Rocco counted silently. "Eight."
He looked again. "No, twelve."
Lark's pulse quickened. "Keller?"
"I don't know,” Rocco said.
Dante stepped beside him. "Black SUVs and tactical gear."
"Definitely not local law enforcement,” Rocco said, looking around the cabin. "We can't stay."
Lark reached for Isabella's journal. "I've got it."
Dante picked up the key Rafael had given her. "I've got this." Rocco checked his pistol, and then he looked at her as she stood between them. Lark knew that fear still lingered in her eyes, but it no longer controlled her.
She squared her shoulders before either man could speak. "Don't." They both paused. "I know." A small smile touched her lips. "You're going to tell me to stay behind you both." Neither answered as she walked over and slipped her hands into theirs. One hand found Dante, and the other found Rocco. "We go together."
Rocco smiled despite the danger outside. "Together."
Dante squeezed her hand. "Always."
A loud voice boomed through a bullhorn outside the cabin. "Lark Santos!" The three of them exchanged a look as the voice continued. "We know you're in there."
Rocco recognized it immediately, and his blood ran cold. He looked at Dante. "It's Hale." The deputy director and the man Rafael had exposed, which meant Keller hadn't just come for the ledger, he had come to erase every witness who could destroy his empire. And Lark knew right then and there that the final battle had just begun.
The pounding on the cabin door never came. Instead, there was only silence. It was the kind of quiet that made the kind that made the hairs on the back of Lark's neck stand up. She crouched beneath the front window while Rocco peered through a narrow gap in the curtains. Dante covered the back door, his pistol raised, while listening for movement in the woods. They counted twelve men, and she was pretty sure that the three of them were trapped in the small cabin.
"What are they waiting for?" she whispered.
Rocco never took his eyes off the tree line. "They're professionals, and they're waiting for us to make the first mistake."
A crackle erupted from a loudspeaker outside. "Lark." Victor Hale's voice carried easily through the quiet mountains. "I know you're listening."
She looked toward the front door. "Don't answer," Dante said.
"I wasn't planning to,” Lark said.
"I'd hoped we'd meet under better circumstances," Hale continued. "Unfortunately, Adrian Keller is not a patient man."
Rocco snorted. "That's the understatement of the century."
"You have something that doesn't belong to you." Lark instinctively tightened her grip on Isabella's journal.
"It belonged to my mother," she muttered. "So, it belongs to me."
Hale's voice remained maddeningly calm. "Come outside, Miss Santos."
"No,” she breathed. The word left her mouth before she even realized she'd spoken.
Dante looked over his shoulder and smiled. "Good answer."
Gunfire never came as she expected it to. Instead, Hale spoke again. "I know about Sofia." Every muscle in Dante's body locked. Lark looked toward him and saw that his face had gone completely still. His mask was back in place. It was the same expression he'd worn inside the Santos mansion whenever Rafael entered the room.
"What did you say?" Dante asked.
"You heard me." Hale's voice held the confidence of a man who believed he'd already won. "She's alive." Rocco quietly cursed.
Dante stepped toward the front door. "Don't."
