CHAPTER ONE
DECK
The satellite phone buzzes against my thigh. Bad news.
Good news doesn't come at oh-four-hundred when you're three miles deep in the Nevada wilderness, tracking a bull elk through fresh powder. Good news waits for reasonable hours and cell coverage. Bad news finds you wherever you are.
I lower my rifle and pull the phone from my cargo pocket. Mace's name flashes on the screen.
"Cross."
"We have a situation." Clipped. Professional. The voice he uses when shit's about to get complicated. "Federal marshal called. They need an off-grid safe house for a high-priority witness. Forty-eight-hour notice."
I scan the tree line, breath frosting in the predawn cold. The elk is long gone, spooked by the electronic intrusion. Just as well. I wasn't hunting for food. I was hunting because sleep wouldn't come, and the nightmares waiting in my bed are worse than any cold.
"We don't do witness protection. Federal jurisdiction."
"They're compromised. Someone inside the marshals leaked the last two safe house locations. Their witness barely survived the second attempt." A pause. "She's a federal prosecutor, Deck. Witnessed a mob hit at the San Francisco courthouse. The Castellano family wants her dead before she can testify."
The Castellanos. Everyone in certain circles knows that name. Old-school Italian mob with new-school brutality and enough connections to make witnesses disappear from federal protection like smoke.
"How'd they get our name?"
"Tom Parker vouched for us. Said if anyone could keep someone alive off-grid, it's Guardian Peak."
Sheriff Parker.Good man. Doesn't call in favors unless it's serious.
I start the trek back toward my cabin, boots crunching through knee-deep snow. The mountains are quiet at this hour. It’s that particular silence that only exists when the world is frozen and sleeping. I built my life around this silence. Craved it after years of gunfire and screaming and the wet sounds of men dying under my command.
"Timeline?"
"She arrives tomorrow night. Marshal's transporting her personally, then pulling out. Complete blackout after that. No federal contact unless absolutely necessary."
Tomorrow night. Less than forty-eight hours to prepare the safe house, run background on the threat assessment, and mentally prepare myself for what I swore I'd never do again.
Take responsibility for another life.
"Put her in the guest cabin near the main lodge. Wolfe and Hayes can rotate?—"
"Negative." Mace cuts me off. He never does that. "Marshal was specific. He wants your cabin. Most remote location on theproperty, hardest to access, easiest to defend. And he wants you personally on protection detail."
My jaw tightens until my teeth ache. "I run operations. I don't babysit."
"You're the only one the marshal trusts for this. Your reputation preceded you." Another pause, longer. "Deck, she's been through two assassination attempts in six weeks. Last one, the shooter got inside her safe house. She killed him herself with a lamp to the head, but she was inches from dead. Marshal says she's holding it together, but barely. That’s still under investigation."
A prosecutor who brained a hitman with a lamp.Respect flickers through me, unexpected.
"Fine. Send me everything you have on the Castellanos and their known associates. Threat assessment, communication intercepts, anything the feds will share."
"Already compiling. You'll have it by noon."
I stop at the ridge overlooking my cabin, watching smoke curl from the chimney I left burning. "Nobody else knows about this. Not even the team, unless absolutely necessary. Fewer people who know she's here, the better."
"Understood."
I end the call and stand there in the snow, watching dawn break over the Sierra Nevada. Pink and gold light spills across peaks I've memorized over five years of self-imposed exile. Every ridge, every valley, every game trail and water source. I know this land like I know my own scarred body, and I've turned that knowledge into a fortress.
A fortress I'm about to share with a stranger.
