Chapter 1
The lonely mountain road was completely empty as the late summer breeze blew along its asphalt surface, kicking up dust and other kinds of debris that lay scattered across its top. And the road was surprisingly well-maintained for its remote location, with barely a bump or a crack to mark its narrow exterior, almost like it hadn't been touched since it first got paved.
For any weary traveller that decided to take this route in the dead of night, they would think themselves pretty safe in its presence, maybe even speed a little since no one was around to stop them.
But as a half-moon sat high in the cloudless sky, its illuminating glow painted a new and treacherous picture, one filled with danger and death with every twist and turn.
You see, with each corner came a huge drop, capable of plunging many careless drivers into swarms of trees and rocks, before falling even further into the glittering remanence of a partly dried-up stream. And unlike similar mountain routes that had small towns or holiday camps at the foot of their summits, this one was deserted, with only a few abandoned lumber mills to grace its presence.
So maybe it wasn't as safe, as it first appeared...
...
As the night crept on, getting closer and closer to morning, something in the atmosphere started to turn. It was almost like a storm was coming but there wasn't a cloud in sight, nor was there any static in the air that made your hair stand on end. There was, however, something different approaching, something wild and fast bringing danger on its tail.
...
At around half past twelve on that lonely mountain road, somewhere in the distance, a small rumbling sound could be heard, growing louder and louder each second. If you listened closely, you could tell it was a low mechanical noise that was sometimes interrupted by a high-pitched screeching, and as it travelled closer, small pebbles that littered the road started to jump.
"Eliot... ts happenin'... you got... Eliot... safe" Nate's voice was coming through the coms in bits and pieces. The hitter was trying to listen, but he had bigger things to worry about than replying to his boss.
Things like keeping his limbs attached to his body as he drives recklessly down this road, pushing his Ducati Streetfighter to just past 70 mph, over double the recommended for the area. It was a stupid idea and he knew it, but he didn't have many choices at the moment.
...
He'd just slipped his helmet on ready to leave when the mark got a tip-off about the criminal in front of him. He knew he was blown the second he saw the subtle nod given by the boss. Before one of his goons could get a shot off, Eliott jumped on his bike and sped away. As he left the dirt track and made it onto the road, he could hear a large SUV revving up behind him.
...
Speeding down the mountain road, his heart was racing and his breathing became erratic as he pushed harder on his throttle. He knew he was climbing higher, which was a bad place to be going when travelling extremely fast on a poorly lit mountainside, but again, he had very few options, and the idiots shooting at him from behind weren't helping any.
And whilst all this madness was going on at the back of him, the hitter was still trying to get a warning to his team.
"The mark knows..." Eliot panted out breathlessly. He was finding it difficult to catch the air that raced past him, but not before it pelted him hard in the chest, knocking anything he had managed to take in right back out of him. "I'm being chased by his security... Gonna try an' lose 'em..."
"Eliot... are you... where... you... now." Nate's voice broke through in pieces but Eliot just about got the gist of it. And he was about to answer, but the words got forgotten when a bullet brushed passed his shoulder slicing a deep furrow into his jacket and skin.
Shit!
The impact made the hitter wobble a little, but he managed to right himself before causing an accident. Eliot let out a small sigh of relief on his own behalf, however, more bullets just came flying at him, still nicking him even as he increased his speed.
And he wasn't sure if the talking in his ear had just stopped, or if it had been drowned out by the blood pumping through his head, either way, he was thankful because a corner was coming up, and right now he needed his head clear if he was going to make his way out of this alive.
Seeing the tight curve and doing a small calculation in his head, Eliot slowed down a touch, easing the break slightly as he adjusted his grip. He was still going way too fast for most people, but he knew he could make it as he shuffled in his seat a little ready to shift his position.
A moment later, Eliot was getting ready to lean into the turn when... BANG! A bullet pierced his back tire, causing the bike to shudder violently, before flipping onto its side and skidding across the road. And before he really knew it, the hitter was holding his body tight as he and his bike went soaring off the cliff's edge...
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The next few moments were a blur.
Air... Ground... Pain... Rock... Pain... Tree... Another tree... More pain... Rock... Ground again... And whoah, way too much pain.
The hitter eventually stopped his descent in a small patch of open grass next to a slow trickle of water, although he still felt like he was falling, as the few things left in his field of vision continued to shift and bend. The lack of trees around him meant he could look up into the night sky, watching as stars danced around the pitch-black sky as if they were in a Van Gough painting, thinking to himself about how pretty they looked. For a moment, it was a pretty good distraction, letting him enjoy the colours even if they were a figment of his probably injured brain.
But soon his mind started to clear, and as soon as it did the hitter suddenly realized that he was completely immobile.
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It took a few minutes for Eliot to calm down even just a little bit, taking in as many shallow breaths as he could. And now that he was focusing on it, the hitter could finally notice that the pain was unbearable, but he knew if he gave in to it, he wouldn't be able to help his team find him.
"Guys... I... I... I'm s-stuck... c-came off m' bike... c-can't move... p... please h-help..." His trembling voice was barely above a whisper. And he thought he heard sounds coming from his earpiece, but none of them made any sense.
Something was wrong with him... Well obviously something was wrong with him, he was lying in the grass unable to move. But besides that, he was dazed, confused, and unsure of pretty much everything that was happening right now.
How long have I been here?... Does the team know where I am?... What's wrong with me?
The late summer air was cold and he thought he should be shivering, but it didn't feel like he was. The only parts of him that he could feel moving were his chest and eyes. He went to move his head so he could see better, but the intense pain that shot through his body after the smallest shift stopped him.
Concentrate. Try to isolate the pain, find out what hurts and how bad... Head for sure, possibly my neck as well. Never a good sign... Left-arm is killing me, and so is my left leg... Right side seems fine, no pain there... actually, no anything. My entire right side feels numb. Shit!
Eliot tried to calm his breathing. He knew the more panicked he got, the more damage he might do himself.
Calm down, Spencer. Numb doesn't mean paralyzed, it doesn't mean permanent damage. Just calm down. If you keep breathing like this, your gonna puncture a lung. That's if it's not already been punctured, God my chest hurts.
In the end, no one would know how long it took for the hitter to lose his fight with consciousness, but he soon did, and he went down hard.
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"Guys... I... I... I'm s-stuck... c-came off m' bike... c-can't move... p... please h-help..."
The four thieves were frozen in complete and utter shock.
They had never heard their teammate so vulnerable before, and the fact that he was asking for help made it ten times worse. The hitter never depended on anyone, at least, not for things like this. Even with two bullet holes in him, Eliot would only let them support him to the car, and then it was all, "I can do this m'self. Stop coddlin' me."
So whatever this was, it had to be extremely bad.
"Hardison," Nate called out, although his voice was breaking slightly as if the static from the comms had spread to his throat. "I need a location on Eliot."
"Already on it... What the hell even happened? Why did the mark turn on him like that?"
"Not sure. But I'm sure as hell gonna find out." Nate was pissed. Someone was playing games with his team, and now his hitter was out for the count. He was also really scared, he wasn't sure how bad Eliot's condition was, but if he couldn't move... well, Nate knew what that could mean.
"Nate," Sophie lightly touched her husband's arm. "What if he's..." She couldn't force the words out, they just clung to the roof of her mouth like a bad taste.
"I'm sure he won't be, love. We're going to get to him."
...
After a few minutes of agonizing silence, a high-pitched ping sounded from Hardison's direction.
Having heard the sound, Nate then sprang to his feet, launching himself toward the other end of the van in haste. "Have you found him?"
"He's not far from here," the hacker nodded, before explaining, "We just take this road up until this turn-off, and then it's a short walk along a dirt path. I'll call for an air rescue now." As he described the simple set of instructions, Hardison also demonstrated them using a route planning app he'd downloaded onto his tablet. The thing even calculated how long it would take them to get there and by its calculations, they were only about twenty-five minutes away.
Still though... all anyone could think was...
Please don't let us be too late.
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After about fourteen minutes (they managed to cut the travel time nearly in half mainly thanks to a certain thief taking the wheel), Nate and Parker found Eliot exactly where Hardison said he'd be, lying face up and completely motionless in the tall grass. The other two were waiting back at Lucile as the hacker worked on creating IDs and a cover story, and Sophie stayed on the phone with the hospital.
At first glance, the area around Eliot looked quite peaceful, almost like the hitter was just relaxing for a moment as he listened to the calm trickling sounds that came from the stream. However, as the mastermind and the thief moved closer, the reality of it all came back into focus.
The crash site was a mess.
Eliot's bike was completely mangled, with most of the damage appearing at the front with a busted headlight, snapped front suspension, bent handlebars (plus other things that Nate could recognize)... But then on top of that, there was the trail of destruction creating a pathway that led right up to the top of the road. Tree trunks had been shattered, rocks were stained with blood, and there were multiple indentations in the ground where the hitter had impacted. It kind of looked like some demented version of a breadcrumb trail, helping guide the team back to the scene of the accident, however, if they thought that appeared bad, what they saw when they found Eliot was horrifying.
To start with, they could both quite easily see that the hitter's right leg was twisted in an impossible position, and as the blonde thief bent down to assess the situation she was pretty sure that she could see a bone sticking out from one of the wounds, creating a large jagged gash that ran almost from his knee to mid-shin. And that would explain a lot really, especially the state of the grass that lay beneath their hitter, which was both red and sticky in slowly growing patches. They didn't know where all the blood was coming from because of his dark clothes, but they could see that there was a lot of it.
Ignoring that fact for a moment (it wasn't like he could really do anything about it right now) Nate shifted his attention to the top of Eliot's body, bending down next to the hitter's head determined to find a pulse. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found it, slow and weak, but a sign of life nonetheless. His reverie was short-lived, however, as when he looked up toward his friend's face, he couldn't help but notice the steady dripping coming from his scalp. Thinking to himself for a moment, Nate realized that Eliot's helmet must have come off during the fall, (they knew the hitter wouldn't have ridden without one) and when he looked around, the mastermind could see that the gear had landed just up the hill, wedged on a rock.
'Shit!'
Nate then called out his friend's name a few times, trying to get a response (to no avail), as Parker fell beside the hitter, too afraid to touch him and hurt him more.
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As soon as the paramedics arrived, Nate and Parker cleared the way for them, but they only moved a short distance not wanting to lose sight of their injured friend.
It was a team of four that came to the hitter's rescue, one piloting the helicopter, one sitting in the cabin ready to send down the ropes when needed, whilst the other two worked on the ground securing their casualty ready for transport. And by the looks of them, they were very capable and knew what they were doing.
It was the first paramedic that came charging up to them that impressed Nate the most, a smallish female with light brown hair and dark green eyes, that took charge of the situation almost immediately when she entered the scene. "Right, Male mid 30's, accident involving a motor vehicle proceeded by a fall with multiple impacts." Without hesitation, she began feeling down the length of Eliot's body, calling out to her partner to put pressure on an area whilst she prepared a tunicate to stop the blood that was still pouring from the hitter's leg. It was with that same speed and assuredness that she then spoke to the two shivering bystanders that since now had been essentially ignored. "Are you the friends that called us?"
Nate answered with a quick "yeah," surprised that he was even able to speak at the moment, as his heart pounded at an alarming rate.
"Can you tell us his name and anything you know about the accident?"
"His name's Eliot Krane and he came off his bike up there." The mastermind pointed toward the top of the mountain path, making sure to repeat the exact information that was being fed into his ear. "He managed to phone us while he was still conscious."
"How long ago would you say this happened?"
"About fifteen-twenty minutes."
"And how long has he been out?"
"Maybe a minute or two less than that... He passed out pretty quickly." To be honest, Nate could be sure when the hitter feel unconscious, having not been there to witness it, but he could hear the hitter muttering on the coms for a while after his accident, but then he just stopped and Nate's heart along with it.
The paramedic nodded as she took out a large tablet from her medical bag and started typing in notes ready for the handover later. She seemed to take down everything the mastermind had told her, only stopping for a second to check in with her partner, and soon she was back to asking questions again.
"Do you know if he's been drinking?"
"No, he was coming home from work when it happened." It was sort of accurate, plus all the important information was true.
"Does he have any allergies or medical history we should know?" The other medic had undone Eliot's jacket and cut through his t-shirt revealing the patient's heavily scarred torso.
From his side, Nate could hear Parker draw breath suddenly, probably shocked by the same image that they had blissfully ignored for so long. Because it wasn't the new stuff that had caused the reaction, even though the sight of deep bruising and multiple lacerations did worry the mastermind and thief, but all the other evidence of older injuries that covered the hitter's body, many of which looked to have gone untreated and uncared for, despite his medical training.
Taking a deep breath to try and calm his frayed nerves, Nate finally answered the lady's question. "N- no allergies, but he doesn't take to pain medication well. As for history, there's quite a lot." Nate searched through his mind for the few things he did know about, although that was apparently very little. "He's a vet you see. I know he has a problem with his left shoulder, it dislocates sometimes and gets sore when he's tired. And he's taken a few bullets, but he never mentioned internal damage. There's probably more that he hasn't told me."
The paramedic nodded again before finishing her notes and returning to Eliot's side. Once she got there, it was her partner's turn to speak.
"Multiple fractures to both legs and an open fracture to the right. A few broken ribs and there are signs of possible internal bleeding. Both arms also have fractures. There is a large laceration to the back of his head, I say we get this guy strapped to a spinal board and have him lifted out of here"
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Within five minutes, Eliot was prepped and ready to go, but Parker could barely look. She hated seeing her friend restrained, she knew that he'd had nightmares about being tied up, and things like this could trigger them. In fact, she remembered this one time whilst working a con, the hitter had to be restrained in a closet to sell this story about an undercover cop being in their mark's agency. And so, Eliot did his job and the con was a success, but for the following week, he was walking around like a zombie, having been unable to get more than thirty minutes of sleep a night.
Still, she also knew he needed to be strapped down as they lifted him higher and higher until he was safely transferred into the helicopter's cabin, the same chopper that would then take Eliot to the closest hospital where doctors and nurses would look after the hitter and make him well again.
It was just hard to watch...