“He's coming,” I whisper to the empty room, and for once it doesn't feel like a wish. It feels like a fact I'm choosing to operate on.
I cross to the bed and sit on the edge. The mattress is too soft. The sheets smell like expensive detergent instead of woodsmoke and man. I kick off my boots because my feet ache, but I keep the socks Colt gave me. Small rebellions. I'm still wearing the sweater he pulled over my head this morning, and I pull thecollar up to my nose and breathe him in. It helps, a little, and then I make myself stop indulging it, because feeling sorry for myself isn't going to get me out of this room.
Instead I get up and walk the space properly, the way I'd walk a location before sketching it, cataloguing everything useful. The window latch, up close now, is exactly the kind of old mechanism I've watched Colt work open on the cabin's own stubborn frames using nothing but a flathead and patience. I don't have a flathead. I do have a hair pin, and twenty minutes of nothing but time on my hands, and absolutely no intention of spending tonight simply waiting to be rescued like I'm a prop in somebody else's story.
I press my forehead to the cold glass and look out at the dark shapes of the mountains beyond the motor court. They're out there. Colt's out there, somewhere in those trees, looking for me with that quiet, deadly focus I've come to recognize as love wearing its most practical clothes. “I'm bargaining with the devil for both of us,” I whisper to the glass. “Don't make me regret it, Colt Rivers. And don't be too surprised if I've already let myself out by the time you get here.”
A soft knock makes me spin around. The door opens a crack and a woman in a simple uniform sets a tray on the small table near the fireplace, soup, bread, a glass of water, not meeting my eyes before the door closes again. I'm alone once more.
I don't touch the food yet. My stomach's too knotted, and I've got better uses for the next few minutes than eating. I go back to the window, working the old latch slow and careful with the hair pin, testing the give in the mechanism, memorizing exactly how many turns it needs and how much noise it makes doing it. Not tonight, maybe. Guards are still too close, the motor court too well lit, and I'm not reckless enough to bolt into unfamiliarmountains at night with no plan beyond adrenaline. But I have options now that I didn't have an hour ago, and options are worth more to me right now than the illusion of safety this room is selling.
I curl up on top of the covers instead, pulling a blanket around me like armor, and go over everything in my head one more time, every guard, every hallway, every exit, filing it all next to what I told Levon so I don't lose a single detail to fear or exhaustion. I was scared in that study. I still am. But I was also sharp, and I bought myself time, and I'm not spending that time being a woman in a tower waiting for someone else to climb up and get her.
Time for Colt to find me.
Time to make sure that when he does, I've already done half the work myself.
I smile against the pillow, small and fierce. Fear's still there, sharp and cold. But so is something harder underneath it, something that's been there since I chose to crouch down in the snow instead of running from a murder scene, since I chose a boot print over pretending I hadn't seen it. Levon can think whatever he wants about how this ends.
I'm already planning my half of the exit.
24
Colt
The diner's bell jingles as we push through the door, snow melting off our boots in wet patches on the checkered floor. Mason, Kane, Ryker, Brock, and me. Silas James is already at the counter, sheriff's badge catching the light, the same steady presence he's had every time I've needed him in the fifteen years I've known him running this county, small enough that he could probably name every person in it on sight. We came here tonight to go over Levon intel together, coffee and pie, the kind of planning session that was supposed to happen calm and unhurried before tomorrow's operation. Instead Greta's face stops me cold the second I walk in.
“What do you need? I'm here.” She's already reaching for a rag to wipe down the back table, reading the room correctly before I've said a word.
“Back room.” My voice comes out rough. “We need a workstation.”
Greta doesn't hesitate. She's seen enough mountain trouble pass through this diner to know when men like us go quiet, it means something's already gone wrong. “It's yours. Coffee's coming.”
We file into the small office behind the kitchen. Kane's already cracking open his laptop, pulling up satellite overlays before anybody's told him what we need. Mason spreads a rough map of the north ridge across the table. Jax and Brock check comms and extra mags with the kind of practiced calm that means they've done this before and hope they never have to again. Ryker stands near the door, eyes scanning every shadow out of habit more than expectation.
Greta bustles in with a tray of steaming mugs, strong and black, and sets it down without spilling a drop despite her hands not being quite steady. “Nate's on his way. I called him the second I heard what happened to your girl. Ex special forces. He'll want in on this.”
“Good.” The word comes out rough. “We need every man who knows how to work quiet.”
Nate Bishop walks in four minutes later, built like he could bench press a fence post, Greta's man through and through from the way his eyes find her first before he takes in the rest of the room. He looks at the setup and nods once, no questions wasted. “Where is she?”
“Levon's mansion.” Kane's voice stays steady. “North ridge. Eight guards inside, minimum, based on what we could piece together.”
Silas slides his laptop across the table. “Camera footage. County cams on the main road, plus a couple private feeds from folkson the ridge who still owe me favors from one thing or another. Already pulled it.”
We crowd in. The video's grainy, snow flecked, but clear enough to gut me anyway. The curb beside the diner. Snow swirling under the security light. Nora steps out the front door. Two men in dark clothes grab her fast. She fights, twisting hard against their grip, kicking, probably mouthing off with something sharp even scared half to death, because that's exactly who she is. They shove her into the back of a black van. It pulls off toward the ridge like the men inside think these mountains belong to them.
They don't. These mountains are mine. Every tree. Every ridge. Every trail nobody else knows exists.
My jaw locks. “They die for touching her.”
“We go in coordinated,” Nate says, already checking his sidearm.
I shake my head. “I go in quiet. Trapper style. You boys set the perimeter, create a distraction at the gate if I call for it, handle anybody who runs. Silas, you keep this legal on paper once it's done. We bring her home first and sort the rest of it after.”
Nobody argues. These men know the code well enough by now. Woman in danger. Protect what's yours or burn the world trying.
We gear up in the parking lot ten minutes later. Rifles, vests, knives, my trapper kit, snares and line and the small tools that make me dangerous in these woods in a way no amount of firepower alone ever could. Snow's falling harder now. Good. It'll cover our tracks and bury whatever we leave behind.
