Chapter 30
Makari
Icome out of the woods just after dawn, the light pale and unforgiving. Mud cakes my boots and climbs my legs in stiff, drying layers. Blood darkens my sleeves where it isn’t my own, where it soaked through fabric and skin and memory alike.
Every muscle in my body hums with exhaustion, but my spine stays straight as I cross the last stretch of ground between the trees and the waiting vehicles. This is not the posture of a man who has won something. It’s the posture of a man who has survived it.
Behind me, my men emerge in silence.
They don’t speak. They don’t look at one another.
They move with the heavy coordination of soldiers who know exactly what they’ve done and what it costs.
Two fewer sets of footsteps break from the tree line than went in last night, and that absence presses against my back like a hand.
Two more families to draw into my protection, to provide for and pay penance to.
We found the den in the hours before sunrise.
The rival syndicate had carved themselves into the land with a confidence that bordered on arrogance, hollowing out a ravine where smoke couldn’t be seen from above.
They had supplies, weapons, radios, and the kind of discipline that comes from working under someone ruthless enough to demand perfection.
It was impressive. But they underestimated me—and my men.
They expected time. They expected to bleed us slowly.
They didn’t expect The Bear.
The fight was ugly. Close. Personal. There was no room for speeches or hesitation. I remember the crack of bone under my fist, the way the forest swallowed gunfire and screams alike. I remember thinking that the earth would remember this long after we were gone.
We lost two men. Both of them earned their deaths standing.
I stop near the trucks as Jesse approaches, his face drawn, eyes rimmed red from smoke and fatigue. There’s blood smeared across his jawline where he didn’t bother to clean himself yet.
“It’s done,” he says quietly. “No survivors.”
I nod once. The confirmation settles something grim and final inside my chest.
“Get cleanup teams in,” I tell him. “Burn anything we can’t move. Strip everything else. I want the supply line operational again by tonight.”
“And Canada?”
“Tell them the mess is handled,” I say. “We’re back on schedule.”
He studies me for a moment, then nods and turns away, already barking orders into his radio.
The men disperse with mechanical efficiency. There’s no celebration, no relief. Just the steady forward motion of people who understand that stopping means feeling too much.
I climb into the waiting vehicle and let my head rest briefly against the seat. The engine hums beneath me, steady and reassuring, but the sense of unease that’s been riding my spine since before dawn doesn’t ease.
Something is wrong.
The compound rises out of the trees as we approach, stone and steel catching the early light. It looks exactly as it should—untouched, fortified, secure.
The moment I step inside, I know it isn’t.
The air is too still. I take three steps before a guard intercepts me, his face pale beneath the grime.
“Shef.”
I don’t waste breath. “Where is she?”
He hesitates just long enough to tell me everything. “She’s gone.”
“What do you mean, gone?”
“Taken,” he corrects. “Sometime during the night. Two of ours are dead. The utility vehicle is missing.”
I don’t remember turning. I don’t remember moving. I only know that suddenly I’m walking again, faster now, my mind stripping away everything but direction.
Eric.
There is no doubt. No question. There is no alternative explanation worth entertaining.
The man has been unraveling for weeks, spiraling deeper into desperation and debt, clinging to the idea that Roxanne might save him.
Even though I cut off the head of the snake, the rotten heart is still trying to beat.
I will make him understand how wrong he was.
The deputy lives on the other side of Bar Harbor in a condominium a little too above his paygrade. It helps, my connections in town; I’ve known where he lived before I ever knew he was a threat. Or rather, before he thought he was a threat.
What he is now, is a dead man.
We tear through the outer grounds, vehicles scattering gravel as we move, toward the main road. The morning sun climbs higher, lighting the land in a way that feels obscene—golden and peaceful and utterly unaware. She’s gone.
We don’t make it more than a mile before someone radios in.
“Boss, we’ve got something.”
I step out onto a dirt road where the stolen utility vehicle sits abandoned, its front end crushed inward like a broken jaw. Blood streaks the ground in dark arcs. Fur clings to twisted metal.
A black bear lies several yards away, massive and still. There’s a long, raw rut in its body that sends a shudder through me. It’s too similar to the scene I left back in the woods, but this time, the life taken was innocent.
I stare at it longer than necessary.
They hit it at speed. Killed it. Didn’t even stop.
The rage that floods me is layered and ferocious.
Rage that Eric dared to take her. Rage that my home was breached.
Rage that this land—my land—was violated again.
Rage for the bear, a creature that had nothing to do with any of this, crushed beneath the cowardice of men who don’t understand consequence.
“Into the woods,” Jesse says quietly. “He dragged her.” He’s done his job, found tracks in the earth.
I’m already moving.
The forest takes us back without resistance, but it does not forgive.
Eric’s trail is sloppy, frantic. He doesn’t know how to move through the wilderness.
He stumbles, crashes through brush, leaves evidence everywhere.
Broken branches. Scuffed soil. The uneven drag marks of someone being pulled against her will.
Roxanne’s footprints are there too, stumbling and smudged.
The thought sharpens everything in me. The image of her fighting to keep her footing, refusing to be broken even while terrified, fuels something cold and precise.
We hear them before we see them.
Eric’s voice carries through the trees, cracked and hysterical. Roxanne’s breathing cuts through it, uneven but present. Alive.
We spread out instinctively, weapons raised, bodies low and silent.
The clearing opens suddenly. Eric stands near the center, sweat-soaked, eyes blown wide, a gun pressed against Roxanne’s head.
She’s filthy, shaking, dirt streaking her clothes and her face, but she’s standing.
Her spine is straight. Her eyes are fierce.
“Don’t come any closer!” he shouts. “I’ll do it!”
I step forward anyway.
His hands shake harder. “I swear I will!”
“I know,” I say calmly. “You’ve always been honest when you’re afraid.”
“Shut up,” he snarls. “You did this to me. All of this. They were going to kill me. Do you understand that? I owed too much. I couldn’t get out.”
“And so you took her?” I shout. “You thought she’d save you?”
His face collapses into something pathetic and raw. “I didn’t want to hurt her. I just needed leverage. I needed time.”
Roxanne looks at me then. The sight of her like this nearly rips me apart. I keep my face still, my body loose, my voice steady.
“Eric,” I say quietly, “this ends now.”
He laughs, broken and high. “No. No, it doesn’t. You don’t get to decide that.” His voice drops, begging now. “I can’t go back empty-handed. They’ll kill me.”
“Yes.” I agree. “They would have. If I hadn’t intervened.”
His grip tightens. Roxanne flinches.
I don’t hesitate.
I close the distance in a heartbeat.
The gun fires, but it’s wild, the shot tearing harmlessly into the trees as I slam into him. My hands close around his throat, driving him backward into the dirt. He claws at my arms, frantic and weak, his strength gone long before his arrogance catches up with him.
I don’t think. I don’t see.
I feel.
I feel his pulse under my thumbs. I feel the moment it falters. I feel the exact second his resistance ends and his weight goes slack beneath me. But even then, I don’t let go. Not until I’m sure.
Choking someone to death takes a long time. Roxanne is making a sound behind me, broken and unbelieving. My grip tightens. The hyoid bone cracks. When I let up just enough, there’s no rise; no pulse.
Eric collapses into the dirt, empty-eyed and silent.
The forest exhales.
Roxanne stumbles toward me with a sound that breaks something open inside my chest. I catch her automatically, wrapping her in my arms, pulling her against me with crushing force. She’s shaking violently, sobbing into my shoulder, her fingers knotting into my shirt as if she’s afraid to let go.
“I’ve got you,” I murmur into her hair. “You’re safe. I’ve got you.”
She clings to me, her body fitting against mine with devastating familiarity. I cradle the back of her head, my other arm locked around her spine, anchoring her with my weight and presence.
Around us, my men secure the clearing. No one speaks. No one looks too long. The sound of a shovel striking the ground breaks the silence.
I press my forehead to hers, breathing her in, grounding both of us.
“We’re going home,” I say.
I will never let her be taken again.