Chapter Ten
They hit at dawn on three fronts.
Before he could respond, a second call: Levee. "Northern approach compromised. Crew coming through the back roads toward the Teague property."
Then a third: Hollow. "Movement on the compound perimeter. Six, maybe eight men. They're probing the fence line."
Three simultaneous attacks. Coordinated. Professional.
Lonnie Cates.
Boyd Maynard's distribution coordinator was making his play—applying the same logistics skills that moved meth through three counties to a military-style disruption designed to stretch the Destroyers across multiple positions.
The meth boss himself was nowhere to be seen. Hiding in one of his cook sites, probably, letting his enforcer handle the war while he protected his paranoid ass.
Coward, Backwood thought. But smart. Let your men die first.
"All units," he said into his radio. "Compound is priority. Converge and hold. I'll handle the Teague property."
"Backwood—" Cottonmouth's voice cut through. "You sure?"
"The northern crew is Cates. I can read him in the ground." Backwood was already moving, sliding through the brush toward his bike. "Hold the compound. Protect the horses. I'll bring you his head."
He didn't wait for a response.
The ride north took fifteen minutes on back roads he'd memorized in his first week of reconnaissance. The Delta spread flat and endless around him, cotton fields shimmering in the early light, and somewhere ahead, a crew of meth runners was moving toward the property where Willa had built her life.
They wouldn't reach it.
He cut his engine a mile out and went the rest of the way on foot, moving through the tree line with the silence the bayou had beaten into him. The crew's vehicles were parked at a crossroads—two trucks, maybe eight men—and they were already moving through the brush toward Willa's stable.
Backwood circled wide and picked up Cates's trail.
The distribution coordinator wasn't with the assault team. He was hanging back at a secondary position—an old barn on adjacent property, far enough from the action to run if things went sideways. Classic logistics thinking. Coordinate from safety, let the muscle do the bleeding.
Found you.
Backwood moved through the woods like water, following sign that Cates didn't know he was leaving. Bent grass. Disturbed soil. The pattern of a man who thought he was invisible because he'd spent years hiding runners in rural country.
He'd never met a real tracker.
The barn materialized from the morning mist—weathered boards, sagging roof, exactly the kind of structure that looked abandoned but wasn't. Cates was inside, radio pressed to his ear, coordinating the assault on Willa's property with the precision of a supply-chain manager directing a delivery.
"Hit the hay barn first," Cates was saying. "Then the stable. Make sure the horses—"
He never finished the sentence.
Backwood came through the barn door without sound, crossing the space in three strides. Cates spun, reaching for the pistol at his hip, but a bayou tracker who'd been hunting since childhood didn't give warning.
The knife opened Cates's throat before his fingers touched the gun.
Blood sprayed across the barn's dusty floor. Cates clutched at his neck, eyes wide with shock, the radio clattering from his hand as he crumpled.
Backwood crouched beside him, watching the light fade from the distribution coordinator's eyes.
"You spent years hiding runners in rural country," he said quietly. "Moving product through back roads, thinking nobody could track you. But a man who hides in the woods is only hidden from people who can't read them."
Cates's mouth moved. No sound came out.
"The bayou teaches that sign follows sign.
That a tracker who knows what to look for can follow anything.
You left a trail from the moment you crossed into Delta territory.
" Backwood stood, wiping his blade on his jeans.
"Boyd Maynard sent you to burn a woman's stable.
He should have sent someone who knew how to disappear. "
He picked up the fallen radio and keyed it to the assault team's frequency.
"Your coordinator is dead," he said. "Turn around now, or join him."
Static. Then panicked voices—men realizing their command structure had just collapsed.
"Fall back! Fall back!"
Backwood emerged from the barn into the morning light, listening to the sound of trucks starting, engines roaring away toward the main roads.
The assault on Willa's property was over before it started—eight men who'd come to burn her hay barn running like rabbits because their logistics man had underestimated a tracker.
He radioed the compound. "Cates is down. Northern threat neutralized. What's your status?"
"Highway 61 hit was a diversion," Crossroad reported. "They pulled back when they realized we weren't taking the bait. Compound perimeter is secure—Hollow and Levee ran off the probing crew without casualties."
"Willa?"
"She's in the paddock with a rifle." Cottonmouth's voice held something that might have been respect. "Hasn't moved since the alarm went up. Your woman doesn't rattle easy."
Your woman.
The words hit Backwood somewhere deep. Not just possessive—true. She was his. Had been since the night in the hay storage, maybe since the first moment she looked at him on her porch and didn't look away.
"Coming in," he said. "Twenty minutes."
The ride back felt longer than the ride out.
Every mile of Delta blacktop gave him time to think—about Cates bleeding out on a barn floor, about Boyd Maynard hiding in his cook sites while his operation crumbled, about the woman who was standing in a paddock right now with a rifle because she refused to be prey.
This wasn't over. Maynard still had Perry Daigle for intimidation work, still had crews scattered across three counties, still had the paranoid determination of a man who'd survived two crew wars.
But his distribution network was dead. His site security was dead.
The operation that had been running for years was hemorrhaging men and money.
The compound gates opened as Backwood approached.
He parked and walked straight to the paddock, not stopping for the brothers who called his name or the old ladies who watched from the clubhouse porch. Everything else could wait.
Willa was exactly where Cottonmouth said she'd be—standing at the fence line, rifle across her chest, eyes scanning the perimeter with that steady military focus he'd seen in soldiers who'd survived the worst and come out harder.
She turned when she heard him approach.
"You're alive," she said.
"I'm alive."
"Cates?"
"Dead." He stopped at the fence, close enough to touch but not quite touching. "He won't be burning any more hay barns."
Willa nodded slowly. Processing. The rifle lowered, finally, and he saw the tension she'd been holding start to release.
"The horses are fine," she said. "Spooked when the alarm went up, but they settled. I kept them in the paddock, didn't try to run."
"You did right."
"I know." Her chin lifted—that stubborn edge he'd come to love. "I'm not cargo, Backwood. I can hold a position."
"I know you can." He reached across the fence, cupped her jaw in his hand. "That's why I left you here. Because I trusted you to hold while I hunted."
Something flickered in her eyes. Not surprise—she was past being surprised by him. Something warmer. Something that looked like the beginning of forever.
"Boyd Maynard," she said. "He wasn't there?"
"Hiding. He sent Cates to do the bleeding." Backwood's jaw tightened. "But he's running out of men to send. Frazier's dead. Cates is dead. He's got Daigle and whatever crew he can scrape together, and he's watching his empire fall apart."
"So what happens now?"
"Now we wait." He pulled her closer, pressing his forehead to hers through the fence rails. "He's paranoid. Reactive. He'll do something stupid—try to hit us directly, make a move that exposes him. And when he does, we end this."
"Together?"
"Together."
She kissed him—brief, fierce, a promise and a claim all at once. When she pulled back, her eyes were hard with something that wasn't fear.
"I want to be there," she said. "When he dies. I want to watch."
Backwood studied her face. The woman who'd been running a boarding stable two weeks ago, whose biggest problem had been weekend lessons and rescue-horse rehabilitation. That woman was gone now, burned away by poison and fire and violence, replaced by something harder.
Something that matched his own darkness.
"You'll be there," he said. "I promise."
The compound returned to normal as the morning wore on. Brothers debriefed. Casualties were assessed—minor injuries only, nothing that would keep anyone down. The coordinated assault that was supposed to cripple the Destroyers had accomplished nothing except getting Lonnie Cates killed in a barn.
Backwood stood at the paddock fence, watching Willa work the horses through their afternoon routine. The same hands that had held a rifle all morning were gentle now, running along Penny's neck, adjusting a halter strap.
Two sides of the same woman.
Both of them his.
Cottonmouth appeared beside him, scarred arms crossed, watching the paddock with those river-mud eyes.
"Cates was good," the President said. "Kept Boyd's operation running for years. Hard to replace."
"He was sloppy. Left sign everywhere he went."
"He was sloppy because he didn't know you were hunting him.
" Cottonmouth turned, studying Backwood with an expression that was part assessment, part something else.
"Boyd Maynard lost his security chief, his distribution coordinator, and most of his armed crews.
He's got Daigle and desperation left. What's your read? "
"He'll escalate. He's paranoid—he treats every threat as requiring immediate elimination. That means he'll stop sending men and start coming himself."
"When?"
Backwood thought about it. Thought about a meth cook who'd survived two crew wars through paranoia and ruthlessness, watching everything he'd built crumble around him.
"Soon," he said. "A week, maybe less. He won't be able to stand the waiting."
Cottonmouth nodded slowly. "Then we wait. And when he moves—"
"I'll be ready."
The President walked back toward the clubhouse, leaving Backwood alone at the fence. The afternoon sun beat down on the paddock, turning Willa's hair to gold as she worked.
Lonnie Cates had spent years running distribution through rural country, thinking nobody could track him.
He'd learned different in a barn this morning.
A bayou tracker followed sign the way water followed gravity—patient, inevitable, impossible to escape.
And a man who hid in the woods was only hidden from people who couldn't read them.
Boyd Maynard was running out of places to hide.
Soon, very soon, the ground would teach him the same lesson.