2. Sixty Seconds
TWO
Sixty Seconds
ADDY
The sound of a skull shattering isn't something you ever forget. It isn't a clean sound. It's a wet, devastating crack that echoes off the timber of my front porch, louder than the gunshot following it a second later.
One moment, the man in the canvas jacket is raising a suppressed pistol, his eyes locked on my chest. The next, a fine red mist paints the air behind him, and he drops like a marionette with its strings cut.
Blood pools instantly on the gravel driveway, a dark stain against the gray stone.
I don't scream. I can't pull oxygen into my lungs fast enough to make a sound.
I stumble backward, my boots scraping against the threshold. My fingers wrap so tightly around the grip of my Glock 19 that my knuckles ache, but the threat is already dead.
The sniper bullet came from the high ridge to the east. A mile and a half out. An impossible shot.
I back into the house and slam the heavy front door shut, throwing the deadbolt with violently shaking hands.
The adrenaline crash hits instantly. My knees buckle. I lean back against the solid wood, my chest heaving as a terrifying, uncontrollable tremor racks my entire body.
I was supposed to die on that porch. Someone found my sanctuary. They found the data. But someone else saved me.
Breathe, Addy. Breathe.
I force myself off the door. Survival demands movement. I rush to the kitchen island, yanking open the bottom cabinet. I drag my tactical go-bag onto the hardwood floor. It's already half-packed with cash, a change of clothes, and survival gear.
I grab the heavy, reinforced hardshell external drive from the safe under the floorboards. My audit. Fourteen months of tracing offshore shell companies and encrypted crypto transfers. I shove the drive deep into the bag and zip it shut.
I stand in the center of the kitchen, trying to force my erratic breathing to slow. Trying to calm the terror screaming through my veins.
The man on the porch is dead, but the sniper who took the shot is still out there.
Then comes the roar of a dirt bike engine tearing into the driveway. Boots crunch on the gravel.
My heart slams against my ribs. I raise my Glock, aiming it squarely at the center of the door.
CRACK.
The combat boot hits the wood right next to the lock. The frame splinters violently, the deadbolt tearing free from the jamb. The door crashes open, rebounding hard off the interior wall.
The life I built here ends the moment that door splinters.
My eyes lock on the man standing in the wreckage of the frame.
He fills the space. Tall. Intimidating. Packed with the kind of dense, functional muscle that doesn't come from a gym. It comes from carrying heavy things through hostile terrain. He radiates a ferocious, undeniable danger.
"Who are you?" The question rips from my throat. My hands are shaking, but the Glock remains leveled at his chest.
"Wyatt. Wyatt Harrison." His voice is a low, gravel rasp that vibrates straight down my spine.
"That tells me nothing."
"It tells you the only name of the man keeping you alive." He steps forward, closing the distance with the silent, terrifying grace of an apex predator. He doesn't give me time to process. "Grab the bag. We have fifty seconds before an Ares cleanup crew swarms this valley."
And he is terrifyingly, devastatingly handsome.
He's the kind of man who could charm the panties off a woman with nothing but a slow wink and a crooked smile. The rugged jawline. The dark, intense eyes assessing the room, taking in every potential threat in a fraction of a second.
The hardshell drag bag slung across his back holds a sniper rifle, and his boots are currently resting inches away from a dead man's blood.
I don't question his presence. I don't scream or demand badges or ask why a hitman just saved my life. My mind bypasses the panic and zeros in on an entirely different, entirely inappropriate thought.
The women who have fallen for that charm.
How lucky they must have been to have those large, capable hands on them. To feel the weight of his attention. To be seen by a man like this.
Then the familiar, cold reality settles in. I will never be one of those women.
I'm A.D. Hart. I exist in spreadsheets and forensic data trails. I built a career hiding my femininity behind a gender-neutral byline and a severe wardrobe because men in my field don't respect women.
They respect machines.
I made myself a machine.
Competent. Unflappable. Untouchable.
A man like Wyatt Harrison doesn't look twice at a woman like me. Not for anything other than a tactical extraction.
"Time's up." His voice is a low, gravel rasp.
He turns on his heel as if he expects me to follow.
And I do.
A man who commands with that kind of absolute authority strips away the instinct to question.
My Glock slides into its holster. I don't tag him as a threat. The ease with which he gets me to drop my defense and follow him out the door might be the most dangerous thing about him.
I step out into the biting Wyoming wind.
The dead man lies on the porch. Blood pools on the wooden planks, thick and dark, creeping toward my favorite rocking chair. A perfect, devastating headshot.
My gaze snaps to the rifle bag strapped to Harrison's back.
He didn't stumble across my house. He didn't arrive by accident. He was on that ridge.
We cross the gravel driveway. A dirt bike rests on its kickstand near the tree line, the engine ticking as it idles. The aggressive tread is caked with mud and crushed sage.
"Get on." He swings a long leg over the seat and rights the bike in one fluid motion.
The low, rough command kicks my heart into a hard rhythm. My pulse races, a tight thrum against my throat. It isn't fear. It's the sheer, undeniable weight of his authority. I swing my leg over the rear tire and settle onto the narrow seat behind him.
"Hold on."
I wrap my arms around his waist.
The physical contact jolts through me like a live wire. He feels like carved granite beneath his tactical jacket. My chest presses flush against his back.
The heat rolling off his body sinks directly into my skin, chasing away the freezing wind. I clasp my hands tight over his flat stomach, hyper-aware of the hard shift of his muscles beneath my fingers.
He dumps the clutch.
The bike surges forward, tearing down the dirt access road. My breath hitches. I tighten my grip, holding onto him for dear life as we hit sixty miles an hour over broken terrain. The wind screams in my ears.
The scent of pine, sagebrush, and gunpowder clings to him, a purely masculine scent that bypasses my logic and goes straight to my bloodstream.
We ride for three miles, weaving through a dense stand of lodgepole pines until we hit a logging trail.
A black, heavy-duty pickup truck sits idling in the shadows.
Harrison skids the bike to a halt. We dismount. He doesn't say a word. He grabs the bike by the handlebars and the frame, heaving the heavy machine into the bed of the truck with a terrifying display of raw physical strength.
He slams the tailgate.
"Get in."
I open the passenger door and slide onto the leather seat. The truck is warm, the heater blowing steadily against the biting cold of the morning. The windows are tinted black, turning the cab into a dark, confined sanctuary.
Harrison gets behind the wheel. The sheer mass of his shoulders makes the spacious cab feel suffocatingly small. He shifts into drive, and the heavy tires crush the underbrush as we pull onto the paved, two-lane highway.
We drive in silence. The Wyoming landscape blurs past the window. Endless stretches of sage, rolling hills, and the distant, jagged peaks of the Bighorns. A small herd of pronghorn antelope grazes near a wire fence, heads snapping up as we roar past.
I press my back flat against the leather seat, trying to create distance between us, but there's nowhere to go.
The cab is too small. His presence is too absolute.
Every time he shifts his grip on the steering wheel, my eyes track the movement of his large, scarred hands.
Every time he draws a breath, my chest tightens in response.
The violent trembling that hit me in the kitchen is completely gone.
The delayed shock of almost taking a bullet to the chest in my own front yard should be crippling me right now. I should be hyperventilating. I should be demanding to be taken to the nearest federal field office.
But the fear is gone.
Instead, there's only the rhythmic hum of the heavy tires, the steady heat radiating from the massive man in the driver's seat, and the cold, hard facts of the data I need to process.
His profile is a sharp study in concentration. The hard angle of his jaw. The focused intensity in his eyes as he scans the empty road ahead.
"You were watching me." A statement of fact. Not an accusation.
He doesn't look away from the road. "Yes."
"For how long?"
"Two days."
The words land between us, heavy and loaded. Two days. Forty-eight hours.
He was on the ridge. He saw everything. He saw me drink my coffee on the porch in the mornings. He saw me working at the kitchen island late into the night.
He saw me yesterday afternoon.
The memory of the freezing creek rushes back. The heat of the sun on my bare skin. Stripping off my clothes on the rocky bank and wading into the water. The utter, complete isolation I thought I had.
He saw that. He watched me through the glass of a high-powered scope.
Heat crawls up my neck, burning my cheeks. I don't cover myself. I don't shrink into the seat. I hold his gaze until he finally turns his head and looks at me.
His eyes are dark, unreadable, but a muscle ticks tight in his jaw. He knows what I'm thinking. He knows exactly what he watched.
I break the eye contact first, turning my attention back to the road.
"Who was the man on my porch?"
"A man paid to kill you." His voice is flat. Clinical.
"A contractor."
"Yes."
The pieces click together. The threat. The surveillance. The impossibly perfect timing of a sniper taking a shot from a mile and a half away. He wasn't there to kill me. He was there to kill the man sent to kill me.
He's a guardian angel with a body count.
I don't ask the obvious question. Why were you watching me?
I don't ask because I already know the answer. He used me as bait. He sat on that ridge, watched me live my life, and waited until the contractor was standing on my front porch before he pulled the trigger.
I don't want to hear him confirm how close he let me get to dying.
The truck eats the miles. The sun climbs higher over the Bighorn Mountains, casting long, sharp shadows across the valley.
I pull the heavy canvas bag onto my lap. My hand rests over the bulge of the hardshell drive.
My audit.
Fourteen months of tracing offshore shell companies, encrypted crypto transfers, and phantom shipping manifests. I found the sanctions-evasion network.
I proved the crime.
And someone high up the food chain decided I needed to die before I filed the report.
Harrison keeps his eyes on the road. He drives with the same terrifying competence he uses to kill.
I'm sitting next to a lethal, ferociously capable man who watched me naked in a creek yesterday, saved my life this morning, and is now driving me into the unknown.
Fear should be the only emotion in the cab.
But as his hands rest on the steering wheel—large, steady, scarred—something deep and unfamiliar settles in my chest.
I'm not scared of him.
God help me, I want to see what else those hands can do.