Chapter Six
Forge had been awake for two hours, positioned at the east window with his rifle across his knees. The motion sensor he'd buried at the property's edge had tripped eighteen minutes ago—could have been a deer, could have been wind.
It wasn't.
"Contact," he said quietly into his earpiece. "Multiple signatures approaching from the north. Estimate six, maybe seven."
"Copy." Ghost's voice, calm as death. "Trooper and I are positioned on the ridge. Static's covering the ravine."
"They think they're hunting."
"They're about to learn different."
Forge moved to the back room where Caroline sat with Ranger, a shotgun across her lap. She hadn't slept either—he'd heard her pacing until midnight, then the deliberate stillness of someone forcing themselves to rest.
"It's happening," he said.
She stood immediately. No panic, no hesitation. Just that steady competence he'd come to expect.
"How many?"
"Six or seven. Stroud's leading them—I can see his truck through the thermals."
"What do you need me to do?"
"Stay here. Shotgun covers the back door—anyone comes through who isn't me or wearing a Black Ops cut, you put them down." He gripped her shoulder, brief and fierce. "Don't hesitate. Don't warn them. Just shoot."
"I've put down animals in pain my whole life." Her voice was steady. "I know how to pull a trigger."
God, this woman.
He wanted to kiss her. Wanted to pull her close and tell her everything he hadn't found words for over the past five days—how she'd become the center of every defensive calculation, how her safety had rewritten his entire operational framework.
Instead, he squeezed her shoulder once more and headed back to his position.
The safehouse had become a killing ground over the past three days. Every approach channeled attackers into predetermined fields of fire. Every window offered overlapping coverage. The reinforced doors would slow any breach long enough for aimed shots.
Stroud thought he was hunting a scared veterinarian and one biker bodyguard.
He was walking into an ambush.
Headlights died on the access road. Doors opened and closed—soft, trying for stealth. Forge counted shadows moving through the pre-dawn darkness.
Seven men. Four approaching the front, three circling toward the back.
"Three heading for the back door," he murmured. "Caroline's position."
"I've got eyes on them," Static responded. "They won't make it to the door."
The front team moved closer. Forge could see Stroud now—that mean face lit by ambient moonlight, knife glinting at his hip. The same knife that had cut Caroline's arm.
Twenty yards.
Fifteen.
"I want Stroud," Forge said. "Everyone else is fair game."
"Copy."
Ten yards.
Stroud raised a fist—halt signal. His men spread out, preparing to breach. Standard rural enforcement tactics: overwhelming force, multiple entry points, assume the target is already beaten.
They didn't know about the motion sensors. Didn't know about the brothers on the ridge. Didn't know about the kill zones or the reinforced doors or the seventeen years of combat experience waiting behind the front window.
Five yards.
Stroud pointed at the door. Two of his men moved forward with a battering ram.
Now.
Forge squeezed the trigger.
The rifle cracked, and the first breacher's head snapped back—dead before he hit the porch. The second spun, trying to locate the shooter, and Ghost's round took him through the chest.
Chaos erupted.
The remaining attackers scattered, firing wild at the windows, at the shadows, at anything that moved. Muzzle flashes lit the darkness in staccato bursts. Someone was screaming—one of Stroud's men, hit in the crossfire.
But Stroud himself had dropped flat the moment the shooting started. Using his own men as cover. Crawling toward the door while the firefight raged.
Smart. Ruthless.
Not smart enough.
Forge left the window and moved to the front entrance. The reinforced door shuddered as Stroud hit it from outside—once, twice, putting his full weight behind each impact.
The lock held.
"You're dead!" Stroud's voice, raw with rage. "You hear me? Dead! Pittman's going to hang your bitch from the barn rafters!"
Forge didn't respond. He positioned himself three feet from the door, rifle raised, and waited.
Another impact. The frame groaned.
"I put my knife in her once—I'll do it again! Cut her slow this time, make sure she feels every—"
The door burst open.
Stroud came through first, moving fast, knife in one hand and pistol in the other. His eyes found Forge in the darkness—recognition, then shock, then something like fear.
Too late.
Forge put two rounds center mass.
The impacts drove Stroud backward, his pistol discharging into the ceiling. He hit the door frame, stayed upright for one impossible moment, then slid down to the porch.
Still breathing. Barely.
Forge crossed to him in two steps, kicked the knife away, and looked down at the man who'd terrorized Caroline. Who'd shot her horse. Who'd cut her arm and called it a warning.
"Pittman's not going to hang anyone," Forge said quietly. "Pittman's next."
Stroud coughed blood. Tried to speak. Managed only a wet gurgle.
Forge raised the rifle.
"This is for her horse."
One more round. Clean. Final.
Stroud stopped breathing.
Outside, the gunfire was fading. Ghost's voice crackled through the earpiece: "Front clear. Three down."
"Back's clear," Static reported. "Three more. Tried to breach, didn't get close."
Six confirmed kills. Stroud made seven.
The entire assault, start to finish, had taken less than four minutes.
"Caroline." Forge turned from Stroud's body and moved toward the back room. "It's me. Don't shoot."
He pushed through the door and found her exactly where he'd left her—shotgun raised, finger alongside the trigger, Ranger pressed against her legs. Her face was pale in the darkness, but her hands were steady.
"Stroud?" she asked.
"Dead."
Something passed across her expression. Relief, maybe. Or the complicated grief of knowing violence had been done in her name.
"The others?"
"All of them. Seven total."
She lowered the shotgun slowly, like she wasn't sure she was allowed to stop aiming. Ranger whined and pressed closer.
"You're not hurt?" Her voice wavered for the first time. "You're okay?"
"I'm fine." He crossed to her, rifle slung, and took her face in his hands. "I'm fine. They didn't get close."
"I heard—there was so much shooting—"
"It's over." He pressed his forehead to hers, breathing her in. "He's gone. Stroud's gone. He's never going to touch you again."
Her hands found his chest, fisting in his shirt. She was shaking now, the adrenaline that had kept her steady finally releasing.
"I was ready," she said against his shoulder. "If they'd come through the back, I was ready. I would have—"
"I know." He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her close. "I know you would have."
They stood like that for a long moment, wrapped in each other while the aftermath of violence settled around them. Forge could hear his brothers moving through the property—checking bodies, securing weapons, erasing evidence.
Standard post-engagement protocols. Muscle memory.
But holding Caroline felt like something new.
"We need to move." He pulled back reluctantly. "The compound's secure, and Pittman will know something went wrong when Stroud doesn't report in. We need to be behind walls before he figures out what happened."
"My things—"
"We'll send someone for them." His thumb brushed her cheekbone. "Right now, you're my priority. The only priority."
She nodded slowly. The trembling was fading, that stubborn strength reasserting itself.
"Forge." Ghost appeared in the doorway, expression unreadable. "Site's clean. No survivors, no witnesses. Local law enforcement won't respond to this location—it's far enough out that gunfire could be hunters."
"Bodies?"
"Being handled. Cargo's en route with the cleanup team."
Forge nodded. "We're moving to the compound. Caroline rides with me."
Ghost's eyes flicked to the woman still pressed against Forge's side. Something that might have been approval crossed his face.
"Copy that. Trooper's bringing the vehicles around."
He disappeared, leaving them alone again.
Caroline looked up at Forge, her face smudged with fear and gunpowder residue from the shots she'd never had to take.
"Seven men," she said quietly. "You killed seven men. For me."
"I'd kill seventy." No hesitation. No doubt. "I'd kill seven hundred if that's what it took to keep you safe."
"That's insane."
"Probably."
"I should be horrified."
"Are you?"
She was quiet for a long moment. Then her hand came up to his face, tracing the line of his jaw.
"No," she said. "I'm not."
He kissed her then—hard and desperate, tasting blood and gunpowder and the adrenaline still singing through both their systems. She kissed him back with equal ferocity, her fingers digging into his shoulders.
When they finally broke apart, both breathing hard, her eyes were clear.
"Take me to the compound," she said. "And then let's end this."
Forge smiled—a rare thing, sharp as a blade.
"Yes, ma'am."
They walked out of the safehouse together, stepping over Stroud's body without looking down. The Carolina pines were lightening with the first hints of dawn, birds starting to sing like nothing had happened.
Seven men had come to kill them.
Seven men were dead instead.
And somewhere in the sandhills, Lyle Pittman was about to learn what it meant to wage war against Black Ops Brotherhood.