Cade POV
The dirt road was a tunnel of darkness, our headlights bouncing off thick trunks and clawing branches. Riley drove like a madwoman, the sedan bucking over ruts and potholes. In the back, Tessa cried out with every jolt, hands clutching her belly.
The high beams of the blue sedan glared in the rearview mirror, gaining.
"He knows this road better!" Riley shouted over the engine roar.
"He doesn't know what's waiting for him!" I shouted back. I rolled down my window. The night air, thick with the smell of damp earth and pine, rushed in. I leaned out, my pistol gripped in both hands, bracing against the door frame.
"Cade, no!" Riley yelled. "A gunshot will bring every deputy in the county!"
"I'm not shooting him!" I aimed not at the car, but at the road ahead of it. At a thick, gnarled root arching across the dirt like a buried snake. I fired twice.
CRACK! CRACK!
The sound was monstrous in the quiet woods. The bullets tore into the dirt and root, kicking up a spray of soil and wood chips.
The driver of the blue sedan instinctively swerved, yanking his wheel to avoid what he thought was an attack. His tires hit the soft, deep shoulder of the road. The car lurched violently, tilting. For a terrifying second, it balanced on two wheels. Then it tipped, crashing over onto its side with a scream of tearing metal and shattering glass. It slid for twenty feet in a shower of sparks before coming to a stop, blocking the narrow road completely.
Riley slammed on our brakes, staring at the wreck in her mirror. "You… you crashed him."
"He'll live. But he won't be following us." I pulled back inside, my ears ringing. "Now turn us around. We need to get off this road before he calls it in."
But Riley was already throwing the car in reverse. "Can't turn around here. Too narrow. Have to back up all the way to the main road." She began reversing at a terrifying speed, her arm over the passenger seat, her eyes glued to the dim reverse lights.
It took five agonizing minutes, the wrecked blue sedan growing smaller in the distance, until we found a slightly wider spot to turn around. As we pointed the car back toward the main road, I saw flashlight beams dancing around the wreck. The driver was alive, crawling out. He'd be on the phone to Marcus any second.
We hit the paved road and turned not toward town, but deeper into the hills, toward the Colter land. The clock in my head was screaming. Twenty minutes. Maybe less.
"Tessa, listen to me," I said, turning in my seat. Her face was pale in the darkness. "We're going to a place near their compound. You're going to hide in the car, absolute silence. Riley and I have to go listen to their plans. We will be back for you. Do you understand?"
She nodded, her eyes huge with fear, but also with a flicker of trust. "You stopped them from burning our house."
"I'm going to stop all of it," I promised, hoping it wasn't a lie.
Riley drove without headlights now, using the faint glow of the moon to navigate a network of old logging roads. She knew this land from her weeks of surveillance. Finally, she pulled into a thicket of young pine trees, the branches scraping against the windows, hiding the car completely. She killed the engine.
The silence was instant and heavy.
"The compound fence line is three hundred yards west, through those woods," Riley whispered, pointing. "We'll be able to see the main house and the yard from the tree line."
"Give me your phone," I said to Tessa. She handed it over. I turned it completely off. "No light, no sound. No matter what you hear. We'll be back before you know it."
I got out, and Riley followed. We were both dressed in dark colors. We moved into the woods without another word, falling into a silent patrol rhythm. I took point, my senses stretching into the night. Riley moved like a ghost behind me, her breathing controlled.
In ten minutes, we saw the glow of lights through the trees. We dropped to our bellies and crawled the last fifty feet to the edge of a cleared field.
The Colter compound sprawled below us. It was less a home, more a small fortress. A high chain-link fence with barbed wire on top encircled several acres. Inside were a large, two-story main house, a half-dozen trailers, and a big metal barn. Yard lights bathed everything in a harsh, white glow.
And it was swarming with activity.
Pickup trucks and SUVs were parked haphazardly in the yard. Men more than eight moved between the house and the trucks, carrying rifles, shotguns, and cans of what looked like gasoline. My blood went cold. Ian hadn't been lying. This was a war party.
Marcus stood on the porch of the main house, a towering figure barking orders. Even from this distance, I could feel his rage. Harlan was there too, sitting on the steps, his arm in a makeshift sling, his face a mask of pain and fury. Good.
"There are at least fifteen armed men," Riley breathed beside me.
"They called in favors," I murmured. "Bikers, hired muscle."
"They're not just planning to burn your house, Cade. They're planning to erase you. A fire would be messy, evidence. This…" She nodded toward the guns. "This is a hunting party. They're coming to shoot you, claim you attacked them, and call it self-defense. They'll make Tessa disappear after."
A new, deeper hatred took root in my heart. This was premeditated murder.
We needed to hear the plan. We needed to know the when and the how. But we were too far away.
"We need to get closer," I said.
"Impossible. The fence, the lights, the dogs." I could now see two large Dobermans pacing inside the fence line.
But then I saw our chance. Two men walked from the main house toward a trailer near the back corner of the property, away from the brightest lights. They were carrying a heavy cooler between them. One of them kicked open the trailer door and they went inside. A light came on in the small window.
"That trailer," I said. "It's close to the fence. If we can get to it, we can hear everything they're saying inside. Maybe get a layout."
"And how do you propose we get past the fence, the lights, and the dogs?" Riley hissed.
I pointed. The two men had left the trailer door slightly ajar. And the shadow along that back fence was deep. The yard light there was partially blocked by the barn.
"We create a diversion for the dogs. You still have that pepper spray Dale dropped?"
Riley pulled it from her pocket. "It's a cheap, powerful stream. It'll blind them for fifteen minutes, send them into a frenzy."
"That's all we need. You take the far side of the fence, draw them to you, spray them through the links. While they're going crazy, I'll cut the fence here and get to that trailer. You circle back and cover me."
It was a reckless, dangerous plan. But we were out of time and options.
Riley looked at me, then nodded. "Give me two minutes to get in position."
She melted back into the woods. I counted the seconds, my eyes on the dogs, on the men by the trucks. At the 120-second mark, a sharp, piercing whistle cut through the night from the far tree line.
Both Dobermans' heads snapped up. They let out low growls and then sprinted across the compound toward the sound.
Now.
I bolted from the tree line, keeping low. I reached the fence, pulled the multi-tool from my pocket, and went to work on the chain links. The cutters were strong. Snip. Snip. Snip. I made a hole just big enough to squeeze through.
I could hear the dogs barking and snarling, a man yelling, "What's got into them?!"
I slipped through the fence and ran in a crouch along the deep shadow of the barn, my heart hammering against my ribs. Ten feet from the trailer. Five.
I reached the metal wall and pressed myself against it, next to the lit window. I could hear voices inside.
"…don't care about the brother!" It was Marcus's voice, booming even through the walls. "You put a bullet in his head the second you see him! The girl, you bring to me. She signs the papers before the fire. We do this clean. A home invasion gone wrong. Soldier boy got paranoid, shot his sister by accident, then we had to put him down. Sheriff's already got the story."
My stomach turned to stone.
Another voice, younger, whined. "Uncle Marcus, Harlan says the brother's a demon. Broken ribs with his bare hands…"
"He's a man!" Marcus roared. "And men bleed! We leave in five! I want this done before midnight!"
I had heard enough. I needed to get out. I turned to sneak back to the fence.
A heavy hand landed on my shoulder.
I spun, my fist coming up.
It was one of the men from the trailer, a beefy guy with a beard, holding an empty beer bottle. He must have stepped outside for air. His eyes went wide with surprise, then recognition he'd probably seen my picture.
"Hey!" he bellowed. "HE'S HERE! THE BROTHER'S INSIDE THE FENCE!"
The shout tore through the night. All activity in the yard froze for a split second, then exploded into chaos. Men grabbed guns. Lights swung toward us.
I drove my fist into the man's throat. He gagged, dropping the bottle. I didn't wait. I sprinted for the hole in the fence.
"STOP HIM!" Marcus's voice thundered.
A shot rang out. A bullet whined past my ear and sparked off the barn wall. Then another. They were shooting. I zigzagged, my legs pumping.
I could see the hole in the fence. Riley was there, her hand reaching through, waving me on.
I was ten feet away. Five.
A searing, hot pain ripped across the back of my calf. My leg buckled. I stumbled, falling hard onto the gravel just inside the fence line. I looked down. A dark, wet stain was spreading on my pant leg. I'd been grazed by a bullet.
Boots pounded the earth behind me. They were closing in.
I looked up at Riley's horrified face in the fence hole. I was caught. Wounded. Surrounded in the heart of enemy territory.
The hunting party had found their prey.