Chapter 15
fifteen
The truck hit a pothole and Creed’s ribs slammed against the door frame. He bit down on a groan before it could leave his throat. The stab wound in his flank pulsed hot under the bandage.
At least he’d gotten the bastard back, stab for stab. Only fair. Even though he’d done it while Evander was passed out.
Some would’ve called that cruel. He called it mercy. He could’ve easily killed the man, after all.
His right knee sat propped on the backseat, swollen to twice its size and wrapped in an ace bandage. The brace kept it from bending. Didn’t do shit for the pain.
“Left,” he said. “The road curves left ahead.”
The driver—one of Mal’s newer recruits, a kid with a shaved head and a tattoo of knuckle dusters across his throat—eased the wheel over.
The headlights swept across wet pine trunks and disappeared into the dark.
The fire road hadn’t seen maintenance in years.
Washouts. Fallen rock. Places where the shoulder had collapsed into the creek below.
Creed had walked this road once, two years ago, before Walker Nash cut him loose from Valor Ridge. He remembered the grade. The switchbacks. The way the trees opened at the top to a view of the whole damn valley.
He hadn’t remembered it hurting this much to get there.
Hobbs sat in the passenger seat. Quiet. He’d been quiet since they left Solace.
Hobbs’s stillness was never peace. It was inventory.
The man cataloged exits, angles, weaknesses, the same way Creed himself had been taught to do it in another life, under different flags. Right now, Hobbs was cataloging Creed.
“You’re sure about this ridge.” Not a question. A statement waiting for confirmation.
“I followed their sign from the creek to the shelter.” Half-truth.
He’d followed Evander’s sign after the fight, backtracking through the rain to the rock shelter where he’d treated his own wounds and made the call.
The cabin location he’d pieced together from terrain, from two years of watching Valor Ridge from a distance and knowing the kind of ground a man like Cole would choose. “The cabin is at the end of this road.”
He was sure of it.
Hobbs shifted to glance back, and his leather cut creaked. “And Rainey is there.”
“She’s there.”
“With Rux’s killer.”
Creed’s jaw tightened. “Yeah.”
The truck crawled over another washout. The suspension bottomed out with a metallic groan. Creed’s knee jolted against the dash and white fire raced up his thigh. He pressed his palm flat against the bandage on his flank and breathed through his nose until the spots cleared from his vision.
Hobbs watched him do it. Said nothing.
The road narrowed. Trees closed in on both sides, branches scraping the truck’s flanks.
Creed directed the kid around a fallen log, then up a grade so steep the engine labored in low gear.
The headlights swept upward, caught the underbelly of low clouds, and for a second the whole mountainside lit up silver.
There. A single point of light, yellow and warm against the black.
“Smoke,” the kid said. “Chimney’s going.”
Hobbs leaned forward. “How far?”
“Half mile on foot from where this road ends.” Creed pointed. “The trail cuts north from the last switchback. Steep. Washed out in places.”
“We’ll take it slow.” Hobbs settled back. “You up for that, Calder? With the leg?”
“I’ll manage.”
He would. He’d managed worse. The Rangers had taught him to move on broken bones, to function through pain that would drop most men.
What the Rangers hadn’t taught him was how to sit in a truck beside the man sent to kill the woman he was supposedly hunting and feel his stomach turn over at the thought of what would happen when they reached that cabin.
He’d had Evander Cole unconscious on the ground. He could have finished it clean.
Instead, he’d cleaned his own wound, bandaged his knee, searched Cole’s pack for anything useful, and called Mal with coordinates that placed the hunt on the ridge, not at the cabin door. Then he’d stabbed Cole, wiped the blade clean, and walked out into the rain.
Why?
The question had dogged him for the six hours since. He’d replayed the fight in his head a dozen times, looking for the moment his hand had hesitated. There hadn’t been one. He’d gone for Cole’s throat. Cole had gone for his flank. No quarter given.
But when it came time, he didn’t finish it.
Creed rubbed his thumb along the edge of the bandage on his flank. The wound throbbed in time with the truck’s suspension. Cole had known exactly how deep to go. Three inches, angled to miss anything vital. A warning shot delivered with a blade instead of a bullet.
A man who put a knife through Rux Granger’s throat had shown restraint with Creed Calder.
It didn’t track. Nothing about this job had tracked from the start.
“The girl,” Hobbs said. “Mal wants them her alive. He plans to deal with her betrayal himself.” His voice carried that soft, measured quality that made the hair on Creed’s arms stand up.
“But Rux’s death requires blood. Evander Cole doesn’t walk away from this mountain.
You understand that, right?” He directed the question at Creed.
“I understand.”
“Do you? Because you called this in instead of finishing it yourself. Man like you, trained the way you were trained. I find that interesting.”
Creed kept his eyes on the road from between the seats. “Terrain’s against a solo approach. My knee was shot, and I was bleeding. Cole had the high ground and a rifle. Calling it in was the smart play.”
“Was it.” Not a question. “Mal was surprised you called at all. Figured you for the type to handle your own problems. That’s what he pays you for. Handling problems without making them his.”
The truck hit another rut. Creed’s teeth clicked together. The cabin light swung in his vision, steady as a beacon.
“I handle problems,” he said. “I don’t suicide-run them.”
A beat of silence. Then, soft: “Fair enough.”
The road ended fifty yards ahead. The kid pulled the truck into a turnout where the shoulder widened enough to park without blocking what remained of the roadway. Killed the engine. The sudden quiet pressed in, broken only by the tick of cooling metal and the distant rush of the creek below.
Hobbs opened his door. Cold rain-soaked air flooded the cab. Creed reached for the handle and paused, his hand on the vinyl, and took one last look at that distant point of light.
Rainey Beckett was in that cabin. With Evander Cole. A woman who’d witnessed a murder, and the man who’d killed to keep her breathing.
And Creed was about to deliver Hobbs to their doorstep.
He was not going to feel fucking guilty for that. He was done feeling guilty about shit that wasn’t his fault.
He shoved open his door.