Chapter 33
Finn
I didn’t stay.
Once the shouting dimmed, the threats were silenced, and the camp was under control, I turned away.
I didn’t look for Saoirse. Didn’t let myself.
Not again. Not when I could still feel the echo of her voice in my chest, still hear the way she’d whispered, You came, like it meant something I hadn’t earned.
The others were moving through the compound, securing weapons, zip-tying wrists, documenting everything for the people who would come later and pretend they hadn’t seen, even as they took the next steps through all the proper channels.
Alex was already on comms. Callum and Ewan had their zones.
The place was locked down tighter than a bunker.
A relatively clean op, considering. No casualties.
Saoirse was safe. So was Isla. That should have been enough.
But one man was still missing.
I didn’t ask permission or say a word before I picked up my pace and melted into the trees. Ajax stayed close, quiet as a shadow. We both knew the drill.
Victor Sandhurst had slipped the net. And if anyone was going to drag him back to face what he’d done, it was going to be me.
I wasn’t chasing a fugitive. I was hunting a man who’d dared to lay a hand on what was mine.
The guilt settled in my chest like coiled wire, hot and tight and impossible to shake.
It had been there since the moment they dragged her off and I’d had to let them.
Since I’d made the call not to charge in like a fool and get myself killed, and by extension, left her alone in that nightmare.
Even knowing it was the right decision didn’t help.
Not when I kept seeing her face in the dark.
Not when I remembered the tremor in her voice, the way her hands had shaken, the restraint she’d forced herself to hold together for Isla’s sake.
She was safe now. Breathing. Whole.
But I’d seen the marks on her wrists.
And I wasn’t going to let the man responsible walk away breathing easy.
I told myself this was about the mission. About tying off the last thread and making sure no one slipped through to start the whole damn machine up again. But that wasn’t the truth. Not all of it.
This had a name. Sandhurst. He was the rot. The money. The arrogance and entitlement that allowed this whole operation to exist. Men like him didn’t build cages. They paid others to do it and made sure their hands stayed clean.
He was the reason Saoirse and Isla were ever in danger.
He was the reason her voice had been hoarse when she said my name. The reason her hands had been shaking when I cut the zipties off her wrists. The reason there was still blood on my knuckles from how hard I’d gripped that blade.
I couldn’t go back and undo what had happened. Couldn’t give either of them back the hours they’d spent bound and terrified. But I could make damn sure the man responsible didn’t walk away.
And maybe that would be enough.
Ajax padded at my side, silent as shadow, his body alert.
He didn’t need commands. He could feel my focus sharpened to a point, every sense angled toward the chase.
We moved without speaking, slipping between trees and over root-choked ground as the light faded into that dense Scottish gray that passed for night.
The rain hadn’t started yet, but the air was wet with promise. Mist slicked the undergrowth and beaded on my skin, making everything smell like loam and iron. And still, the signs were there.
A boot print in a patch of softened earth, barely catching the edge of my flashlight’s low beam. A freshly snapped stalk of bracken. A half-erased tire rut leading into the tree line where no vehicle should’ve been.
Sandhurst knew these woods. I’d give him that. Knew enough to vanish before the lockdown hit. But he didn’t know how to evade someone like me. How to move through them without leaving signs I could read. Didn’t know what it meant to hunt while being hunted.
Didn’t know what it meant to be hunted by someone who'd found the woman he loved bloodied and trembling and still trying to protect someone else.
I could feel him out there—close enough to chase, not yet far enough to escape.
And I was going to catch him.
The hours bled together, each step folding into the next until there was nothing left but rhythm: breath, footfall, breath again.
The forest pressed close, branches snagging at my jacket, the sky above gone to ink.
I didn’t care. I wasn’t looking up. My focus was forward, tunneled down to the pulse of movement, the next clue to tell me the shape of the trail.
We hit the stream bed around what must’ve been the middle of the night, though it was hard to tell in the gloom.
The only reason I caught the shape tucked against the trees was Ajax’s sudden halt, the deep rumble building in his chest. My light swept sideways and found a quad bike half-concealed behind a fallen branch, its tires still wet.
When I laid a hand against the engine casing, warmth bled against my palm.
Close.
He’d gone to foot travel from here. Too narrow a route ahead, too risky with the engine noise. He was trying to disappear into the dark. But he hadn’t counted on someone who made his living in it.
I crouched, signaling Ajax forward. He slunk ahead, soundless as a shadow, and I crept after him.
I caught a flicker again. A flashlight beam, faint and erratic, swinging low through the trees. The figure holding it didn’t know how to move quietly. He was breathing hard. Footsteps too fast, too careless. Panic was starting to edge in.
Good. Let him run scared. Because I was done chasing.
He heard me too late. I stepped out from the trees as he angled his flashlight forward, and his whole body jolted, hands fumbling, boots slipping in the soft leaf litter. He caught himself on a low branch, but I was already moving. No words. No warning.
He threw up a hand like that would stop me. “You know who I am?”
I didn’t slow. “Dinna care.”
His mouth opened, probably gearing up for some bullshite threat, some name to drop, some lawyer he’d call. But none of it mattered. He was simply another coward trying to buy time with bluster, and I was fresh out of patience.
It was fast. I slammed into him with enough force to knock him off balance and sweep his legs from under him. He hit the ground with a grunt, and before he could roll or scramble, I was on him, knee to spine, zipties snapping into place behind his back.
He grunted again as I tightened them a little harder than necessary. Not enough to damage—just enough to make sure he felt it.
This was for her. For the fear I’d seen in her eyes. For the bruises and the abrasions. For every second she spent wondering if help was ever coming.
“Wait,” he wheezed.
“Shut up.” I yanked him upright by the collar and shoved him against a tree trunk.
He was panting now, jacket askew, mud on his knees. “You can’t do this.”
In the faint glow of the flashlight that had been knocked askew, I met his eyes, cold and level. “I just did.”
He cursed me with considerable vigor and creativity, but I didn’t hear most of it. I wasn’t listening anymore. There was no satisfaction or adrenaline high. Only the solid weight of an ending that had taken too long to come.
Justice wasn’t always clean. But tonight, it was handled.
I hauled him to his feet with a rough grip on the zipties and gave him a shove to get him moving. He stumbled, spat something about his shoes being custom made, and I didn’t bother to hide my contempt. Ajax circled us once, then fell in on my left, silent, alert, steady as ever.
We moved through the trees in near-darkness, no flashlight, no sound but the scrape of branches and the soft crunch of leaves underfoot. The clouds hung low and thick above the canopy, hiding any trace of moonlight, but I didn’t need it. I knew the way.
Sandhurst wouldn’t shut up.
“This is kidnapping. Do you have any idea who I am?”
“I’ll bury you. You and whoever you’re working for.”
“You don’t walk away from this kind of mistake.”
I didn’t answer. Not once.
Let him burn out his voice, trying to reclaim the illusion of control. Let him pretend his name still carried weight in the dark. I kept walking.
Each step felt heavier than it should’ve. Not from fatigue—though I was running on fumes—but from everything this bastard represented. Power without conscience. Wealth without consequence. He thought he could buy his way out of anything. That the rules didn’t apply to him.
But they did tonight.
Ajax gave a growl once, almost thoughtful, when Sandhurst tried to twist away. I tightened my grip on the tie and jerked him forward again.
“You’re going to regret this,” he muttered.
I met his gaze for half a second and smirked. “You already do.”
We kept walking, with nothing more than the rustle of branches, the drag of his boots, and the sound of justice catching up.