the exterior walls. The helicopter light held steady on the structure, turning the narrow gaps around the shutters into thin white knives. Fiona kept the sealed case locked against her chest and forced her numb leg to carry her weight. Blood loss had made the edges of the room tilt; she locked her focus on the task the same way she had once locked it on boot prints and water-tower cars in a village that now felt a lifetime away.The interior was larger than it had looked from the outside. Concrete floor. Metal shelving along two walls. A heavy workbench. At the far end, a second door that had to lead to the reinforced storage Reyes had described. She moved toward it, each step sending a distant, sick pulse through the wound in her thigh. Th