As Sam sprinted across the parking lot to where he had left his truck, a black SUV pulled out of a parking spot and raced toward him. His initial instinct was to turn the other way and run, until he heard a familiar voice shouting his name. “Sam! Get in!” Alex Sanchez yelled as he pulled the vehicle around.
Sam didn’t hesitate to jump into the vehicle. However, Alex didn’t go very far, pulling up to Sam’s old truck and stopping. “Listen, you don’t have much time. They’re on their way right now. I saw members of the DFW team leave about an hour ago, and I got here as fast as I could. You still know how to fly an AgCat?”
Having difficulty processing all of this information at first, Sam hesitated, but then, when the words caught up to him, he nodded his head, “Yeah, sure,” he replied.
“Good! There’s a farmer east of town dusting his crops. It’s your only chance, my friend. Take this road straight out of town, and you’ll see it. He’ll have to refuel in a few minutes, and when he does, you take it and get out of here. Head back toward Mexico,” Alex instructed. Even as he finished his sentence, he was climbing out of the vehicle. “Take this,” he insisted. “There’s a gun in the glove compartment. Your keys in your truck?”
As Sam slid over into the driver’s seat, he nodded. He grabbed Alex’s arm through the open window. “Alex, thanks man,” he said quietly.
“I failed you once. I couldn’t let it happen again,” he replied, memories of Sam’s slaughtered family still etched in his mind.
Sam nodded, and before Alex could even get around the front of the vehicle, he threw it into reverse and took off toward the exit of the parking lot. He could see parachutes dotting the sky in his rearview mirror, and he knew he was running out of time.
* * *
There was no time for Aaron to question how Cadence had forgotten to bend her knees when she landed, nor was there time for him to try to comfort her in her pain. Right now, he could only see this as a huge problem that needed fixing immediately; they couldn’t get Sam without Cadence.
“Jamie,” he began, but before he could give a direction, the Healer replied back that he was “on it,” and he could see him running at full speed back toward where Cadence had landed, which was about a half-mile from where he was currently located. He could cover that ground in just a few minutes and put her back into commission pretty quickly. Of course, that would put Jamie out of service himself, but the tradeoff seemed worth it so long as no one else got injured.
He turned his attention to the rest of the team. “Hannah, Aurora, make entry into the school and start damage control. Christian, Meagan, the members of the DFW team will be at your location in approximately two minutes. As soon as they arrive, get on Sam’s tail immediately. Pam, Truitt, and Cassie are joining us via IAC right now, and they’ll be helping out as well. I see Sam pulling out of the parking lot right now, headed east in a black GMC Acadia, and I’ll stay with him from up here. Questions?” There were none, and the team began to follow directions immediately. Aaron looked up just in time to see an AgCat flying in slightly below him from his left. In order to avoid it, he pulled up, realizing as he did so that he already knew exactly where Sam was headed.
“You okay?” Jamie asked as he ran up the road just in front of where Cadence was sitting in the cow pasture. He leaped the fence easily and knelt down beside her.
“You should be careful jumping over fences,” Cadence muttered as Jamie pulled his gloves off. “You could really tear up your knee doing that.”
Jamie snickered at her attempt at humor. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to bend your knees when you land?” he asked still surveying the damage.
“No!” she shot back, though clearly not angry at him. “I’ve never been dropped out of an airplane before.”
“Well, now you know for next time,” he replied smiling at her reassuringly. “Can you pull your pant leg up? I don’t want to touch you until I know exactly what we are dealing with.”
“Not easily,” Cadence admitted as she struggled with the leather. She knew Jamie wanted to be careful because as soon as he touched her, she would start healing. Sometimes that wasn’t a good thing if there was a foreign object lodged where it shouldn’t be or something wasn’t set correctly.
As soon as she had her pants up above her knee, she could see how swollen her knee was. It looked twice as big as normal, and she could see a bruise beginning to form on the inside of her leg near the bottom of her kneecap. “Wow, when you break a knee, you break a knee!” Jamie exclaimed. “I think I can fix it well enough for now that you can get in on the hunt. I’ll need to go in as an actual surgeon later, though, and make sure that everything is fixed correctly.”
“Is it my ACL?” Cadence asked as he continued to peer at her knee without touching it.
“Yes,” he confirmed, looking into her eyes with a very serious expression on his face. “Probably your meniscus as well, and maybe a few bone bruises.”
“Awesome,” Cadence muttered, not even sure what a meniscus was. “Will I be able to run on it?”
“Should be,” he replied, finally beginning to work on the area. “Just give me a minute to put it back together.”
Cadence let out a deep sigh and stopped talking so that he could concentrate. She could see Hannah and Aurora entering the school through her IAC. She also saw that there were local police cars pulling up as well, and she couldn’t help but wish Elliott was there to spread his wonderful lies. Hannah and Aurora had both been practicing and were getting much better at it, but no one was as good at convincing crowds that they had not seen what they had, in fact, just seen as Dr. Elliott Sanderson.
