32. Walking Into War
Walking Into War
Summer
The gunshot rips through the house like the mountain itself has cracked open.
Everything in me stops.
My heart stutters. My lungs lock. The world narrows to one long ringing note while terror crawls cold and fast through every inch of me.
No.
Jacob.
The thought hits so hard it's physical. And for one unbearable second I can see it—Jacob falling. Blood. Those dark eyes going empty.
The sound that comes out of me barely makes it past my ruined throat.
It isn't fear. Fear would be easier. This is deeper—something vital being torn out of me with bare hands, because he came for me. Even after everything, he came, and this house ate him for it.
My Jacob.
Gone. Because of me.
The rope burns as I twist my wrist against it, and I bite down on the cry and I keep twisting.
I've been working at these knots since they left me here, waiting for the house to go quiet, testing every inch of them for something Donnie's hands missed.
My shoulders scream. My fingers have gone numb.
Hope is a dangerous thing in this house—I've learned that the hard way—but when the knot shifts under my fingertips, my breath catches.
I freeze.
Then, slowly, I pull again.
It loosens. Another fraction. Another.
And gives.
My hand slips free.
I stare at it like it belongs to someone else. The rope's left angry red bands around my wrist and I don't care about a single one of them, because for the first time since they dragged me into this house, nothing is holding me down.
I get the other hand loose and I'm off the bed so fast I nearly go down on the marble.
My clothes are scattered across the floor where they left them.
My fingers shake so badly the joggers twist wrong around my legs twice before I get them on.
The shirt catches over my head and for one humiliating second I'm trapped in fabric and darkness and grief, choking on my own panic.
Not him. Please, not him.
Jackson's smile flashes through my head and the nausea surges.
What if he knew it was a trap and came anyway?
What if he walked into this house already knowing?
The lock clicks.
Terror crashes back through me so fast it hurts. I back up until my legs hit the bed.
The handle turns. The door opens quietly.
And Harris steps inside.
For one disoriented second I just stare at him. He's pale under the hallway light, his hands trembling as he closes the door behind him, his eyes darting back the way he came before they find mine.
"Come."
Hope hits so hard my knees nearly go.
"There's no time, miss." His voice is rough with panic. "The guards are occupied with the sheriff and his men."
I have to grip the bedpost, because my body can't process the whiplash fast enough. One second I'm grieving him. The next—
He's alive.
He's still fighting.
I follow Harris out without asking a single question.
The house has changed… somehow no longer a dead place.
It feels alive, but for all of the wrong reasons.
Somewhere below us men are shouting. Boots thunder across floors.
Doors slam hard enough to echo down the long white corridors, and the whole place has the feeling of something that's been kicked open.
War. Jackson brought a war into his own house.
Harris moves fast for a man his age, guiding me down hallways I've never seen. "Keep close," he whispers, and I nod, and my eyes go everywhere at once—every shadow, every sound, every corner he might be standing behind.
Don't think. Move.
We pass tall windows looking out over black mountains and endless trees, the moon smothered behind storm cloud. Out there, this house doesn't exist. Nobody would ever hear you scream in it.
He turns us down a narrow corridor tucked behind the grand staircase—one I never knew was there—and the air goes colder the further we get from the main halls.
Then a steel door.
Harris fumbles the keys off his belt, hands shaking so badly he drops them once before he gets it open.
The door swings wide and cold mountain air rushes over my skin.
Freedom. The trees beyond the service road stretch out into the dark, and it doesn't feel real. None of it feels real.
He presses a set of keys into my hands. "The black SUV, the one nearest the gate."
I stare down at them. "What about the gates?"
"I can open them from inside."
Fear moves through me. "But they'll know."
Harris goes still, and I see it all over his face. Acceptance. A tear slips down the deep lines of his cheek.
"I know."
No. No—
"Harris—"
"You should go now, miss."
"Why are you doing this?" It comes out broken, because nobody risks Jackson Moore unless they're already lost. Or grieving.
He looks past me, toward the dark beyond the gates.
"My daughter." The pain that crosses his face is so violent I nearly stop breathing.
"She disappeared years ago into Mr Moore's network.
I don't know where she is now. Only that she stays alive as long as I work for him.
" His voice cracks. "I couldn't save her.
But I would pray somebody would help her, if they ever had the chance. "
Emotion surges up so fast it chokes me. I reach up without thinking and touch his face, and the old man closes his eyes beneath my hand like it's the first kindness he's felt in years.
"Thank you," I whisper. "Thank you."
Then something clicks hard inside me. If I get out—if I actually get out of here—then I'm the chance he's praying for.
"Harris." He opens his eyes. "What's her name?"
The silence stretches.
"Sarah," he says. "Her name is Sarah."
Sarah.
I take it out of his hands like something I've been asked to carry, and I put it somewhere in my chest where nothing in this house can reach it.
"Then I'll find her," I tell him. "I swear to God, I'll find her."
He squeezes my shoulder once. It's the only goodbye either of us gets.
The cold slams into me as I run for the black SUV, gravel loud under my shoes, my heart trying to climb out through my ribs. I get the door shut behind me and my hands shake so badly I nearly drop the keys before the engine catches.
The gates sit ahead of me in the headlights.
And I freeze.
Because Jacob is still in that house.
The realization comes all at once. I'm free. I could put this thing in drive and be down that mountain in twenty minutes. I could survive.
But he could be bleeding somewhere in there. He could be alive right now, in that house, waiting for me the way I waited for him.
A sob catches in my throat.
I can't leave him. I physically can't. I think about him on his knees in the gravel while a helicopter carried me into the fog. I think about him walking into this place tonight knowing exactly what it might cost him.
I'd burn the whole fucking world down for you.
My fingers tighten on the wheel.
I should go back. I should find him—
Movement flickers near the gates.
I jump so hard my breath catches. Footsteps crunch through gravel out there in the dark.
Then—
"Shhh."
Hushed. Female.
I stare into the blackness beyond the fence line, my pulse hammering, and two figures come out of the trees.
And even in the dark, I know them instantly.
Constance. Adelaide.
For one impossible second I'm certain I'm hallucinating—that my mind has finally cracked and started handing me the people I need most. Because Jackson spent days building me a world where nobody was coming. Where the whole thing had stopped turning without me in it.
And yet there they are. Real enough to hurt.
"Oh my God—" Adelaide's voice breaks around my name, and that's what destroys the last thing holding me together.
They run.
I barely make it out of the SUV before Constance hits me, arms locking around me so hard my ribs ache. Adelaide crashes into us a second later, fisting handfuls of my shirt like she's afraid I'll come apart if she lets go.
And I break. Not gracefully. Everything in me caves at once, and the sound that tears out of my wrecked throat isn't human, and my knees nearly go, and Constance holds the back of my head against her shoulder while I come apart in the driveway.
"You're okay," she keeps saying, shaking, crying herself. "We've got you. You're okay."
I'm not. Nothing about me is okay. I can still feel him everywhere—his hands, his voice, the perfume he put on my skin there under the smoke and the sweat. My body isn't mine yet. I don't know when it will be again.
I pull back and grab Adelaide's wrists hard enough to make her flinch. "The gunshot—"
"There were loads of them," Constance says fast, her eyes already scanning the estate behind me. "Carter brought Hayes, Vance, Groves—"
"Groves?"
Something twists in my chest.
"It could've been anybody, Summer." Her jaw sets. "Don't do that to yourself yet."
Yet.
That word. We all hear it.
"How did you even get here?"
Constance drags her sleeve under her eyes. "I saw the map Kurt drew in the hospital."
Adelaide lets out a watery laugh. "Jacob told us not to come. Threatened us, actually."
"Yeah, well." Constance shrugs, hard. "He can be pissed at me later."
They came anyway. Knowing what this place is. Knowing women disappear up here and don't come back.
Then the sound of grinding metal cuts across the night, and every one of us goes still.
The gates. Beginning to close.
Panic flashes over Adelaide's face—but the SUV is between us and the house, and its shadow is holding, for now.
Then voices. Male.
The front doors of the Ridge bang open hard enough to echo across the property, and Donnie comes out under the floodlights with two armed men behind him.
And Harris.
Oh God.
He looks ancient. Broken. Donnie shoves him forward and he stumbles so badly he nearly goes face-first into the gravel before Donnie catches his collar and hauls him upright like something on a leash.
Rage and grief hit me at once, hard enough that I sway.
He risked everything for me. And now I know exactly what's about to happen.
Donnie throws him down onto the driveway hard enough that Adelaide gasps behind me. Harris cries out—small, frail, and it guts me.
Then Donnie laughs.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are!"
Constance's hand closes on my arm. "Summer, don't."
But I can't stand behind a car and watch him die for me. I can't.
I step out from behind the SUV.
"There she is," Donnie drawls, and the smile that spreads over his face makes my skin crawl.
Harris lifts his head, and the second he sees me, tears spill down his face. "No—miss, no—go—"
Donnie kicks him in the ribs. The crack of it carries across the driveway. Harris curls around himself with a broken sound.
"Thought you could let her go, huh, old man?" Blood runs from Harris's mouth into the gravel while he fights for breath. "How'd that work out for you?"
My nails bite into my palms until they sting.
Donnie crouches beside him, easy, almost friendly. "You know what's funny?"
Harris starts to shake. Because he knows. Whatever's coming is going to be monstrous.
"When I get back to the warehouse," Donnie says softly, "the first woman I'm gonna visit is your daughter."
Harris goes rigid. "No—"
"I'm gonna take my time, too."
The old man breaks completely. "No—please—please don't hurt her—"
"Oh, I will." Donnie's voice drips with it. "Maybe I'll tell her her daddy cried like a bitch first."
The sound Harris makes isn't human, and something in me snaps.
"STOP IT!"
Donnie doesn't even look at me. He just pulls a gun from the back of his jeans, slow and deliberate, and presses the barrel to Harris's temple.
Harris is sobbing now. His mouth is moving and I know—I know—he's saying her name.
Adelaide grabs the back of my jacket, trying to pull me down. Constance hasn't moved.
The world shrinks to that gun.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
The gunshot explodes across the night.
Adelaide screams.
For one horrific second I'm certain Harris is dead—
Then something heavy hits the gravel. Wrong direction.
My eyes fly open.
Donnie drops sideways onto the driveway, blood spraying dark across the stone.
Nobody moves. Nobody breathes.
Then the guards come alive, rifles swinging up—
BANG.
One drops before he's got it to his shoulder.
BANG.
The second goes down beside him.
Silence slams over the driveway hard enough to ring. Smoke curls in the cold air.
Movement, beside me.
Constance steps forward with a handgun in both hands.
My stomach drops. Adelaide stares at her like she's looking at a stranger.
Her face is terrifyingly calm as she crosses to Donnie's body. She looks down at him for a long second. Then she spits on him.
"Motherfucker."
I can barely get the words out. "Where—where did you get that?"
She glances back at me. "Carter."
Something tightens in my chest. Of course.
"He knew we'd come." She shrugs. "He knew neither of us were ever going to listen."
Adelaide finally drags her eyes off the bodies. "Wait—" Her voice trembles. "We've got Summer. Do we call the station? Do we have, like, a direct line to the FBI or something?"
Constance's hands move automatically, checking the chamber before her attention shifts to me.
"Oh, sweet girl." A low laugh. "Right now, we are the motherfucking FBI."
Then she looks at me.
"Let's go get your man."