Chapter 13
thirteen
Evander moved downhill through the rain-wet forest and felt the old wiring click back into place.
The rifle settled against his shoulder. His boots found the gaps between roots and loose rock without sound.
His breath came shallow through his nose.
The rain helped—muffled his footfalls, drove most creatures to cover, turned the mountain into a gray-green smear that blurred the edges of every shape.
He picked up the tracker’s trail fifty yards below the shelter. Clear sign, even in the rain: boot prints pressed deep into the mud of the game trail.
Evander crouched and studied the prints. The right was heel-heavy and splayed. A limp. Not pronounced—the man was compensating well—but he had a weakness in the right knee, something old enough that the body had learned to work around it. The rain had barely started filling the indents.
He was close.
Evander rose and followed.
The trail cut east along the slope, following the contour line, and he let it lead him a quarter mile before he broke left into the high timber.
The trees grew thicker here, old-growth fir throwing a canopy that broke the rain into a fine mist. The ground underfoot was soft with decades of needle-fall, spongy and silent.
He moved faster now, no longer matching the tracker’s pace.
He needed to get ahead. Needed to find a position.
The trapper’s shelter sat tucked under where the slope bent sharply north.
Evander had found it his first year on the mountain—a shallow lean-to built so long ago that moss had claimed its walls, and its roof was propped with lodgepole logs that had turned silver with age.
Hunters used it in season. Nobody else came this high.
Smoke curled from a fire. Thin. Gray. The rain had driven the man to shelter, and he’d built a small fire to dry his gear.
Evander circled east and came down on the shelter from above.
He dropped to the flat ground behind the shelter and brought the rifle up in one clean motion.
The man sat on a log beside the fire, his back to the shelter’s entrance, a tin cup steaming between his tattooed hands.
The rifle lay across his thighs, barrel down.
Evander stepped forward and pressed the rifle to the back of the man’s skull.
The man went still. His shoulders tightened under the wet fabric. Then, slowly, he set the tin cup on the stone beside the fire.
“Turn around.”
He turned, and Evander’s breath snagged in his chest.
A full beard, close-trimmed, dusted with gray at the chin. Eyes that shifted from dark to amber in the firelight.
Creed Calder.
Former Army Ranger. Former Valor Ridge resident, until two years ago when he put a man in the hospital, and Walker had no choice but to cut him loose.
Evander had watched it happen from the ridge above the ranch, binoculars pressed to his eyes, the same way he watched everything that happened behind those gates.
The Sons of Sin had sent a man who knew Valor Ridge from the inside.
Ice slid through his veins, and he pressed the barrell tighter to Creed’s head. “What are you doing on my mountain, Calder?”
Creed shifted his weight on the log, seemingly unworried by the weapon. His right leg extended slightly, knee braced.
“Working.” He picked up the tin cup and drank. Steam rose past his beard. “You know how it is. Man’s gotta eat.”
“You’re tracking Rainey.”
Creed set the cup down. His eyes never left Evander’s. “I gotta say, I didn’t expect to find her with you. Last I heard, Evander Cole lived alone. No visitors. No exceptions. The guys at the Ridge talked about you sometimes. The man who wouldn’t stay.”
“They talk about you, too. The man who got kicked out.”
Creed’s smile faded at that. “It was bullshit. They wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Why would they? You proved you’re not trustworthy.” Evander rested his finger against the trigger. The rifle was steady. One pull and the threat ended. Clean. Simple.
He didn’t pull.
Killing Creed meant losing everything the man knew. Whether the Sins had more men coming. Whether they’d already found the cabin. What they planned to do with Rainey once they had her.
Information had value. Dead men gave none.
Creed’s mouth curved again, that same cold not-smile. “You’re wondering if you should waste me. I can see it. Right there behind the eyes. Do it.” He leaned back into the barrell.
The fire popped between them.
“No? That’s what I thought. If you were gonna do it, you’d have done it already.
You don’t strike me as a man who hesitates.
” He laughed and poked at the fire with a stick.
“She must be something special. The woman. Rainey Beckett. River’s sister.
Mal Granger wants her bad enough to pay five figures for her coordinates.
Alive, preferably. He wants you, too, for killing his dear old daddy, but he’d prefer you dead. ”
He knew what Creed was doing, needling him, looking for his weakness. He wouldn’t let the words penetrate his mask, refused to show how terrified they made him. “How many men does Mal have on the ground?”
“Enough. Not here yet. I’m the advance party.
Not many bikers know how to track like I do.
” Creed shifted his weight and his right knee protested.
He gave a slight grimace, quickly masked.
“Smart man, Mal. Cautious. Doesn’t waste resources.
Sent me because I know the terrain and I know the target’s brother. Two birds.”
“You won’t get near her.”
“Maybe not. But I don’t have to. All I have to do is find her and call it in. Rest is somebody else’s problem.”
Evander’s finger itched on the trigger. “She’s not here.”
“Yes, she is. I followed two sets of prints. Yours and hers. Recent.” Creed’s voice dropped.
Soft. Almost gentle. “You left her somewhere, didn’t you?
Sent her back to your hideaway cabin while you came down to play hero.
I’m close, aren’t I? Otherwise you wouldn’t have exposed your position like this. ”
He should just shoot the fucker now. He wasn’t going to get anything useful out of him.
Evander tightened his finger, and as the trigger caught, Creed exploded off the log.
His right knee buckled on the push—Evander saw it happen, the leg giving way—but Creed used the momentum anyway, driving forward off his left foot with a speed that shouldn’t have been possible.
His shoulder caught Evander in the sternum, and the shot cracked the shelter’s roof, raining dirt and splinters, and then Creed’s weight drove him back into the mossy wall.
Creed was younger. Stronger. Trained for exactly this kind of violence—close-quarters, dirty, the kind the Rangers taught men who needed to survive when the guns ran dry. His right hand locked around Evander’s wrist and slammed it against the rock. Once. Twice. The rifle clattered to the dirt.
Evander drove his knee into Creed’s bad leg.
Creed snarled, and his grip loosened.
Evander twisted free and drove an elbow into the other man’s ribs, the impact shuddering up his arm.
Creed took it and came back with a right cross that caught Evander high on the cheekbone. His vision flashed white. He rode the punch, let his head roll with it, and lashed out with his own right that connected with Creed’s jaw hard enough to split his lip.
Blood sprayed. Creed spat and smiled through it, red on his teeth, and lunged.
They went down together. The fire scattered, embers hissing in the wet dirt.
Evander landed on his back with Creed’s weight on his chest and a forearm across his throat.
The pressure built. Black spots crowded his vision.
He drove his thumb into Creed’s eye socket—not enough to blind, enough to make him flinch—and when Creed’s head jerked back, Evander rolled.
They grappled in the dirt. Fists. Elbows. Knees.
Creed got a hand free and reached for his hip. A pistol cleared leather—compact, black—and Evander grabbed his wrist and drove it toward the ground.
The pistol discharged. The round buried itself in the dirt an inch from Evander’s ear.
The report deafened him on that side, but he didn’t slow.
He headbutted Creed. Felt the man’s nose give and blood splattered hot on his forehead.
Creed’s grip on the pistol faltered. Evander reached for his knife—the one on his belt—and drove it into Creed’s flank.
The blade went in clean. Three inches, maybe four. Below the ribs, above the hip. Not fatal if treated, but painful as hell.
Creed roared. The sound went up through the trees, raw and animal. His fist came around with the pistol butt and cracked it across Evander’s temple.
The world went black at the edges.
Then it went black everywhere.
Evander woke to blood dried along his temple and daylight bleeding out of the trees. He blinked blurry eyes until the edge of the shelter’s roof came into focus above him—mossy, age-silvered logs against gray sky.
The rain had stopped.
The fire was dead ash.
His skull pounded, and every breath sent a hot wire through his ribs where Creed’s knee had landed.
He sat up.
Too fast.
Way too fucking fast.
He caught himself on one hand and waited for the world to stop its Tilt-A-Whirl act.
His rifle was gone. His pack lay open beside the dead fire, contents scattered. Radio. Water. First-aid kit. Creed had searched it.
His knife lay on the stone beside him. He could still feel the resistance of Creed’s flesh around the steel, but the blade was clean, wiped of blood. The bastard had pulled it out of his side, cleaned it, set it down within reach in a clear message:
I could have killed you.
But he hadn’t.
Why?
He staggered to his feet and squinted at the late afternoon sun slanting through the trees. He’d been out for hours. Two, maybe three.
And Rainey was alone at the cabin.
His empty stomach clenched at the thought.
Acid burned the back of his throat. He’d left her there.
Sent her back with Tilly and a pistol and the absolute certainty that he would draw the threat away from her.
He’d decided it was for the best. Just like he decided on that ridgeline in Afghanistan.
Just like every other bad choice he’d ever made when someone else’s life sat in his hands.
The pattern was repeating.
Nate’s face in the snow.
Cooper’s open eyes.
River’s blood on the barn floor.
His ribs screamed when he stood. His vision grayed. He caught himself against the shelter wall, palm flat on cold stone, and breathed through the nausea until the trees stopped swimming.
Creed could have gone anywhere in three hours. Down the mountain toward town. Or—the possibility turned his stomach to ice—straight to the cabin. Straight to Rainey.
No.
He abandoned the shelter at a run.