I drop the hammer and strip off my heavy leather welding gloves, snatching the phone. The screen glows with a grainy black-and-white feed from the motion-activated camera I tucked into the eaves of the abandoned building opposite Sweet Pine Bakery.
My blood, already hot from the forge, turns into liquid nitrogen.
A sedan idles in the alleyway behind her shop. Black. Late model. Plates obscured by mud that looks too deliberate to be accidental. Not a delivery driver. Deliveries happen at ten in the morning, not ten at night. Not a customer; the shop is closed.
A man steps out of the passenger side. He wears a windbreaker and a baseball cap pulled low. He doesn't look like a local. Pine Valley folks move with a certain casual slowness. This guy moves with efficiency. He checks the perimeter, eyes scanningthe windows of the bakery. He steps toward the back door—the one I just reinforced.
He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a slim metal tool. A lock pick.
"Wrong move," I say, the sound tearing out of my throat like grinding gears.
I don't bother shutting down the forge properly. I kill the gas to the burners, leaving the steel to cool on the anvil, and grab my cut. The leather is heavy, the Broken Halos patch on the back a warning to anyone with a brain. I check the chamber of my Sig Sauer P226 in one fluid motion, then slide it into the holster at the small of my back.
I don't take the bike. I need weight. I need mass.
I vault into the cab of my lifted black Silverado. The engine roars to life, a guttural beast waking up in the quiet of the mountain. I tear out of the gravel driveway, the tires spinning and spitting rocks before biting into the asphalt of the winding road leading down from Grizzly Peak.
The drive usually takes twenty minutes. I’m going to make it in ten.
My hands cramp on the steering wheel, bones threatening to poke through skin. I knew this was coming. I knew her ex-husband wasn’t going to just let her go. Men like that—men who break women to feel strong—they don't understand loss. They only understand theft. He thinks she belongs to him.
He’s about to find out she’s been claimed by something much worse.
I drift around a hairpin turn, the back end of the truck sliding dangerously close to the guardrail. My foot stays buried on the gas. The lights of Pine Valley twinkle below me, peaceful and ignorant. Down there, people are sleeping, watching TV. They don't know a war just started on Main Street.
I pull up the camera feed on my mounted phone. The guy is still at the door. He struggles with the new deadbolt I installed. Good. That hardened steel core is designed to break drill bits and frustrate tension wrenches. He steps back, frustrated, and kicks the door.
He’s losing patience. He’ll break a window next.
I hit the city limits doing eighty. I blow through the single stoplight on the edge of town, the red light reflecting off my hood. When I turn onto Main Street, I kill the headlights. I want to be a ghost until impact.
I swing the truck into the alleyway, the tires crunching over broken glass and gravel. The sedan remains. The guy at the door freezes, blinded by my sudden arrival as I flip on my high beams, flooding the narrow alley with blinding white light.
He scrambles, reaching for his waistband.
I don't give him the chance. I slam the truck into park and kick the door open, the metal groaning. I’m out before the vehicle settles on its suspension.
"Get in the car!" the driver of the sedan screams, the engine revving.
The guy at the door hesitates. He looks at me—a mountain of scarred muscle and bad intentions—and does the math. He sprints for the sedan.
I could shoot him. I could drop him right there on the pavement. My hand twitches toward the small of my back. But shooting a man in downtown Pine Valley brings cops and questions. I don't have time for delays. Punishment comes later.
Right now, I need to be inside that bakery.
The sedan screeches away, peeling rubber as it fishtails out of the alley. I memorize the taillights, filing the image away. I’ll find them. I’ll take them apart piece by piece in the quiet of my forge.
But right now, I turn to the door.
I slide the master key into the high-security cylinder I tapped into the frame this morning. The tumblers fall with a heavy, mechanical snarl—a sound of pure, unyielding steel. I don’t need a keypad; I need the tactile certainty of a deadbolt that requires a Gunnar’s hand to move. I push inside, the hinges silent, a predator entering his own territory.
The bakery smells of yeast and cinnamon, underscored by something sour and sharp. The lights are off in the kitchen, save for the spill of streetlamps coming through the front windows.
"Tiffany!" My voice booms, too loud for the small space.
There’s a crash from the front of the shop. I move through the kitchen with the predatory grace that kept me alive in places where the sand was stained red. I round the corner to the front counter.
She’s there, backed against the display case. She holds a rolling pin like a baseball bat, her grip tight enough to crack the wood, her chest heaving beneath her flour-dusted apron. Her eyes are wide, terrified saucers in the gloom.
