“Hey, we’re pulling in to the driveway now,” Trevor answered as the doorknob rattled, officially triggering my panic.
“Someone’s in the—”
I never finished. Never made it to the gun, either, because the lock gave easily.
The door flung open, and I let out the scream I’d been holding in so Trevor would know to keep Chase away from the danger.
A man in dark clothing, face hidden behind a ski mask, stepped inside. His gaze snapped to my phone, to Trevor shouting through the speaker.
“We’ve got company,” a deep voice called from the hallway.
The man shifted slightly, reaching behind him for something.
I prayed the self-defense lessons Trevor had drilled into me would kick in, and lunged for him.
The guy was faster. He wrangled me in one arm and took me down, then climbed on top of me.
I turned my head, peering under the bed to that tease of a lockbox just out of reach, terror choking me up, mangling my insides.
“Mommy!” Chase crying out over the line was the last thing I heard before I was hit on the side of the head and knocked out.
Chapter Two
Alejandro
Just outside Jackson, Wyoming
“Like hell you won that round.” Recruit Two brushed the snow off his pants, scowling. “You fell on your ass in a snowbank and pretended it was a strategy.”
“Itwasa strategy.” Our other recruit’s breath fogged the air between the two of them as he scoffed, “It was a tactical retreat.”
I listened to the two candidates continue their back-and-forth nonsense as Ryder stepped forward to shut it down.
He barked out a gruff noise of annoyance. “A retreat into what, exactly? Hypothermia?” He waved them off, motioning for another lap through the course.
The two candidates groaned, held back the curses I knew they wanted to sling our way, then started for the reset point.
“Were we such pains in the ass when we were recruits?” I asked, my breaths coming out in steady white puffs, the cold air managing to bite through my layers.
Ryder slid his sunglasses down his nose just far enough to give me his classicshut the hell uplook.
“I’ll take that as a no,” I responded, following his gesture toward the ranch.
The light reflected off the snow like a spotlight, turning everything into a white wasteland. Even my shades didn’t offer a reprieve. I bowed my head, eyes to the ground, as we walked, with only the sounds of the recruits arguing in the distance and the crunch of snow beneath our boots.
For whatever reason, the white blanket covering the field sent me back into the past—to Christmas, which was less than two months ago. I’d helped Ryder’s nephew roll a snowball bigger than his head while Audrey had watched on from the deck with Ryder’s fiancée, Seraphina.
While the air burned my lungs today, the same as it had then, it didn’t carry the laughter from that day, and I couldn’t help but miss that sound.
Shit.Why was I thinking about that? Or remembering her smile, and the way her blue-green eyes lit up when I said something funny?
I did my best to try to shatter those thoughts and force them through the cracks of the steps as I climbed up to the porch.
Our third teammate, Reed, was there, in a rocking chair like an old man, sipping his black coffee and silently judging the world. I was one step behind him in losing my faith in people. The only thing that gave me hope was knowing there were kids like Chase out there, growing up to be better than us.
“Good news,” I muttered, resting against the porch rail and glancing at Reed. “The recruits can’t possibly get worse.”
“A three-man team is the sweet spot. No need to add more people,” Reed remarked.
