Page 101 of Ruthless Enforcer

She makes a circle around the drawing with her finger. “You left all that negative space around his hand. It makes me look at what he isn’t holding.”

I look down at the open palm. Is that what I’ve been missing? Not what we hold—what we choose not to.

Suddenly, I understand something about my series I haven't been able to see before. What We Hold isn't only about the things we cling to. It's about knowing when to open our hands. When holding someone becomes keeping them, and when protecting someone becomes choosing for them.

And maybe loving someone means trusting them enough to do neither.

70

GABRIEL

I’m focused on one thing: destroying Cole Turner.

Jake sits behind the wheel, his broad hands resting at four and eight o’clock, guiding the three-ton truck through the ruts without touching the brakes. Beside me, my customized tactical carbine sits muzzle-down between my knees, the selector switch resting on safe, thirty rounds of match-grade ammunition stacked in the magazine.

Behind us, Luke and Harper follow in the second truck, maintaining fifty yards of spacing in the swirling dust.

The comms earpiece in my right ear clicks twice. Low static.

Then Mason’s voice, raspy and dry as dead pine needles. “Warden.”

Jake taps the push-to-talk button on my tactical vest. “Go, Ace.”

“I’m established on the north ridge above the dry cistern. Distance three hundred and eighty yards. Wind west-northwest at four knots. Temperature twenty-six degrees. I have optical clarity on the west flank and the rear mudroom.”

“Status on target?”

“Still on the ground,” Mason reports, his voice steady as a surveyor’s laser. “The 4Runner is backed up to the lean-to. Rear hatch is up. The tech runner just racked the second Pelican case into the cargo bed. Cole is inside in the kitchen. I can see the outline of that wool coat through the window. He’s packing paper into a metal lockbox.”

“Is the vehicle running?”

“Negative. Engine cold. Trailer hitch is locked down. They’re running a final sweep of the ground floor.”

“Understood.” Jake turns off the highway onto the dirt road that leads up to Turner’s main house. “Two minutes to dismount. Riot, you copy?”

“Loud and clear.” Luke’s voice cuts in from the second truck, easy and relaxed, the way he always sounds right before the lead starts flying. “Harper and I are breaking off at the culvert. We’ll drop into the irrigation ditch and seal the driveway. If that 4Runner tries to roll, Harper’s got thirty-ought-six armor-piercing loaded for the engine block, and I’ve got a warm greeting for the driver’s side window.”

“Contain only,” Jake reminds him.

“Understood.”

Jake eases the truck into the shadow of a rusted combine chassis half-buried in chokecherry bushes three hundred yards west of the main house. The vehicle settles into the snow-crusted mud with barely a sigh of suspension.

The silence that rushes into the cab is immediate and sharp.

I check the chamber on my rifle. Round loaded. Ejection port cover snapped shut. I run my left thumb over the heavy platinum band on my fourth finger, feeling the smooth, cold metal bite against my skin.

“Ready?” Jake asks quietly, racking the slide on his short-barreled shotgun.

I open the door. “Let’s put this fucker down.”

We hit the dirt together.

The Montana air hits my lungs like broken glass. We clear the brush line, moving in low, staggered bounds along the drainage swale that borders the west pasture. Overhead, the late afternoon sky has turned the color of bruised iron, heavy with the promise of more snow.

To our right, Luke’s truck peels off down the tree line, vanishing into the ravine.

We jog up the ridge, fast but silent. I’m not used to this kind of accompaniment. My tactics lean less toward subtlety and more toward show of force. It only helps me to have word of mouth about what a scary motherfucker I am. But it’s interesting seeing how the other half works.