We approach the main house, and the door opens effortlessly. The structure is dark inside, no lights visible, no power humming, no electronic sounds at all. Weird for a winter day in the mountains when you’d expect heat running constantly.
We slip inside, greeted with the stench of stale sweat and unwashed bodies, old beer and cigarette smoke. The living room is shabby but appears lived-in recently. Empty beer bottles scattered across a coffee table. Pizza boxes stacked in a corner, grease stains spreading across the cardboard. A couch with suspicious stains that look like dried blood.
This isn’t some weekend hunting cabin. People are living here full-time, and living rough.
From the kitchen area deeper in the house, I hear a distinct creak, that specific sound of someone stepping on a loose floorboard trying to be quiet. A man steps out and freezes completely when he finds us standing there.
I recognize him instantly, and shock jolts through me. “Holy shit. That’s Carl Brenner,” I murmur. Carl is a bail jumper we’ve been actively hunting for three months. Skipped on armed robbery charges totaling fifty grand in bail. Disappeared completely off the grid, no credit card usage, no family contacts, no known associates turning up anything.
And he’s standing right fucking here in this random mountain cabin.
Carl’s eyes widen in response, and he bolts immediately back toward the kitchen.
I’m faster.
I tackle him before he makes it three steps, driving my shoulder into his lower back and taking us both down hard onto the floor. The impact drives the air from his lungs in a whoosh. We’ve gotten used to taking down assholes without guns or blades if we can help it… then we don’t get sued.
I grab his wrist, twist it at an angle behind his back, and he bucks in agony, then I slam his head into the floor once, hard enough to daze him. He goes limp.
Kane zip-ties his wrists behind his back, then does his ankles, pulling the plastic tight enough to leave marks.
We shove him behind the couch, out of sight from the hallway.
From deeper in the house, voices carry. “Why the hell are all the systems still down? I thought you said it was just a breaker.”
“The grid blew, man. Whole electrical panel is fucked. What the hell is the boss doing about it? We’ve been sitting in the dark freezing our asses off for over an hour.”
“Should’ve stayed in the city. At least there we had heat and running water.”
Two men step out of the hallway into the main room, still talking, not paying attention, then they see us and everything changes. They’re big fuckers.
The first one, bald head, scar on his face running from temple to jaw, easily two fifty of solid muscle, assesses the situation in a split second. “Who the fuck are you?”
The second, with long dark hair pulled back, shifts his weight into a fighting stance.
“Your fairy godmothers,” Kane growls.
Then all hell breaks loose.
The bald guard moves first, grabbing a heavy metal flashlight from a side table and swinging it at Kane’s head with brutal force. Kane ducks smoothly, and the flashlight whistles through empty air where his skull was a heartbeat ago.
He drives his elbow up and into the guy’s ribs with enough force that I actually hear something crack, ribs breaking or cartilage separating.
The guard grunts in pain but doesn’t go down, swinging a backhand fist that catches Kane’s shoulder with a meaty thud.
Meanwhile, the dark-haired man charges at me like a linebacker with a death wish, head down, arms wide, trying to drive me straight through the wall. I pivot hard to the side, but not fast enough as his shoulder clips my ribs with the force ofa battering ram. I stumble, pain lancing through my side, and I grunt, staggering another step, breath knocked tight in my chest.
He doesn’t get off clean either. He crashes into the wall, and that throws off his balance as plaster cracks under the impact, a spray of crumbled drywall raining down around him.
I turn on instinct, riding the burn in my ribs, and grab his jacket before he can fully push off the wall. My knee drives into his kidney once. Twice. A third time. Fast and vicious.
He lets out a strangled howl, more animal than human, spine buckling as he tries to twist toward me.
I grab him and use his own momentum against him, throwing him across the room into the opposite wall. His head bounces off the drywall with a sickening thud, and he slides down, leaving a visible dent and a smear of blood.
But he’s not out. He shakes his head like a dog shedding water and starts to push himself up. Fuck!
The bald guard is still trading blows with Kane. The man grabs a kitchen knife from a side table near a couch.
