Ashes of a Stolen Summer

Thirty. Fucking. Seconds

Jacob

The helicopter rises, its blades tearing through the darkness as it banks east. The downdraft kicks up gravel and dust, stinging my face, filling my mouth with grit as I run.

I run—boots hammering into gravel that spits and bites back, shards slicing into my shins with every stride.

My lungs are burning, ribs screaming with every breath I drag into my chest, yet none of it matters.

Pain doesn't matter. Exhaustion doesn't matter.

The only thing that matters is the woman disappearing into the sky.

I see her through the glass. She’s pressed against it—both palms flat, body straining forward like she thinks she can break through if she just pushes hard enough.

Her hair is disheveled, strands plastered to her damp forehead.

The adrenaline turning it into a wild, untamed mess that mirrors the chaos. Her eyes are wide. So fucking wide.

It’s terror. Real, visceral terror. The kind that strips a person down to instinct and leaves nothing else behind.

And she sees me.

Her gaze locks onto mine like I’m the only solid thing left in a world that’s coming apart beneath her feet. Like I’m the only thing stopping her from falling straight through whatever edge she’s standing on.

Good.

Let her look at me. Let her fucking see me.

I've memorized every expression she's ever worn. Every glare. Every eye roll. Every stubborn lift of her chin when she was determined to fight me. Every moment she looked at me like she hated me while her body betrayed something entirely different.

This one? This one doesn’t lie.

This one tears straight through me.

Her hand slams against the glass.

Once.

Twice.

The force of it should break something—anything—but the glass doesn’t move. The helicopter doesn’t slow. Nothing gives.

Her mouth moves. My name. She’s screaming my fucking name.

“SUMMER!”

Her name rips out of me raw enough to tear my throat open on the way up—something feral snapping loose, something I don’t even try to control. It doesn’t sound like me. It doesn’t sound like the man who keeps everything locked down, who turns violence into something precise and useful.

It sounds like something being dragged out of hell.

The bird climbs higher.

Gunfire cracks behind me—Mason and Carter unloading round after round into the air. One round hits the tail. Then another. Sparks scatter into the dark like they might actually achieve something.

They don’t. It keeps going.

Of course it fucking does.

I push harder, forcing my legs to move faster even as they start to fail. My body is done. I can feel it—the weakness creeping in, the loss of control. I don’t care. My body doesn’t get a say.

Closer.

Just get closer. Ten feet. Five.

Anything—

The fog rolls in. Fast and thick in a way that doesn’t feel natural. It swallows the helicopter whole. One second she’s there—hands on the glass, eyes locked on mine, everything in her reaching for me. And the next—nothing.

Gone.

The silence that follows is unbearable.

Not true silence. The distant ringing of gunfire still echoes through the night. Gravel crunches beneath boots and someone shouts behind me. But none of it reaches me properly. Everything feels muffled, distant, like I'm submerged beneath freezing water.

My knees hit the ground hard enough to shred the skin. Gravel tears into my palms as my hands shoot out to catch me, skin splitting open instantly, blood slicking across stone. I barely feel it.

She’s gone. Thirty seconds. That’s all I was behind her.

Thirty.

I fold forward, pressing my forehead into the dirt.

The sharp edges bite into my skin, but I welcome the pain.

It's the only thing keeping me anchored.

My fist crashes into the ground once, then again, then a third time.

Agony shoots through my arm, but it doesn't come close to touching what's happening inside my chest.

“NO—” It tears out of me. “—NO—NO—”

Footsteps crunch behind me.

“Boss—”

“Don’t.” My voice barely sounds like my own. It's rough, shredded raw from screaming her name, from breathing so hard my lungs feel flayed open. My hands remain buried in gravel slick with blood, and I can't move. Can't think. Can't do anything except stare at the place where she disappeared.

“Don’t fucking touch me.”

I think Mason might actually listen. Then his hand lands between my shoulders anyway.

The contact should make me angry. It should make me throw him off and tell him to get the fuck away from me.

Instead, I stay exactly where I am. Maybe because I'm too exhausted to fight him.

Maybe because some part of me understands what he's trying to do.

Mason isn't the kind of man who offers comfort.

He doesn't know how. He's trying to keep me grounded, trying to stop me from disappearing into whatever dark place I've been standing on the edge of since she was taken.

“We were so fucking close,” he mutters, voice rough and breathless.

Close.

I squeeze my eyes shut, but it doesn't help.

Summer is still there behind my eyelids.

Her hands against the glass. Her mouth moving around my name.

The panic in her eyes when she realized I wasn't going to reach her.

The look on her face wasn't fear that Jackson had taken her.

It was the certainty that I couldn't stop him.

I would’ve torn that helicopter apart with my bare hands. I would’ve hung off the fucking thing and let it drag me into the sky before I let her go. If I’d reached her—she’d be here. In my arms.

Thirty. Fucking. Seconds.

Mason stays quiet for a long moment.

“He can’t hide for long, boss” he says eventually.

The certainty in his voice should help. It should give me something to hold on to.

Instead, it makes something ugly rise in me because finding her tomorrow isn't enough.

Finding her next week isn't enough. Every second she's with Jackson Moore is another second she's terrified.

Another second that she's wondering where I am.

Another second where she's trapped with a man who views people as things to own, break and destroy.

The thought alone brings bile burning up the back of my throat.

Neither of us says anything. The darkness of the night creeps around us with the sound of my men working in the distance. Chains rattle, radios crackle.

Mason speaks again, pulling me back to reality, "You know, I spent years thinking there wasn't much left that could scare me." His gaze stays fixed on the fog where the helicopter vanished. "Then I saw your face in the station after she was taken."

And he’s right to be afraid. Because when I get my hands on Jackson Moore, even the devil himself will look the other way.

My whole body is shaking with rage, settling deep instead of burning out.

I’ve destroyed men before. Taken my time.

Made them understand exactly what they did wrong before I ended them.

This?

This is something else. Something I don’t have a name for yet. Something with Jackson Moore written into its bones.

My heart is gone. Ripped out and carried east on rotor blades. But maybe—just maybe—rage is enough. After all, rage wins wars. I push myself up, each movement heavy—like I’m dragging something broken behind me that used to be part of me. But grief won’t save her.

I will.

Mason falls into step beside me as we make our way back toward the house.

Neither of us speaks. The adrenaline that carried us through the chase is fading now, leaving behind exhaustion, pain, and the kind of rage that settles deep rather than burns hot.

Flashlights cut through the darkness between the trees, casting long shadows across the property, but nobody is searching anymore.

Nobody is talking. The usual noise that follows any operation—the swearing, the shouting, the endless stream of opinions—is absent.

The silence hangs over the property like a funeral.

That's when I see Hayes.

He's kneeling beside one of the trees with Reyes propped against the trunk.

Blood covers the front of Reyes's shirt, dark and wet beneath the moonlight, and Hayes's hands are stained red as he keeps pressure on the wound in his ribs.

For a terrifying second, I think we've lost him too.

Then Reyes lifts his head and looks at me.

"Boss." The word is barely audible.

Relief loosens something inside my chest, though not nearly enough.

I crouch beside him, taking in the pallor of his skin, the sweat beading across his forehead, the tension in his jaw every time pain tears through him.

He's trying not to show it. Trying not to become another problem for the rest of us to carry.

That's Reyes. Bleeding half to death and still worried about everybody else.

"You look like shit," I tell him. A weak smile touches his mouth before disappearing again.

"Feel worse."

I grip Reyes's shoulder briefly before standing again. "Stay alive."

His eyes close for a split-second before reopening. "Trying, Sheriff."

The exchange should feel reassuring. Instead, it only draws my attention to the rest of the men gathered across the property. Vance is standing nearby with his arms folded tightly across his chest. Even Carter—who always has something to say, some order to give, some problem to solve—is silent.

My stomach sinks. Because I know why. I follow their gazes and find Calder.

For a long moment, I simply stare. He's lying on his back near the edge of the clearing, illuminated by the harsh beam of a flashlight resting on the ground beside him.

Someone has closed his eyes. Someone has tried to straighten him out. It doesn't matter.

He's still dead.

Yesterday he was bitching about paperwork and bad coffee. A few hours ago he was standing beside us planning how we were going to get Summer back, leading me to George Johnson and eventually this place. Now he's a body lying in the dirt.

Nobody says a word. They don't need to. The grief hanging over the men says enough.