Then Colton Stryker shows up in my yard with a gun and a story about men who want my son dead.
And I realize I never escaped at all.
1
STRYKER
The Cessna drops through turbulence hard enough to rattle my teeth. Kane arranged the charter out of a small airfield outside Missoula—the kind of place that doesn't ask questions about cargo or passenger manifests. Tucson sprawls beneath the wing like a wound in the desert, brown and beige bleeding into wilderness at every edge. My stomach lurches, but that has nothing to do with rough air. Everything to do with the woman I'm about to face after eight years of silence and the address burning a hole in my jacket pocket.
My duffel sits between my boots, heavy with weapons Kane insisted I bring. Two sidearms, a tactical knife, and enough ammunition to start a small war, because nothing about Echo Ridge operations is simple anymore. Morrison's dead, but the Committee's hunting anyone connected to that operation. Eliminating witnesses with bullets and shallow graves.
Rachel Donovan is a single mother and former captive. The briefing file sits in my other pocket, every detail memorized during the flight from Montana. She spent over a year in a cartel compound in Sinaloa against her will until a CIA task force led by an operator named Micah Hawthorne extracted her alongwith her infant son and several other hostages. Lucas was barely walking when Micah's team breached the compound. Rachel saw things no one should see, survived things that break most people. Now she lives quietly, lives carefully, lives like someone who learned the world is full of predators.
She's not the problem.
The problem is I walked away from her eight years ago because I couldn't be what she needed, and now Kane's sending me back to protect her from people who want her son dead.
Lucas is six years old. First grade. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time and witnessed a Committee cleanup operation recently. He saw faces and heard names. He can probably identify the operatives if someone shows him photos. The Committee doesn't leave witnesses.
Rachel and Lucas both have targets painted on their backs, and I'm supposed to keep them alive long enough for Kane to figure out a permanent solution.
The wheels hit the tarmac with a jolt. I grab my duffel before the plane fully stops, already moving toward the exit. January heat slams into my face the second the door opens. Even in winter, Arizona burns hot and dry. Sweat breaks out across my forehead before I reach the terminal.
A Ford F-150 sits waiting where Kane said it would be—dark blue, clean plates, keys under the floor mat. No rental paperwork, no GPS, nothing that creates a trail the Committee could follow. I throw the duffel in the passenger seat and pull out of the small airfield, navigating from memory through Tucson's surface streets.
The drive through Tucson takes longer than expected. Traffic crawls along surface streets lined with strip malls and fast food chains, everything sun-bleached and worn. A school where kids play on bright equipment. A grocery store with hand-painted signs. A gas station where men in work clothes fill trucks.Normal people living normal lives, completely unaware that Committee kill teams operate in their city. Completely unaware a young boy a few miles away is marked for elimination.
I head east through the city. The commercial zones give way to residential neighborhoods with single-story homes and desert landscaping spread out in neat subdivisions. Gravel instead of grass. Cacti instead of hedges.
4127 Saguaro Vista Drive sits at the end of a cul-de-sac, a small house with beige stucco and dark brown trim. Flower boxes under the windows overflow with something bright yellow. Two mesquite trees provide shade over a gravel yard, and chain-link fences separate the property from neighbors on both sides. The front windows offer good sight lines.
A soccer ball sits abandoned near the driveway with white and black panels faded from the sun and one section partially deflated.
My chest tightens. It's a kid's toy left out because kids don't think about putting things away and don't assume tomorrow might not come.
I park across the street, engine running, and watch a young boy chase a second ball across the front yard. Dark hair catches the afternoon sun. Small frame, maybe forty-five pounds soaking wet, with the boundless energy of someone who hasn't learned fear yet. He kicks toward a makeshift goal marked by two rocks. The ball sails wide left. Lucas retrieves it without frustration, lines it up again with his tongue caught between his teeth.
This kid saw Committee operatives eliminate a witness. He probably saw the body and definitely heard enough to become a liability. Committee protocol says to eliminate witnesses and anyone who might corroborate their testimony.
Kane wants them both alive. He wants me to figure out how to keep them that way while Committee assets work through their target acquisition protocols.
The front door opens. Rachel steps onto the porch, coffee mug in hand, barefoot on the concrete.
Everything stops.
Eight years haven't changed the basics. Same dark hair, though she wears it pulled back now instead of loose. Same curves despite the weight she's clearly lost, though she carries herself differently with movements that are tighter and more coiled, ready to move fast. Jeans and a faded t-shirt fit differently than they would have before, evidence of captivity and what it took from her.
But the differences hit harder. She's thinner and harder, like someone took the woman I knew and filed her down to the essential components of survival and vigilance, with an absolute refusal to ever be vulnerable again.
But the same fierce intelligence burns in her expression with the same stubborn jaw that made me fall for her and the same presence that could fill a room just by walking into it.
Rachel freezes when she sees the truck.
Every muscle locks in threat assessment. The coffee mug stops halfway to her lips. Eyes track the vehicle and then track me. Recognition flashes across her face followed by something darker.
One hand moves to her pocket. Phone, probably. Smart move for someone who's learned to be careful.
I kill the engine and climb out slowly with my hands visible in a non-threatening posture. My boots hit the pavement with deliberate sound, not sneaking and not rushing.
