Chapter 16
Silas – POV
Silas stepped off the gravel lane and slipped into the black maw of the pine woods flanking the driveway.
The forest floor was a soft, treacherous mattress of wet pine needles and rotting oak leaves that swallowed the sound of his heavy boots.
He kept his back bent low, his service weapon brought up near his chin, his thumb resting flat against the safety.
Rain hammered the canopy high above him, creating a chaotic, rushing white noise that masked his approach—but it worked both ways.
He couldn't hear what was waiting for him in the dark either.
He knew every tree on this lot. He’d helped Jonah clear the fallen timber from the eastern ridge one month ago.
Moving twenty yards inside the tree line, Silas flanked the open gravel driveway.
Through the jagged black gaps in the pine branches, he caught glimpses of the house.
The farmhouse sat like a dark fortress under the lashing rain.
No candles. No flashlights. Blair was keeping them dark, exactly like she was trained to do.
Then, fifty feet ahead of him, a branch snapped.
It wasn't the clean, explosive crack of a heavy bough breaking under the weight of the storm. It was a sharp, brief pop—the sound of someone stepping on dry kindling beneath the shelter of a dense hemlock tree.
Silas froze. He went perfectly still, pressing his shoulder against the rough, sticky bark of a massive white pine. He stopped breathing, letting his jaw hang slack to clear his ears, listening past the roar of the wind.
A shape detached itself from the gloom near the edge of the gravel drive.
It wasn't Victor Hollister. Hollister was an aging corporate executive who paid people to do his bleeding for him.
This man was tall, lean, and moved with a rigid, professional economy of motion.
He wore a dark, heavy waterproof technical jacket, tactical trousers, and a low-profile baseball cap cinched tight against the driving rain.
In his right hand, held casually down along his thigh, was a suppressed automatic pistol.
Private security, Silas realized, his blood turning to ice. Hollister’s liquidation wasn't just a getaway fund. It was a clean-up crew.
The man wasn't rushing. He was surveying the front porch of the farmhouse, tracking his eyes across the dark windows, checking for movement before he made his final approach.
Silas slowly shifted his weight to his front foot, easing his weapon around the side of the pine tree.
He had the tactical advantage of the dark wood line, but a suppressed weapon meant the shooter was looking to do this quietly.
If there was one man on the driveway, there could be a second wrapping around the back toward the kitchen pantry.
Silas couldn't risk a long-range shot through the driving rain and shifting branches. He needed to close the distance.
He moved forward, stepping from tree to tree with agonizing slowness. Ten yards. Five yards. The wind howled, a sudden summer gale kicking up a blinding curtain of gray spray that obscured the lane.
Silas used the burst of noise to spring forward, abandoning his cover.
He closed the final gap across the forest floor like a freight train hitting a switchback.
The guard heard the sudden rustle of nylon fabric a split second too late.
As the man spun around, raising the suppressed pistol, Silas slammed his full two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame straight into the man's chest.
They went down together in a brutal, bone-crushing heap in the thick limestone mud at the edge of the gravel drive.
The wind knocked out of the guard with a sharp oof, but the professional didn't panic. He clamped his left hand onto Silas's forearm, trying to redirect Silas's service weapon while simultaneously twisting his own wrist to bring his pistol up under Silas’s chin.
Silas didn't waste energy trying to wrestle the gun. He drove his heavy, tactical-gloved elbow directly down into the guard’s nose.
There was a sickening, wet crunch of breaking cartilage.
The guard’s grip loosened for a fraction of a second as blood spluttered across his face.
Silas seized the opening, grabbing the man's wrist and slamming it violently against the sharp edge of an exposed limestone rock in the mud.
The suppressed pistol flew from the guard's fingers, vanishing into the dark weeds.
Silas pinned the man's shoulders to the earth, burying his knee deep into the guard's sternum. He brought his own weapon down, the steel barrel pressing hard against the space right between the man's eyes.
“Don't move,” Silas growled, his voice a lethal, vibrating rumble over the sound of the rain. “Where is the other one?”
The guard choked on his own blood, his eyes wide and frantic under the bill of his wet cap. He didn't answer.
Before Silas could press him further, a sharp, shattering explosion of glass echoed from the front of the farmhouse. It was followed instantly by the deafening, booming roar of Jonah's twelve-gauge shotgun ripping through the dark.