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Lights were still on at the clubhouse when I pulled in, gravel crunching under my tires. Riley was sitting on the porch steps, wrapped in one of my flannel shirts. Her bare legs were pulled up to her chest, and her eyes locked on mine the second I stepped off the bike.
She ran to me without a word.
I caught her, wrapped my arms around her waist, lifted her clean off the ground.
“I was so scared,” she whispered, pressing her face to my throat.
“I told you I’d come back.”
“You smell like smoke.”
“Because I lit the match.”
She kissed me like she couldn’t breathe without it, and I knew I was hers, and she was mine.
Two days later,the war behind us, we started planning Caleb’s fall.
Riley pulled out the hand-drawn map and laid it across the bar in the chapel. “There,” she said, pointing to a bend in the woods. “That’s where the hunting cabin is. He and his father used to go out there all the time. Meetings. Bribes. Dirty money. You name it.”
Trigger leaned in. “How sure are you?”
“Sure enough to bet my life.”
I looked at her. “You already have.”
We split into teams. Nash and Pitbull handled the wiretap gear. Diesel prepped the drone. Riley drew a layout frommemory—cellar access, solar panels, a hidden generator, even an old canoe dock they could use as a back exit. It was brilliant.
“Tomorrow at dusk,” I said. “We ghost in, plant the bugs, ghost out.”
Simple.
Except nothing with Caleb was ever simple.
We moved under twilight.The forest was wet and dense, sounds muffled by moss and mist. Riley led us through like she’d walked the path yesterday. When we reached the cabin, we split.
The inside was worse than expected. Binders on shelves. Laptops. Cash. Labeled fake nonprofits like “Green Schools of Tomorrow” and “Veterans for Vision.” All fronts.
“We’ve got them,” I whispered.
Nash planted the mics. Diesel left a camera. We stayed twenty-three minutes.
And that’s when everything went to hell.
We reached the trucks, but Nash’s tail car was gone. The keys were still in the dirt.
Then Riley screamed.
I spun just in time to see her being dragged backward by a man in tactical gear. Another shoved a gun in her ribs. Trigger raised his Glock, but Riley screamed, “No! Don’t shoot!”
Three men. One van. Caleb’s men.
“Back off or she’s gone!” one barked.
I froze. My pulse pounded so hard I couldn’t hear.
“Logan!” she cried.
I took a step forward. They shoved her into the van.