PART 2 — THE FIRST WALL
The starting horn sounded.
Cole’s friends surged forward like they were racing for a championship.
I didn’t.
I waited three seconds.
Then I ran.
The first thing Cole noticed was that I wasn’t running like a beginner.
I wasn’t sprinting either.
My pace was controlled.
Steady.
Almost boring.
His livestream camera bounced as he ran behind me.
“Come on, little sister!” he shouted. “Don’t burn yourself out!”
I didn’t answer.
The first two hundred yards disappeared beneath my boots.
Then the first obstacle came into view.
The wall.
Twelve feet of rough timber stood between us and the next section of the course.
Cole slowed down beside it.
His friends gathered around, laughing.
“This is where she quits,” one of them said.
Cole turned his phone toward me.
“Ready to go home?”
I looked at the wall.
Then I looked at him.
“No.”
He smiled.
“No?”
“I’m ready to start.”
Before he could respond, I grabbed the lowest horizontal beam and pulled myself upward.
Cole’s smile disappeared.
I climbed quickly.
Not recklessly.
Efficiently.
One hand.
One foot.
Shift.
Pull.
Move.
Within seconds, my chest reached the top.
I swung one leg over the wall and dropped onto the other side.
Silence.
I turned around.
Cole was still standing below.
His camera was pointed directly at me.
“Come on,” I called.
His friend laughed nervously.
“Dude… your sister just smoked you.”
Cole’s jaw tightened.
He climbed over the wall.
The livestream comments were already exploding.
I could hear his phone vibrating constantly.
But I didn’t look at it.
The next obstacle was a cargo net stretched nearly twenty feet into the air.
Cole finally caught up.
“You’ve been training.”
It wasn’t a question.
I kept walking.
“Everybody trains.”
“Not like that.”
I stopped.
For the first time that morning, I looked directly into his eyes.
“You never asked.”
Something changed in his expression.
For years, Cole had assumed he knew everything about me.
My job.
My habits.
My limits.
He had mistaken my silence for weakness.
He had mistaken my lack of attention for lack of ambition.
And now, standing in the dirt with mud already staining his expensive shoes, he was beginning to understand how badly he’d miscalculated.
We reached the cargo net.
Cole went first.
Halfway up, his breathing became heavy.
I followed.
By the time I reached the top, he was still climbing.
I didn’t wait.
The course narrowed into a muddy trench.
A whistle sounded.
We dropped into it.
Brown water swallowed my boots.
Cold mud splashed across my legs.
Behind me, someone shouted.
“She’s actually keeping up!”
I kept moving.
Then came the wire crawl.
The ceiling was barely two feet above the ground.
Cole dropped beside me.
“There’s no way you’re faster than me through this.”
I smiled for the first time.
“Want to bet?”
He stared at me.
Then laughed.
“Fine.”
He crawled forward.
I followed.
For the next fifty yards, neither of us spoke.
The only sounds were boots scraping against dirt and the distant shouting of other competitors.
Then I passed him.
Cole froze.
I kept going.
When I emerged from beneath the wire, I heard his friends shouting behind me.
“COLE!”
“Bro, she’s ahead of you!”
“Your sister is beating you!”
I turned around.
Cole finally emerged from the trench.
His face had changed.
The joking was gone.
So was the smile.
He looked at me as if he were seeing a stranger.
“You said you work behind a desk.”
“I do.”
“So how?”
I wiped mud from my arm.
“You really want to know?”
He nodded.
I stepped closer.
“My job isn’t the reason I can do this.”
“Then what is?”
I looked past him toward the enormous hill waiting ahead.
“That’s the part you never bothered to ask about.”
The next horn sounded.
The course continued uphill.
Cole stared at me for another second before following.
But his livestream was still running.
And somewhere inside that growing audience, someone had started asking the question Cole should have asked years ago.
Who exactly was his little sister?
Then my phone buzzed inside the waterproof pouch around my waist.
One message.
Three words.
THEY FOUND YOU.
I stopped walking.
Cole nearly ran into me.
“What?”
I stared at the screen.
For the first time that morning, my expression changed.
Because I knew exactly who “they” were.
And I knew why they had found me.
I looked toward the finish line in the distance.
Then back at my brother.
“Cole…”
“What?”
“You need to turn off the livestream.”
He laughed.
“Why?”
I didn’t answer.
Because behind us, near the entrance gate, three black SUVs had just pulled onto the course.
And every single one of them was heading straight toward us.