Colt stopped walking.
Maybe skipped a breath or two as well.
For a second, all he could do was look at her. Same sharp brown eyes. Same stubborn chin. She looked like the last time he’d seen her, and completely different all at once.
Colt’s pulse kicked a little harder, and not just from the aftermath of the rescue. Brenna being here meant something had cracked open. Something they’d buried years ago, deep enough they hadn’t planned to ever dig it up.
She looked at both of them. No smile. No welcome.
Just the words Colt had been dreading ever since Noah had told them she was there.
“We need to talk.”
Colt didn’t say a word as he and Harlan followed Brenna away from the van. Noah didn’t stop them, just watched with that unreadable expression of his.
Brenna led them toward a black SUV parked just off the road, a little distance from the rest of the responder vehicles. She stopped beside the driver’s side door but didn’t open it. Didn’t move. Just waited.
Colt’s footsteps slowed. He didn’t want to remember, but his brain didn’t ask permission.
Three years ago. A compound outside Kerrville called Timberline Lodge. Once upon a time, gun runners had used the shell of an old hunting camp, fortified with concrete, barbed wire, and paranoia. But the gun runners had long since moved on by the time the place landed on Colt’s radar. By that timeit had become the site of a Strike Force mission for Brenna, Harlan, and him.
Intelligence had said there were hostages inside. Civilians who were being held for reasons unknown. No time for a long recon. No time to bring in the local cops. Strike Force had gone in fast and hard.
But it wasn’t enough.
The hostages were already dead by the time they got inside. Slaughtered. Traps rigged at every turn. Colt had taken shrapnel to the ribs, and Harlan had almost bled out trying to drag him to cover. Brenna had been the only one still upright when they finally got out. Barely.
No part of that mission had been clean. No part of it had been easy.
And when the dust finally settled, Brenna had walked.
She’d left Strike Force and private security. Said she was done. No warning, no goodbyes. Just filed the papers and vanished. Last he heard, she was working as a PI out in San Antonio, chasing lost kids and cheating spouses. Nothing like the adrenaline-fueled life they’d led before.
But now she was here. Standing in front of them with that familiar fire in her eyes and something sharp riding beneath her voice.
“This isn’t a personal visit,” Brenna spelled out. “And it’s not about closure for what happened three years ago.”
Colt gave her a long look. “Didn’t think it was.”
Brenna looked past them for a moment, toward the smoldering ruin of the ranch house in the distance. Then her gaze returned to Colt, steady and unreadable.
“I’ve been working a missing person’s case,” she went on a heartbeat later. “A guy out of Dallas. Twenty years old. Last seen crossing into this part of the Hill Country the day beforeyesterday. His name’s Marcus Hartman.” She paused. “He’s the nephew of one of the hostages who died at Timberline.”
And there they came again. The blasted flashbacks that even now ate away at him like acid. It no doubt did the same to her since Brenna had seen every one of those bodies as well. He still remembered her face when she came out of the back of the lodge. Blood on her shirt. Silence in her eyes.
Now she shook her head, muttered, “Damn it,” and pulled out her phone.
Dragging in a long breath as if trying to steady herself, Brenna tapped the screen and turned the phone toward them. “That’s Marcus Hartman.”
The image wasn’t sharp. Black-and-white, low resolution. But the subject was clear enough. A young man lay on his back in the dirt, limbs twisted, face half in shadow. His eyes were open. Vacant. Colt’s gut clenched.
It wasn’t just that the man was dead. It was how he’d been posed.
Arms spread wide. Knees angled just so. Head tilted left. A length of rope still bound his wrists, pulled taut beneath him in a way Colt remembered all too well.
And in his right hand, barely visible in the grainy light, was a scrap of torn fabric. Red and white flannel.
Colt had seen that exact position before. So had Harlan.
