He kept low and parallel to the driveway, the undergrowth muffling his footsteps as he crept through the woods toward the house.
He slowed as the trees thinned near the edge of the yard.
The house sat quiet from the outside. Curtains were drawn on the front windows. The back door was visible from this angle, standing slightly ajar.
Then movement at the side window caught his eye.
A man stood just inside the glass, his back partially turned, his attention directed somewhere deeper in the house. He was big with controlled posture.
Wes went motionless.
Remington dropped into a crouch beside him without a sound, his eyes locked on the window.
They watched the man and waited.
Ten seconds.
Twenty.
Then the man stepped away from the window and out of sight.
This was Wes’s chance to move.
He broke from the woods at a low run and crossed the open yard in long, fast strides. Remington stayed a shadow at his side. The grass was soft enough to muffle their steps.
He reached the exterior wall and pressed his back against it, his breathing controlled, and he listened.
He could barely make out voices from inside. They were too low.
He moved along the wall toward the back door.
As he reached the corner of the house, he risked a glance through the kitchen window.
Everything inside him went cold and then immediately, incandescently hot.
Rowan was pinned against the counter, a man’s forearm across her chest, his hand at her jaw. Her face was turned toward him with rigid resistance.
Wes’s heart lurched in his throat at the sight.
Another woman—Lauren maybe—sat against the far cabinet, her knees drawn to her chest and her hands pressed over her mouth.
The second man, the one who’d just been at the window, now stood near the back door.
Three feet from where Wes stood.
He pulled back against the wall and looked at Remington.
The dog’s eyes were already on him. Waiting. Every muscle coiled and ready, his body a question with one answer.
Wes had worked enough operations to know that the next thirty seconds would determine everything. Two men, two targets, one dog, and no margin for error.
The man at the door would have to be his.
That put Remington on the beefy man at the counter—the one with his hands on Rowan.
Wes trusted his dog with his life every day. Right now he was trusting him with Rowan’s also.
He met Remington’s eyes and gave the signal.
