“We’ll get to his file later. Right now, it’s enough to say he looks like a man who is suspected of spending time with the bodies of his victims.”
“Jesus.”
“Yeah. I’ve been tracking him for weeks. Thought he ducked north, but he’s still here, somewhere. Sniffing around on that asshole’s difficult because it means getting my nose deep in the shit and that ain’t pleasant. I’m close, though.”
“Why call me?”
“Because I need backup I can trust on this one. And because…” He pauses and gives me that half-crazed Marine smile I remember so well. “I miss the hunt, brother. The adrenaline. The clarity. It’s the only time I still feel like I know who I am.”
I stare at my beer. I know that feeling. The edge of it still whispers in my blood sometimes, telling me to run toward the fire instead of away.
That call took me to the brink.
Finally, I nod. “I’ll help you with all this while you’re in town, but then I’m out. I won’t be following you around the country hunting bounties.”
“You sure? It’d make a fucking great reality show.”
“Just this job, Viper.”
He grins. “Knew you’d say that. You always say that.”
“I wouldn’t lie to you, brother.”
“Appreciate it. Listen, finish your fucking beer because I’ve got a lead on Miller’s cabin and as much as I enjoy looking at your pretty face, I’d rather be taking his ass off the street.”
I finish my beer. I take my bike and Viper his truck, a rust-eaten F-150 that looks like it came stock with a shotgun rack and a glove box full of felonies. The main drag through Ironwood Falls only lasts three minutes, maybe four if you hit the stoplight at the wrong time. Then the town blurs out into endless blacktop arteries, each one winding deeper into the dark. You can smell the difference out here — wet earth clotted with moss, woodsmoke, and the sickly sweet tang of bark beetles eating the pine trees from the inside out. The only other traffic is the occasional logging truck, its bed stacked with stripped trunks like the ribcage of a dead god. Our twin engines growl through the forest roads until the pavement turns to mud and the trees close in. Miller’s cabin is nothing but rot and quiet. One light flickers inside.
“Plan?” I whisper.
Viper grins, teeth flashing even in the dark. “We go in. You want the front or the back?”
I shake my head. Always the same dance. “I’ll take back.”
He shrugs. “Your funeral.”
We move in low and quiet. He ghosts across the sparse gravel, boots barely making a sound. I skirt the treeline, boots sinking in mud and wet leaves, knees already aching from the cold. My breath fogs in the air, every exhale a miniature smoke grenade. The back of the cabin is half-rotted, a laundry line collapsed under the weight of a week’s worth of wet. I test the doorknob, expecting a rattle or the catch of a chain, but it turns without resistance.
The door’s unlocked. That’s the first red flag. Miller’s not an idiot — not if he’s lasted this long.
I push the door in slowly, hinges creaking like a death rattle. Inside: pitch black, except for a sliver of light leaking from beneath a warped door at the far end of the hall. The smell hits me first — not just mildew, but bleach, and underneath that something gone to rot. I hold my breath and edge down the hall, past a kitchen table stacked with empty ramen cups and a moldy mountain of pizza boxes. The floor is sticky; the walls are crawling with water stains.
Through an open doorway, I spot Viper, his eyes scanning the dark, his whole body taut, head cocked like a predator waiting for the first twitch. The shadows in here are thick as tar, but his eyes still find mine, and the old unspoken language snaps alive between us: perimeter clear, threat probable, risk level unknown, watch your six. He gestures with a quick flick of his chin — the target’s in here, somewhere.
Then there’s movement.
Something moves in the gloom; a shadow breaking from the corner, sudden and silent as a cut tendon. My animal brain registers the threat an instant before my conscious mind does: a human figure, tall and ragged, face bristling with a week’s worth of beard and eyes blacker than night.
He moves with desperate clarity. He’s even faster than I expected — faster than any man with that much decay in hisbones should be. He launches in a blink, slamming into Viper with a force that cracks bone against plywood. Viper’s head snaps back, skull thumping the wall. His sidearm goes spinning across the filthy linoleum, skittering under a tipped-over chair.
The guy’s knife flashes silver, a sliver of moonlight in the dark, and it’s aimed dead for Viper’s throat. I lunge, muscle memory snapping my body forward even as my boots slip on something slick. My left hand snaps out and catches the bastard’s wrist, halting the arc of the blade inches before it finds carotid. The force of our collision jars my teeth, and for a split second my only thought is that I want to hurt him — badly.
He’s sweating, even in the cold, and his whole body vibrates with fight or die. His arm trembles, veins bulging blue, and the knife edge hovers so close that I can see the notch in the steel from a hundred previous cuts. He snarls, breath hot and sour, and the sound is pure murder.
He’s strong. Sweat slicks my grip. For a moment, the two of us are locked — neither willing to give an inch. He tries to rip free, twisting his wrist, and I feel the pop of a joint somewhere in my hand, but I hold on, squeezing until my knuckles are white. He stomps my instep, hard, pain spiking through my foot. I grunt and drive my shoulder into his ribs, hoping to knock the wind out of him.
But he’s already decided he’s not walking out of here alive if it means he’s going back to jail. He headbutts me, no telegraph, just the sudden crack of browbone to nose. My vision goes white for a heartbeat, sight full of static and blood. My head snaps back and I taste metal.
He wrenches his knife arm, trying to bring the blade down on my throat. I twist with him, using the torque of my hips, and we both careen into a peeling cabinet. A bowl of instant noodles explodes across the floor. The knife bites into the meat of mycollarbone, shallow but enough to send fire through my right side. My shirt gets instantly wet.
