Chapter 12
chapter twelve
Morgan
The phone's shrill ring shatters the silence of our bedroom. I jolt awake, my heart hammering against my ribs. Beside me, Trenton is already reaching for his cell, his movements precise despite sleep still clinging to his features.
"Trenton speaking," he answers, his voice low and alert.
I watch his face in the dim light, seeing it shift from wakefulness to sharp focus in an instant.
"Where? How many?" His words are clipped, urgent.
Matthew sits up beside me, instantly alert. The tension radiating from Trenton's body tells me everything I need to know before he hangs up.
"That was Caiden," Trenton says, already swinging his legs off the bed. "Someone's at the back of the house. More than one person."
"Evan?" I ask, my voice tight with fear.
"Don't know yet." Trenton moves to the closet, pulling out a weapon with practiced efficiency. "Get Charlie. Now."
Matthew is already on his feet, moving toward the door with purpose. "Safe room."
I scramble from the bed, adrenaline clearing my head completely. In the hallway, I can see Charlie's bedroom door, her night-light casting a soft glow through the crack.
"Morgan!" Matthew hisses, grabbing my arm. "I'll get her. You get to the safe room."
I nod, trusting his instincts. As he slips into Charlie's room, I move toward the hidden panel in the hallway, my fingers finding the latch I prayed we'd never need.
A crash from downstairs makes me freeze. The front door. Someone's trying to break in.
"Morgan!" Trenton's voice cuts through the chaos. "Go!"
I hear Charlie's frightened whimper as Matthew emerges from her room, her small body cradled against his chest. Her eyes are wide with terror, her unicorn clutched in one hand.
"It's okay, baby." The words come out steady even though my heart is slamming against my ribs. "We're just going on a little adventure."
Charlie doesn't believe me. I can see it in the way her fingers have gone white around her unicorn, the way her eyes keep cutting toward the sounds coming from downstairs. She's heard raised voices before. She knows what they mean.
Another crash, louder this time.
Matthew's arm tightens around her, his jaw set. "Move, Morgan."
I push the panel open and step inside. The safe room smells like fresh paint and circulated air; we'd had it installed six weeks ago.
The room is small. A cot against one wall, a first aid kit bolted above it, a monitor mounted in the corner showing four camera feeds from around the house.
Top left: the back fence line, two shapes moving along it in the dark.
Top right: the front porch, empty, but the motion light is on and I don't know when it tripped.
Bottom left: the driveway. Trenton's truck, undisturbed.
Bottom right: the hallway outside this room. Empty. The night-light still glowing gold under Charlie's door.
I watch the two shapes on the back fence feed and I grow cold.
Charlie is pressed against my side on the cot, her unicorn tucked under her chin, her breathing coming in shallow little pulls. She's not crying. That's almost worse. Kids who've lived with real danger learn fast that crying makes it worse.
"Who are they?" she whispers.
"I don't know yet."
"Is it my daddy?"
I look at the feed. The shapes are moving in a pattern, spreading apart, covering ground. Not the behavior of one desperate man. This is coordinated.
"I don't know," I say again, because I won't lie to her. Not about this.
She nods like she expected that answer, and her fingers tighten around the unicorn.
The monitor crackles. Static. Then Trenton's voice, low and close to the receiver, says, "Two confirmed at the back. Matthew's taking the east side. Stay in the room, Morgan. Don't open that door for anyone but us."
I press the talk button. "What about the front?"
A beat of silence. "Caiden's on it."
Then nothing.
I stare at the feeds. The two shapes at the back fence have stopped moving. One of them crouches. The other is holding something I can't make out in the grainy night-vision green.
Charlie shifts beside me. "Ms. Morgan?"
"Yeah."
"Are Mr. Trent and Mr. Matt going to be okay?"
I watch the feed. Watch the shapes. Watch the empty hallway outside our door.
"Yes," I tell her.
I believe it. I have to believe it. These are men who spent six years doing exactly this, in places with no safe rooms and no backup and no one waiting for them to come home.
But my hands are shaking.
I press them flat against my thighs and keep watching the monitor.
Matthew
The east side of the house is dark.
Trenton killed the motion sensors from the panel inside thirty seconds after Caiden's call came in, maybe less. No lights means no silhouettes. No silhouettes means we move blind, same as they do, except we know every inch of this ground and they don't know any of it.
I press my back to the exterior wall and listen.
Cool air. The smell of Morgan's garden. The distant bark of a neighbor's dog cutting off mid-sound, like it thought better of it.
Then footsteps.
One set, moving slow along the gravel path that borders the garden bed. Whoever it is, they're placing each foot before committing weight. Not crunching. Feeling for loose stone first.
Trained. Or practiced enough that it amounts to the same thing.
My jaw tightens.
I text Trenton one character: E. One contact on my side.
His reply comes back in under five seconds: 2 back. I have them.
I pocket the phone.
The figure rounds the corner of the house and I'm already moving, my forearm driving up hard under his chin before he can register the shape of me in the dark.
His head snaps back against the siding with a sound like a bat connecting with a fence post. It clatters to the gravel.
I glance down without releasing the pressure.
Tac flashlight. Not a gun.
I pin his wrist against the wall and get a proper look at his face.
Young. Early twenties, maybe. Whatever cool he came in with is completely gone.
His eyes are white around the edges, breath coming in short, shallow pulls.
His whole body has gone rigid against the siding, the way bodies go when the brain finally catches up to how badly things have gone wrong.
Not Harris.
"Who sent you." Flat. Not a question.
He makes a sound that isn't words.
I apply pressure to the wrist. The angle is specific—I know exactly how much force it takes before the joint starts to fail, and I stay just below that threshold. The tendons flex against my thumb. He feels it. I feel him feel it.
"Try again."
"Harris." It comes out in a rush, like he's been holding his breath and just ran out. "Harris paid us. Said we were supposed to scare them. Get the kid out."
Get the kid out.
Fury shakes me to my core.
Charlie asleep in that room. Charlie with her unicorn and her night-light and her stuffed animals lined up like a tiny army. Charlie who asked me to check on her before bed because she might get scared.
I keep my face neutral.
"How many?"
"Three. Me, Denny, and one more at the front. That's all, I swear to God, man, that's all he told us to do."
Trenton materializes out of the dark behind him. No sound. No warning. Just suddenly there, his hand dropping onto the kid's shoulder with a grip that makes him flinch hard enough to cut himself off mid-sentence.
"We know about the front," Trenton says.
That voice. Completely level. No heat in it at all. People who don't know Trenton think the loud version is the one to be afraid of. They're wrong. The loud version means he's still deciding. This version means he already knows what he is going to do and he's just working through the steps.
He meets my eyes over the kid's head.
We don't need to say it.
Harris isn't here. He sent three guys, found them somewhere, paid cash, and told them enough to be useful and not enough to matter.
Which means right now, while we're out here dealing with the distraction he built for us, he's somewhere else.
Watching. Waiting. Seeing if the noise pulls us far enough out of position to—
"Morgan." The word comes out of me before I've finished the thought.
Trenton's already moving.
I haul the kid off the wall by his collar, spin him, and drive him forward. He stumbles but I keep him upright, one hand fisted in the back of his jacket. He smells like cigarettes and nervous sweat. I don't look at his face again.
Trenton has the second one from the backyard, this one bigger, older, with a cut above the lip that's already swelling from wherever Trenton introduced himself, moving him toward the back door with the same mechanical efficiency he applies to everything when he's in this headspace.
"Walk," I tell mine.
He walks.
Inside, the kitchen light is on. Caiden has the third one zip-tied to a chair already, a wiry guy in his thirties who's working very hard to look like he isn't scared and failing completely.
Caiden's standing over him with his arms crossed, not saying a word, which is somehow worse than anything he could say.
I shove my guy onto a chair. Trenton deposits his next to him.
Three chairs. Three men. None of them Harris.
I cross to the security panel by the back door and pull up the camera feeds. Four windows on the screen. I find the one I'm looking for, Morgan's face, pale and still in the safe room's low light, Charlie tucked against her side. Both of them watching the monitor. Both of them intact.
I hold down the intercom. "We're clear. Stay put."
A beat. Then her voice, tight and controlled. "Confirmed?"
"Three. None of them him."
There's silence on her end. I can picture exactly what her face is doing right now, the way her jaw sets when she's keeping herself together through sheer will, the small muscle that jumps near her temple.
"Stay in the room," I tell her. "We need a few minutes."
I release the button and look at Trenton.