Page 112 of Tracking Safety

But he couldn’t.

She wasn’t alone. An older man faced her. Another stood at the car. A third near Jenna.

The moment Luke came out of the dark, Jenna would be the first to die.

He went flat near the water, where it flowed beneath the road. Caleb dropped beside him without being told.

Luke reached for Freya’s collar and brought her down low against his side. She stayed, pressed to the ground and silent, as if she understood the cost of a sound right now.

Three men. One of them within arm’s reach of Jenna.

He needed a plan. He needed it now.

CHAPTER 47

Heat rolled off the slope in waves, shoving against Jenna’s face. The flames were close enough to make her skin feel tight and scorched.

The whole world had narrowed to the smell of the scorched forest. Burning pine, sharp and sweet. Smoke. Dry leaves.

“You’re calmer than I expected.” Something almost like respect moved through Vito’s voice as he stared at her.

She raised her chin. “I’ve had practice.”

“So I see.” He tilted his head, and the headlights caught the loose skin at his throat. “You always were the smartest one Roderick ever brought home. Smarter than him, certainly. I told him as much the day he married you. I told him, that one will be trouble. He didn’t listen.”

Behind him, a stand of pine caught. A roar filled the air.

Then forty feet of deep-crimson and burgundy flames climbed the dark in a single second. The heat slammed into them, and Jenna turned her face from it.

Sparks rose in a column and scattered on the wind. A second later, embers fell between them in a slow rain.

She stared at Vito as one of the embers caught the shoulder of his coat. He brushed it off as if it were merely a nuisance, his gaze completely focused on the task of teaching her a lesson—no matter the cost.

He wasn’t in his right mind, was he? There was no way he’d be standing here like this if he was.

Smoke rolled across the low ground, and Jenna’s eyes streamed. She breathed through her sleeve and made herself stay calm.

She had to do the only thing she could right now—she had to get into Vito’s head and buy time. “I’m sorry about Roderick.”

His mouth tightened at one corner. “Roderick is none of your concern anymore.”

“He’s dead. I know that much. What I don’t know is why.”

The heat pressed at her back now. The fire had found its way around the edges of the clearing and ate up the open ground one foot at a time.

Jenna forced her gaze to remain on Vito. “So what mess had Roderick gotten himself into?”

Another tree caught behind him, close enough that the light of it threw his shadow long across the dirt. The driver looked up at the flames and flinched. Sutter shifted half a step.

“I put my own son in the ground for less than you’ve cost me, Ellie.” Vito sneered at her. “Do you understand what that means? There is nothing I will not do to protect what I’ve built. Nothing! I buried my own blood. I’ll bury you.”

Sutter went still at I put my own son in the ground.

Sutter had served Roderick before he’d ever served Vito. He’d driven him, covered for him, buried things for him.

His loyalty had been with him, not Vito. But how far would he take that?

Jenna had hedged everything on that thought. Now she would find out if the risk paid off or not.