The smoke hit them before the heat did.
Brian was fifteen yards from the cabin when the first thick wave of black smoke poured from the broken rear window.
"Structure fire!" someone shouted behind him.
"Where are they?!" Brian yelled back.
"No visual!"
The ridge team split instinctively — two flanking left, two pushing right.
The front door hung half open, warped already from rising heat.
Inside, flames crawled along the side wall where the generator had sparked. Not a raging inferno yet — but spreading fast along old, dry timber.
"Molly!" Brian shouted toward the structure.
No answer.
The fire snapped violently across the ceiling beam.
Wood popped.
Cracked.
Shifted.
"Rear access!" tactical yelled.
Two officers circled toward the back, but the crawlspace hatch had collapsed inward from internal heat.
"Rear compromised!"
Brian didn't hesitate.
He wrapped his sleeve across his mouth and lunged toward the doorway.
The Chief grabbed his vest hard.
"Don't."
"She's in there!"
"And you'll die with her!"
Another explosion — smaller — erupted from inside as the generator casing ruptured.
Flames surged upward, licking toward the roofline.
The structure groaned.
Inside the cabin, Molly rolled onto her side, coughing violently through the tape as smoke thickened around her.
Her vision blurred.
Heat pressed against her skin.
The room that had felt suffocating for days was now a furnace.
She twisted her wrists desperately against the bindings.
The tape had loosened slightly from sweat and heat.
She rolled again — this time closer to the fallen lantern that had shattered during the chaos.
Her bound hands struck broken glass.
Pain sliced across her palms.
But she kept rubbing.
Kept twisting.
Outside, Brian heard something.
A sound beneath the crackling fire.
Movement.
"There!" he shouted.
Through the smoke-filled doorway, a shadow shifted low along the floor.
"Molly!"
She couldn't answer.
The tape muffled everything.
But she saw light at the doorway.
She dragged herself forward, inch by inch.
A ceiling beam gave way above her.
It crashed down where she had been seconds before.
The impact sent sparks and flame exploding outward.
Outside, tactical backed up instinctively as flames burst through the front window.
"The roof's going!" someone yelled.
Brian broke free from the Chief's grip and moved forward again.
Two officers followed him, low and fast.
Through the smoke, they saw her.
Crawling.
Barely moving.
One officer lunged in just far enough to grab her jacket and pull hard.
They dragged her out across dirt and brush as flames surged behind them.
Seconds later—
The cabin exploded.
Not from a planted charge.
From pressure.
Fuel line rupture.
Generator burst.
Fire meeting confined air.
The blast wave knocked Brian flat onto his back.
Heat washed over the clearing.
Debris rained down in burning fragments.
The structure collapsed inward, roof folding into flame.
Silence followed.
Brief.
Ringing.
Then shouting resumed.
"Account for everyone!"
"Helicopter crew status?"
"Alive!"
Brian rolled onto his side and scrambled toward Molly.
She was coughing violently now, the tape half-burned and peeling from her mouth.
"Molly!" he said, kneeling beside her.
Her eyes fluttered open.
"S… Sarah…" she gasped.
"Where is she?!"
Molly tried to sit up.
Pain shot through her shoulder.
"He… took her…"
"Where?"
She turned her head weakly toward the slope behind the cabin.
"The hatch…"
Brian's stomach dropped.
The crawlspace.
The exit.
He looked toward the rear of the now-collapsed structure.
Fire blocked it.
"Search the shoreline!" he roared.
"Expand perimeter!"
Teams broke off immediately, running toward the lower slope that led to the hidden cove.
The water there was churned.
Ripples moving outward.
But no boat in sight.
One officer pointed.
"Fresh drag marks!"
Brian ran.
Through the brush.
Down slope.
Toward the waterline.
There — half concealed beneath branches — a small secondary boat launch point carved into rock.
Hidden from aerial view.
Clever.
Too clever.
"Boat missing!" Tactical confirmed from dock side.
Brian stared at the widening ripples across the lake.
He was already gone.
Smoke continued to rise behind them as the remains of the cabin burned.
Sirens echoed faintly now from incoming emergency units.
Molly was lifted onto a stretcher.
An oxygen mask was pressed to her face.
"Sarah…" she whispered again.
Brian walked back slowly from the shoreline.
The Chief met him halfway.
"He planned the exit."
"Yes."
"He took her."
"Yes."
Fire crews began suppressing what remained of the structure.
Helicopter wreckage in the trees still smoked.
The lake had returned to its deceptive calm.
But Sarah was not in the rubble.
And Jack was not in the water.
He had slipped through.
Through fire.
Through chaos.
Through tactical lines.
Brian stood at the edge of the clearing as dawn finally broke fully across Table Rock Lake.
The sun illuminated smoke drifting upward into the pale sky.
The cabin was gone.
Molly was alive.
Barely.
And Sarah—
Was somewhere out there.
With him.
This was not over.
It had just changed.
This was not over.
It had just changed.
Brian stood unmoving as the fire crews worked behind him, hoses hissing against flame, steam rising where water struck smoldering timber. The cabin was no longer a structure — it was a skeleton of blackened beams collapsing inward on themselves.
The smell of burned wood mixed with fuel and lake water.
"Perimeter clear on the east side," an officer called out.
"Nothing in the water within fifty yards," another reported.
Brian didn't respond.
He turned slowly back toward the slope where the crawlspace had been.
"Get me that rear quadrant," he said finally.
Two tactical officers moved in with axes and pry bars, cutting through weakened boards along the collapsed backside. Heat still radiated from the debris, forcing them to work in short bursts.
"There!" one shouted.
A hollow pocket beneath the remains of the foundation became visible — charred but intact enough to show its shape.
Brian crouched down, ignoring the ash staining his knees.
The crawlspace angled downward at a deliberate slope, reinforced with plastic lining and narrow wooden supports.
It wasn't a last-minute escape.
It had been built.
Engineered.
"Pre-dug," tactical confirmed quietly. "This wasn't improvisation."
Brian followed the line with his eyes toward the tree line below.
The underbrush had been disturbed recently — snapped twigs, pressed leaves, dirt displaced in a narrow, controlled path.
He moved down the slope carefully.
Boot prints.
Two distinct sets.
One is dragging slightly.
Sarah.
He clenched his jaw.
At the base of the slope, the hidden cove revealed itself more clearly in daylight — a narrow cut in the rock face where a small aluminum boat could sit completely shielded from aerial view.
And it had.
Fresh scrape marks lined the stone where the boat had pushed off quickly.
"He had this mapped," the Chief said behind him.
"Yes."
"He anticipated fire."
"Yes."
"He anticipated pressure."
"Yes."
Brian straightened slowly.
Jack hadn't panicked.
He had escalated to cover his exit.
The explosion hadn't been rage.
It had been a strategy.
Up near the medical unit, Molly's stretcher was being loaded into an ambulance. Her oxygen mask fogged with each shallow breath.
Brian walked toward her as paramedics secured straps.
"Molly," he said gently.
Her eyelids fluttered.
"They… went down," she whispered weakly.
"The hatch?"
She nodded faintly.
"He said… we forced it."
Brian swallowed.
"You did everything you could."
Her fingers twitched, reaching for his sleeve.
"He won't stop," she said, barely audible.
"I know."
Tears slipped from the corners of her eyes.
"I shouldn't have come."
He leaned closer.
"If you hadn't, we wouldn't know about the hatch."
Her breathing steadied slightly.
"Find her," she whispered.
He held her hand firmly.
"I will."
The ambulance doors closed.
Sirens started — not frantic, but urgent.
Brian turned back toward the lake one more time.
The surface looked peaceful.
Glasslike.
Reflecting the rising sun.
No sign of a fleeing boat.
No sign of Sarah.
Only widening the space.
The Chief stepped beside him again.
"State patrol's locking down surrounding marinas."
"Too late," Brian said quietly.
"You think he had a second vehicle?"
"Yes."
"Pre-positioned?"
"Yes."
Silence settled between them.
Jack hadn't just escaped.
He had transitioned.
This was no longer a standoff.
It was a pursuit.
And Sarah was still with him.
Brian stared across the water until the smoke thinned and the fire crews reduced the cabin to smoldering ruin.
He had underestimated one thing.
Not Jack's intelligence.
Not his planning.
His willingness to abandon control of a location.
Jack had burned his fortress without hesitation.
Which meant—
He valued mobility more than territory.
And that made him infinitely more dangerous.
The lake finally went quiet.
But the war had just expanded beyond it.