Page 59 of Crossfire Creek Siege

“Fuck you,” he was snarling. “Fuck this.”

The other raised his weapon. One clean, controlled shot.

The first man dropped where he stood. Rena flinched. The sound echoed through the hangar, followed by a horrible silence.

“Go,” Gage whispered.

They moved, a swift, tight formation, with Rena on point, Gage covering her six, Sheriff Chase flanking wide. Her pulse was a pounding drumbeat in her ears. Every instinct screamed trap, but they had to close the distance while the smoke still gave them cover.

Then, movement. Four more shapes emerged from the shadows, forming a perimeter around the shooter. Guarding them. Protecting them.

The shooter turned toward the faint light filtering from the chopper’s beam outside. The voice that came through the gas mask froze Rena in place.

Cold. Familiar.

“Find them, kill them,” the figure ordered, the voice unmistakable even distorted by the mask.

Rena’s blood went cold.

Corrine.

For a split second, disbelief rooted her to the spot. Corrine Astor, here, armored up, surrounded by mercenaries, standing over a corpse she’d just created. She wasn’t just pulling strings from the shadows. She was leading them.

Everything they’d theorized, every manipulation, every smug denial, culminating in this. Corrine wasn’t a suspect anymore. She was standing in the middle of a battlefield she’d built herself.

Rena’s breath caught, the name tearing from her throat before she could stop it. “It’s Corrine,” she whispered into the comm.

For a heartbeat, there was silence on the line. “You’re sure?” Cal asked.

“Positive,” Rena hissed. “She’s here.”

Outside, Noah must have caught every word because the helicopter thundered lower, its lights slicing across the compound in a renewed surge of chaos. The distraction roared back to life, blades hammering the air, spotlights flashing through the smoke, but the noise couldn’t mask what happened next.

Movement. Fast. Wrong.

Rena felt it before she saw it. An instinct, a flicker in her periphery. She spun, but not fast enough.

The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space. Sheriff Chase jerked backward, the impact throwing her hard to the concrete.

“Sheriff down,” Gage barked, already pivoting, weapon up.

Rena dropped beside the sheriff, heart pounding, her vision narrowing. Blood pooled fast under the older woman’s vest. No time to check how bad. It was bad enough.

“The vest will compress to slow down the bleeding,” Noah let them know through the comm. But he sounded worried. And pissed off.

More shots erupted, echoing through the hangar. Muzzle flashes strobed through the haze, Corrine and her guards taking cover behind stacked crates, firing toward them in short, brutal bursts.

Rena returned fire, ducking low, the acrid tang of gunpowder thick in her throat. Gage shifted beside her, covering the opposite angle, his precision lethal even in the chaos.

A round slammed into a crate inches from Rena’s head, splintering wood. She cursed under her breath and leaned out just far enough to squeeze off two rounds.

Through the haze, she caught sight of Corrine ducking behind some supply shelves, barking orders.

The woman wasn’t running.

She was commanding.

Gage’s shout ripped through the smoke, raw and hard. “Corrine!” he yelled, voice carrying like a blow. “We know it was you. You tried to kill a hangar full of kids.”