Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 38307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 38307 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 192(@200wpm)___ 153(@250wpm)___ 128(@300wpm)
I leave Tidehaven with the taste of her still on my tongue and her voice looping in my skull.
The rendezvous is pine and granite, air so cold it bites the lungs even though the calendar swears it’s spring. Nash takes point, moving like smoke between the trees. Crewe flanks left, silent as death. Banks, Colt and Jace ghost along the high ground, rifles ready, bad jokes swallowed behind clenched teeth. Mack stays with the Suburban, tablet glowing, eyes flicking between thermal overlays and our green dots on the map.
We ghost through the mist, boots sinking into black, wet earth. The fog is thick, gray, turning fifty yards into five. Everything feels too close. My neck hairs stand up before my brain catches why.
Crewe signals—two fingers, sharp. Movement.
I drop to a knee, and scan. Nothing. That’s the problem.
Ambushes don’t wave hello. They wait.
Nash leans in, breath ghosting against my ear. “Quiet. In and out. Confirm, then exfil.”
I nod.
We slip closer. The first shot cracks like a breaking bone. Bark explodes off the pine inches from Nash’s temple.
“Down!” I roar, slamming him toward the nearest fallen log.
The mountain answers with gunfire. Left ridge, high and vicious. Right flank, closer to the cabin, disciplined bursts. They were waiting. They knew.
We hit cover. I return fire in tight, three-round groups. Colt’s rifle speaks from the rear—sharp, surgical, dropping one silhouette against the skyline. Jace and Banks melt into the fog like a wraith, moving to flank.
Crewe’s voice is ice in my earpiece. “Three confirmed shooters. Maybe five. Elevation advantage.”
Mack crackles through comms, voice tight. “Heat sigs spiking. Six—no, eight. They rolled in from the west. They’re behind us. How the fuck—”
Because they were told. The realization lands like a fist.
Nash snaps off two rounds. One body tumbles down the ridge. Another scrambles back. We push anyway—cover to cover, tree trunk to boulder, fog swallowing muzzle flash and sound.
A grenade arcs out of the mist, and lands twenty feet from the cabin. The blast punches the ground. Dirt and pine needles rain. Chemical smoke rolls thick and acrid, clawing at my throat.
My gut lurches. “Nash!” I grab his sleeve.
“Move!” he snarls, already coughing.
We lunge through the smoke toward the cabin’s rear wall, trying to break their lines of sight. Lungs burn. Eyes stream. The world shrinks to gray pain and the drum of my pulse.
A shape coalesces in the haze.
I pivot, and slam my elbow into a windpipe. The man folds with a wet gurgle. I don’t think he’s dead but I’m not about to stop and check. Another silhouette surges behind him. Taser prongs bite my triceps. Electricity rips through muscle and nerve. My arm locks. I grit my teeth, force my hand to rise, force the pistol up—
Second jolt hits my neck. The world slews sideways. I drop to one knee. “Nash!” It comes out shredded.
Hands seize me from behind. Zip ties ratchet tight around my wrists. I thrash—boot to shin, shoulder to solar plexus. A baton cracks across my ribs. White fire blooms. I taste blood.
Nearby, Nash is roaring, firing, then the gunfire chokes off. Too sudden.
A hood yanks over my head. Blackness slams down.
The world collapses to sensation: rough burlap scraping my lips, damp earth and spent powder in my nose, iron grips dragging me forward over roots and rock.
“Sin!” Nash’s voice cuts through the dark somewhere close.
Then the crackle again. The ugly pop. Nash grunts. Curses. Chokes off. A body hits dirt hard.
My blood turns to ice. “No!” I lunge blind. Hands clamp harder, wrenching me upright, hauling me downslope through brush that claws at my legs.
They’re separating us from the others.
Colt’s shout echoes, distant now. Jace’s voice thunders somewhere in the fog, fading fast. The attackers move us quick—down the grade, away from the cabin, away from our brothers.
A vehicle door squeals open. I’m shoved inside. Metal floor hard against my knees. Smell of diesel and old blood. Engine snarls to life.
Another body crashes in beside me.
Nash. He’s breathing hard through the hood—ragged, pissed, alive.
Relief spikes, bright and brief. Then the van lurches forward. Tires spit gravel. We’re moving. Wrists bound behind me. Pistol gone. Comms gone. Phone gone.
Rowan.
My chest caves in so hard I can’t pull air. I twist against the ties until skin tears. A boot slams my shin, pinning my legs.
A voice drifts from the front seat—smooth, amused, familiar in the way a blade between ribs is familiar. “You Hawthorne boys never learn.”
The van takes a hard turn. My shoulder slams steel. Pain flares. My head rings.
In the suffocating dark under the hood, Rowan floods my mind—her laugh in the kitchen at dawn, the heat of her mouth when she kissed me goodbye, the way she said I love you like a challenge to the universe.
My throat closes.
What if I don’t make it back?
What if this is the end?