His expression shifted. Focused. Predatory.
“Then,” he said quietly, “we stop running.”
***
Jack studied the pale oval of the cave opening above them, committing every contour of stone and shadow to memory while his mind worked through tactical possibilities. The voices outside had already told him what his eyes could not: these men were organized. Their spacing, their tone, the discipline of their movement through the mountain all spoke of training and coordination. At least six. Possibly more. They weren’t local muscle or desperate relatives scrambling to protect an old family scandal. These were professionals—contractors, security teams, men accustomed to operating in hostile terrain. The kind of men hired when someone had serious money and even more serious secrets.
Under normal circumstances, the smart play would have been to lock down their position, find a way to call for backup, and wait. But nothing about this situation qualified as normal. His parents were somewhere down that mountain, potentially surrounded. Annie was being hunted through caves like an animal. And somewhere in Fairview, in a bank vault that hadn’t been opened in nearly a century, sat evidence that had already driven people to attempted murder, arson, and an armed manhunt.
Sometimes the smart play wasn’t the right play.
Sometimes survival demanded offense.
“Tell me about this plan,” Annie said quietly.
Jack shifted his weight against the stone, keeping his body angled between her and the narrow entrance. Even now, even knowing she could handle herself, the instinct to shield her rode him hard and relentless. “They’re watching the exits becausethey think we’re trying to escape,” he said in a low voice. “They’ve covered the logging road. They’re circling the main cave mouths. They’re assuming we’ll make a break for the valley.”
Annie’s gaze lifted to his, alert and intent even in the dim light. “And we’re not?”
“We are,” he said, “but not the way they expect.” He nodded subtly uphill. “They staged vehicles near the old logging station. You don’t hike armed teams into terrain like this without transport, communications, and supply support. Those vehicles are their base. Their radios. Their coordination hub.”
Understanding sharpened her expression. “You want to take their way out.”
“And their way to hunt us.” His jaw tightened. “If we strand them up here, blind them, fracture their coordination, we buy ourselves time. Maybe enough to get off this mountain. Maybe enough to figure out who’s really running this.”
“Jack,” she said carefully, “that’s incredibly dangerous. If something goes wrong—”
“Something already has,” he interrupted quietly. “The moment they tried to burn us alive, this stopped being defensive. They escalate every time we move. Which means we don’t win this by staying one step ahead. We win it by breaking their ability to keep coming.”
He watched her process that, saw the internal balance shift between caution and resolve. It was one of the things he loved most about her. Annie never rushed blindly into danger, but when the truth demanded risk, she didn’t hide from it either.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked.
His chest tightened. This was the part he hated. “Stay here. Keep the locket safe. If I don’t come back, you wait until morning, then you find another way down. You get to law enforcement, to the FBI if you have to, and you give them everything.”
“Absolutely not.” Her voice was calm, but immovable. “We stick together. That was the deal.”
“This is different,” he said. “This could turn into a firefight. I can’t have you exposed—”
“And I can’t let you walk into that alone.” She stepped closer, lowering her voice. “My chances of surviving this are better with you than without you. And yours are better with me. Besides… you might need a distraction. Or someone to drive. Or someone to make sure you don’t bleed out in a ditch.”
He searched her face, saw no fear there—only resolve. The same stubborn courage that had made her climb down a burning building on bedsheets and crawl through limestone tunnels without hesitation. Slowly, he exhaled.
“Fine,” he said at last. “But if things go bad, you run. You don’t look back. You get off this mountain and you get help.”
“Agreed.”
Jack spent several minutes listening, mapping sound and movement through the stone. The search teams were fanning wider now, voices drifting farther apart, their pattern loosening as confidence grew. He’d counted at least two vehicles staged near the old logging station. That meant fewer men up the slope.
“They left guards with the vehicles,” he murmured. “Which means at least two, maybe three men down there. Armed, but not expecting contact from this direction.”
Annie’s mouth curved grimly. “Because why would anyone be crazy enough to go after them instead of running away?”
“Exactly.”
They waited until the voices climbed farther uphill, until the canyon swallowed them into distance. Then Jack eased out of the cave mouth, scanning the tree line, the ridges, the darkness between. When he was satisfied, he offered Annie his hand and helped her out after him.
The forest wrapped around them in cool, resin-scented silence. Stars spilled across the sky in hard brilliance, untouched by any city glow. For a moment, memory tried to intrude—boyhood nights on this same mountain, thinking the greatest danger in the world was getting lost. Now he was stalking armed men with the woman he loved and a century-old murder riding in her pocket.
