Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
The world snapped open around Isobel, shards of noise and light colliding with the black.
Rone dragged her from the building, and they tumbled; Isobel’s cheek hit dirt, breath trapped under Rone’s weight as another suppressed shot cracked through the air.
Splinters showered her hair. She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until he rolled, dragging her behind the mangroves.
His arm locked around her shoulders, solid and unyielding, his heartbeat slamming against her back.
For a moment, all she could hear was that—his heart, the rasp of his breathing, the faint mechanical click of distant rifles resetting.
A dog’s growl tore through the night. Not close but deeper in the trees. Echo. Alive.
She blinked grit from her lashes, the clearing dissolving into flickers of moonlight and shadow. Blake’s men shifted positions, forming a half circle toward the ranger station. The glow of a laser sight swept low across the sand before vanishing again.
Isobel’s body was trembling, but not from fear. The kind of trembling that comes from holding still when every instinct screamed to move. To run. To reach for her father, or for the dog, or for anything that might anchor her to something.
Shade’s voice came again, disembodied, almost playful through the radio’s static. “Didn’t your daddy teach you better than to come here without knocking?”
Her throat closed. The sound of that voice was too calm, too measured—someone who already believed he’d won.
Rone’s hand closed around hers, grounding her. “Stay low,” he whispered.
She nodded, swallowing hard. Her mouth tasted like salt and fear.
From the tree line to the west came a slow crunch of boots on dry leaves. More than one pair. The rhythm was deliberate. Not hunting—they were herding.
“Blake,” she hissed, “they’re circling—”
“I see them.” His silhouette lifted a hand signal, crisp and clean. His men adjusted their angles, one dropping to a knee, the other sighting through the NVG scope.
A faint metallic click answered from the ranger station porch—the distinct, unmistakable sound of a safety flipping off.
Everything in her stilled. Even the crickets stopped.
Rone tensed beside her. She felt it ripple through him—a controlled violence coiling beneath his calm. He was measuring distance, sound, timing. It was the same precision he’d had when he’d saved her life the first time. Only this time, the odds were worse.
“On my mark,” Blake murmured into his mic, voice low enough she barely caught it. “We move south through the cut. No sound. No light.”
A shot split the night. Not from the porch this time—from the north woods. A scream followed, short and sharp, ending in a wet thud.
The air filled with the hiss of radios coming alive. Muffled orders, movement.
“They’re flanking,” Rone breathed. “Laurel’s tightening the net.”
She caught the flicker of red dots dancing across the brush ahead—three, maybe four—before Rone pulled her up and whispered, “Move.”
They plunged into the mangroves, crouched low, branches whipping against their shoulders. The smell of decay was thick enough to taste. Somewhere behind them, automatic fire chewed through the night, bullets clipping branches with the precision of fate.
Rone took Isobel to the ground and covered her head.
The gunfire stopped. The silence that followed was worse.
Isobel’s pulse thundered in her ears as she pressed into the mud, every breath shallow and burning. Rone’s hand was still on her back, solid, grounding, but the night had gone still—too still. No rustling from the reeds. No distant calls. No radio chatter.
Something had changed.
Rone rolled off, and Isobel caught Blake lift a hand, signaling his men forward, but before they moved, a flare hissed to life overhead. Blinding red light flooded the clearing, painting everything in blood.
“Down!” Rone barked, but it was too late.
Voices erupted from every direction—sharp, commanding, confident. “Hands up! Weapons down!”
Shapes emerged from the trees—black uniforms, rifles raised. Laurel Tide. A dozen at least. Maybe more. They’d been herded, just like Rone had feared.
Isobel’s stomach dropped as Blake cursed under his breath and raised his weapon halfway before freezing. They were surrounded. No cover. No escape. The sound of boots splashing through water drew closer.
Rone stepped in front of her, lowering his own weapon slowly, his body a shield even now. “Don’t,” he said quietly. “They’ll gun you down.”
She wanted to argue, to fight, but the look in his eyes, the grim resignation there, stopped her.
“Drop it,” someone ordered, voice slick with confidence.
A man stepped into the light. Thin shoulders, salt and pepper hair with a gray beard. A scar down his cheek that made his smile look crueler. She knew that face.
The docks.
The man who’d watched her when the sparks flew from the pedestals. He’d appeared helpless and broken and confused, but now he stood straight and strong and sure. No deadly.
Lucky.
Her blood turned cold.
“Well,” Lucky drawled, his grin widening as his men swept their rifles across the group. “Ain’t this a Christmas miracle. Three ghosts walk right into my swamp.”
Blake said nothing, just tightened his jaw and lowered his gun the rest of the way. His men followed.
Lucky’s gaze slid over to Isobel and lingered, deliberate and heavy. “Shame your daddy didn’t teach you better than to play in other people’s waters.”
Her chest constricted. “Where is he?” she demanded before she could stop herself.
Lucky smirked, then lifted something from his pocket—a smartphone, screen cracked but glowing faintly in the red light. “Since you asked so nice.”
He tapped the screen.
Static crackled. Then— “Isobel… I need—”
Her father’s voice.
Her breath caught, a sound too sharp and broken to contain. The voice was faint, recorded through interference, but there was no mistaking it. Her father’s low, rough tone. The way he said her name.
Rone went rigid beside her. Blake didn’t react.
Lucky paced closer, letting the phone dangle casually from his hand, the recording still playing. “Took me a while to find this,” he said. “Guess your old man thought he could send messages where I wouldn’t find them. Shame about that.”
Her pulse roared in her ears. “Where is he?” she said again, voice cracking. “What did you do to him?”
Lucky stopped right in front of her. The phone’s glow lit his face, throwing shadows across that cruel smile. “Sweetheart,” he said softly, “you’re a smart girl. You already know the answer.”
The phone clicked off.
The night swallowed the silence that followed.
Her knees gave out. She couldn’t breathe. The air burned in her chest.
Her father wasn’t— No. No, she refused to believe it.
“He’s lying,” she whispered. “He’s lying.”
But Blake’s expression told her otherwise. That tiny shake of his head—grim, final—shattered the fragile thread she’d been clinging to.
Her vision blurred. The world tilted, the edges of the swamp swimming in red light. Acid boiled up her throat.
Lucky laughed, low and cruel. “You think we’d go through all this trouble if Daddy Daniels was still breathing?
Nah. Thought he’d sent you the info, tried to track you down, but Daddy wouldn’t squeal.
Tried lying to him and saying we already had you, still didn’t tell us.
Don’t know how, but that man kept your location a secret all these years. ”
“Then how’d you find him?” she managed between pants.
“We didn’t. That’s the beauty of all this. We never did track him or you down. Didn’t even know about you at the time. A new hire to the company told a story about his prison days. A real winner of a story that caught some attention. You know what he told us?”
She could only shake her head. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks, and nausea rolled up her throat.
“Told us about a man that everyone had said was murdered, but our guy was on mop duty and saw him walk out of the infirmary. It took one leak to the FBI that we’d found out, and he came running to protect his family.
Kept him alive long enough to record his voice to generate phrases from.
Techie stuff above my pay grade, but amazing what AI can do now.
He was useful for a while. Until he wasn’t. ”
Laurel Tide minions marched them through the ruin of the ranger station like trophies, wrists cinched with plastic.
Rone counted boots, guns, angles without thinking.
Twelve in the outer ring. Four in close.
Two on the catwalk above pretending they were posts.
The odor of wet plywood and old fuel clung to the air breathing out through the hurricane-torn walls.
A small room in the back sparkled with Christmas lights as if mocking happier times.
He couldn’t gauge Blake’s part in this. Misstep—it had to be based on the shocked look on his face.
Not that anyone else could see it except an old military brother who’d beat him at poker on more than one occasion.
But if so, where were the Feds? Backup? They were supposed to be staged on the island.
Lucky walked backward ahead of them, an easy smile riding his face like something he’d practiced in a mirror. The smile didn’t reach his eyes. Nothing did.
He stopped in the middle of the open room, under a dangling bulb that swayed in the wind. “Let’s not drag out the grief parade,” he said, head tilting toward Isobel. “Your daddy’s dead.”
Rone felt her flinch by his side. Her breath hitched once, then went thin and fast. She didn’t make a sound.
She just stood there like someone had pulled a wire straight through her sternum and tied it to the floor.
He wanted to reach for her, take her in his arms and promise her everything would be okay.
He didn’t. He couldn’t. Any move toward her would be a trigger here.
Blake’s jaw worked. “You’re lying.”