23. Burn The Fucking Mountain Down
Burn The Fucking Mountain Down
Jacob
Constance loses her shit first.
"Are you all seriously just standing here?" She shoves off the wall hard enough to send the chair beside her screeching across the floor. "What the fuck are we doing?"
Nobody answers.
Kurt's still propped against the hospital bed looking half dead, blood dried under his nose, the monitor beside him throwing out steady little beeps that feel obscene against the chaos in this room.
Adelaide stands at the window hugging herself tight enough to hurt.
Tamara watches Kurt like she's counting down to the next time he goes under.
And me—I'm holding still by force, because every time Michael Miller's name circles back through my skull I want to put my fist through his brother's face just to have somewhere to put it.
Constance jabs a finger at the bed. "I don't give a fuck about Jackson Moore's dead girlfriend," she spits. "Summer is alive. Right now. With him. So why are we standing around talking instead of getting her back?"
"She's right." Adelaide's voice shakes badly enough that it barely sounds like her.
Kurt drags another breath into his lungs, and it clearly costs him. "If he took her to Rivers Ridge…" His throat tightens. "You don't have time."
And I believe him. That's the worst part—I believe him.
Because Jackson didn't take her up there to kill her. He took her up there to keep her. The thought sits in the middle of my chest, ugly and rotting, and I can't put it down.
Constance is pacing now. "Okay. Fantastic. We're all terrified. Can somebody explain how we actually get her out?"
Kurt pulls the notepad closer with shaking fingers. "I can draw the Ridge."
Tamara steps in and puts a pen in his hand, tearing a clean sheet off the treatment record for him to work on.
"I know the layout," he says. "Entrances. Security routes. Blind spots."
"Draw."
He starts laying it down—roads, tree lines, the buildings, the marks where the guards stand—and the shape that comes up off the paper is worse than I braced for. Not some cabin tucked in the woods.
A fortress.
"Cameras along the perimeter," he mutters. "Guard rotations every six hours."
Constance leans in. "How many?"
"Twelve minimum."
"Jesus Christ," Adelaide whispers.
Kurt circles a stretch along one edge. "East side service access. Minimal surveillance because of the tree coverage."
I study the map and let my head do what it does on its own, running the routes and the angles and the timing, the places where a wall stops being a wall. Then I pull my phone and call Carter.
He picks up on the second ring. "Sheriff?"
"I need men at the hospital. Now."
The line goes sharp. "What happened?"
"I found her. I know how to get in." The words scrape out raw—not found, not yet, but close enough that I can finally taste it. "Bring weapons. Night vision. Ammo. Everything."
A beat. Then, lower: "We going in tonight?"
"Yes."
"Who do you want?"
I look back down at the map. Tree cover, dark ground, next to no visibility. Any other night we'd put a bird in the air and read the heat signatures before a single boot touched that property, and that's the one thing we don't have anymore. No air. No thermal. We go in blind, on foot, in the dark.
"We move quiet," I tell him. "No lights unless necessary. I want men who can track movement in dark terrain."
"I'll bring Hayes, Vance, and Groves."
Good. Men who don't panic and don't make noise, which is the whole job tonight.
"How long?"
"Twenty minutes."
"Make it fifteen." I hang up before he can answer.
The room's shifted under me. It's stopped being somewhere people are falling apart and turned into a staging ground, and I feel the panic in my own chest cooling as it goes, hardening into the thing I actually need.
Constance folds her arms. "So what's the plan?"
I set my finger on the east-side route. "The second Jackson realizes we're there, he runs. So we get to Summer before he understands what's happening."
Kurt nods once. "That's the only way."
Adelaide steps closer, her voice small. "What if he moves her before you get inside?"
Something ugly turns over behind my ribs.
"Then I burn that fucking mountain down finding her."
Nobody argues with that, because every person in this room knows I mean it.
Kurt finally lowers the pen. His breathing's gone rough and wet, like sketching a few lines on a page cost him more than it should have.
"You'll need me there."
Tamara rounds on him. "No chance."
"He won't expect me to turn on him."
"He'll kill you."
Something unreadable crosses Kurt's ruined face. "Maybe."
I look at him for a long moment and weigh it properly. Take him and he might sell us the second we're inside that house. Leave him and I go in without the only man alive who knows where the walls are thin and where to put my men when we hear movement.
And he cares about her. I hate that more than I can say. But right now it's a lever, and a lever's a lever.
"You're coming."
Tamara looks genuinely horrified. "Jacob, he's been conscious for forty-five minutes."
"And he's the closest thing we've got to leverage."
Kurt's eyes narrow, because he's smart enough to hear exactly what I'm not saying. Jackson cared about Annalise. Maybe he cares about his brother, too. Maybe there's enough left inside that bastard for half a second of hesitation.
Hesitation gets people killed. Usually the man doing the hesitating.
"You help me get her back," I say quietly, "and I won't kill you."
Adelaide's eyes flick to me. Constance narrows hers. Because they both hear the wording.
He'll still die. I'll have Carter do it, and I'll take my time watching.
Kurt studies my face for a while, then nods once. "Okay."
I fold the map into my pocket and check the magazine in my gun without thinking about it, and the metal clicks sharply through the room. Familiar. Steady. The only thing in this building that's behaving itself.
Constance watches me. "When do we leave?"
I slide the magazine home with a hard snap. "The second my men get here."
Nobody argues. Not even Tamara. Because they can all see it now—I'm already gone. Mentally I'm halfway up that mountain with blood on my hands and Summer somewhere inside that house, waiting.
And underneath it I know that taking Kurt is the right call. Not because I trust him. I don't, and I never will.
But Jackson Moore already lost one thing he loved.
And if there's a shred of humanity left in that monster, it's tied to the broken man in this bed.