On their way to the station ,suddenly, there was a heavy thump in the back of the pickup truck. The whole vehicle shifted, the suspension groaning under a sudden weight.
"What was that?" the old man yelled, hitting the brakes. "Did I hit a deer?"
The truck skidded to a stop on the gravel shoulder of the road. Isabella held her breath. She saw a hand—a large, bloody hand with familiar tattoos—reach over the edge of the truck bed and grab the metal railing.
A figure rose up from the back of the truck. He was covered in soot, his black t-shirt was shredded, and he was clutching his side, but his green eyes were unmistakable even in the dark.
"Jaxson!" Isabella screamed. She scrambled out of the truck, falling into the mud in her haste to get to him.
Jaxson rolled over the side of the truck bed and landed heavily on the ground. He groaned, but when Isabella reached him, he pulled her into a crushing hug. He smelled like smoke and spent gunpowder.
"I told you," he gasped, his voice sounding like he'd swallowed glass. "I don't like... keeping people waiting."
"How did you get out?" she cried, pulling back to look at his face. He had a deep cut over his eye, and his side was soaked in blood, but he was breathing.
"The cellar," Jaxson said, leaning against the truck tire. "I didn't follow you through the tunnel. I waited until they thought I was trapped in the bedroom. I threw a kerosene lamp at the curtains and dropped through the floor right as the room went up. I crawled out the back way and saw this truck passing by. I jumped in the back while it was slowing down for the turn."
The old man got out of the cab, holding a flashlight. "Well, paint me red and call me a barn! Is this the boyfriend?"
"Yes," Isabella said, helping Jaxson stand up. "This is him."
Jaxson looked at the old man, then back at the mountain. "We can't go to the sheriff, Isabella. Vanessa has friends everywhere. Even in small towns like this. We need to go to the city. We need to go to the docks."
"The docks?" Isabella asked. "But that's where they are!"
"Exactly," Jaxson said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a second key. It looked exactly like the one he had given Vanessa. "I gave her the key to an empty locker. The real gold... the stuff that's going to buy us a new life... is still where I hid it. We get the gold, we get on my boat, and we leave this country tonight."
Isabella looked at the blood on his shirt and the fire on the mountain. She wasn't the same girl who worked at the bookstore anymore. She was a girl who had survived a shootout and a mountain chase.
"Okay," she said, her voice firm. "Let's go get our gold."