Chapter 18 - The Safehouse in the Ridge
The tunnel swallowed the noise of the helicopter, leaving only the deafening roar of our engine bouncing off limestone walls.
We drove in darkness for three miles, guided only by the dim parking lights.
Eventually, the cavern opened into an old subterranean excavation cavern, forgotten since the 1970s.
In the center sat a weathered silver travel trailer, hooked up to an old industrial generator.
I cut the engine.
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Emma was shaking, looking at the blood dripping from Julian’s fingers onto the floor mat.
"Julian," Emma whimpered softly.
"Uncle Julian is hurt."
"Uncle Julian is tough, sweetheart," Julian rasped, offering her a weak, pained smile.
"Takes more than a scratch to put down an old soldier."
I hurried around the truck, helping Julian down from the cab.
His left shoulder had a clean through-and-through gunshot wound, but the bleeding was heavy.
I supported his weight as we entered the trailer.
Inside was Spartan: a cot, a metal table, boxes of canned rations, and a fully stocked trauma medical kit.
I sat Julian down on the cot and immediately went to work.
Years of forgotten military training seemed to unlock inside my muscle memory.
My hands moved without hesitation—cutting away the fabric, applying pressure, packing the wound with hemostatic gauze.
Julian hissed in pain, gripping the edge of the cot.
"You still remember field medicine," he chuckled weakly through gritted teeth.
"Some things can't be rewritten by Lily’s neural scans," I said quietly, wrapping a tight pressure bandage around his chest.
Emma sat at the small table, drawing on a dusty notepad with a pencil she found, her innocence acting as our only anchor to sanity.
"Adrian," Julian said, his breathing stabilizing as the adrenaline began to fade.
"The men back there weren't sent by Hale’s associates."
"I know," I answered, wiping the blood from my hands with an antiseptic wipe.
"You saw the white camellia on their uniforms."
"It’s Eleanor Vance," Julian stated with grim certainty.
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"Lily’s mother is alive."
"And she is the head of the Vance Syndicate."
