Page 166 of Legacy Elite

Then he turns toward the left-hand side of the road, where there's a ditch and then a bank and then a field. The grass in the bottom of the ditch is flat, and there are gouges up the far bank, deep ones, where something very heavy came up it fast.

I go over.

Forty-odd yards out, in wet grass up past my knees, the ground is torn open in a long slide with black earth showing under it, ending in a churned patch about the size of a car. Thirty feet on there's a second one, shorter, and then the field is just field.

I put my hands on my knees for a second.

There's a green tarp bundled off to one side, and three aluminum poles lying in the grass with wire loops on the ends. One of them has blood on the shaft.

Nearby a black plastic case lies open with a foam insert in it. Six recesses, two of them still holding darts.

I go back down to the road because Luke's calling my name.

They've brought Freya in a vehicle. She's in the second car with the door open, a blanket around her and a dressing above her eye.

She opens her eyes.

"Took your time."

Luke's already down in front of her. "Where's Jessica?"

"Gone." She swallows. "She made me run. She went the other way and she made them all follow her." She gets a breath. "She got me out."

Jon crouches and turns her head toward the light with two fingers under her chin and looks at the dressing, and says something to her I don't hear, and stays there.

The man from the gate hut is standing a few feet away with his hands hanging.

"Freya got to me," he says. "All the way to the barrier." He looks down the road. "So I got her through the gate and up to the building — it's a couple hundred yards inside and I called for reinforcements."

"How long were they here?"

"Six minutes."

"And how long before anybody got back down?"

"Nine."

I go back over the ditch because I have to move. I can't stand there while Freya tells us Jessica sent everyone after herself.

So I walk.

I keep going down the ditch, farther than any of the searchers have come.

He's twenty yards past the second slide, on his back. The grass out here is high enough that from the road he's just more grass.

I almost walk past him.

Then his chest moves.

“Jon!”

I'm down beside him before I know I'm moving.

His right hand is wrong and one of those poles is lying a couple of feet away with blood on it. His shirt's dark all down one side. His breaths are shallow and wet, but he's fucking breathing.

Jon reaches us and drops down on his other side.

I grab the front of the man's shirt.