Chapter 20
Coop
Oliver’s fist connected with my jaw while I was watching the black SUV disappear down the road. Lucky shot—caught me distracted, sent a spray of blood across the gravel.
But Mia was in that vehicle. She was getting away.
Oliver had seen it too. We’d both watched her burst from the tree line—muddy, bloody, desperate—and throw herself into the vehicle that had no business being on that road.
Bishop had been closest, had actually started running toward her, but the SUV was already accelerating before he’d made it halfway.
Now Oliver stood with his fists raised, breathing hard, those pale eyes blazing with cold fury. His tactical jacket was torn at the shoulder, mud streaking the dark fabric. The civilized mask had slipped, showing the predator underneath.
The thought burned through me brighter than the pain radiating through my skull.
My body was a catalog of damage—ribs screaming from the Russian buyer who’d gotten in a solid kick before I took him down, knuckles split from four separate fights over the past few hours, blood dripping into my left eye from a gash I didn’t remember getting.
And underneath all of it, the strange, hollow weight of having killed Snake. Of watching his eyes go wide with shock as his own momentum drove him onto the blade.
None of it mattered. She’d made it.
Bishop hung back near the tree line, one hand pressed to his broken nose. Blood soaked his sleeve, dripped steadily onto the ground. But his eyes were fixed on me, calculating. Weighing.
“You let her get away.” Oliver’s voice came out low. Dangerous.
I let him see frustration. Disgust. Not that that required much acting on my part. “I let her get away? You fucking drove her to this with your stupid games.”
His next swing was telegraphed—fury making him sloppy. I ducked under it and drove my fist into his solar plexus with everything I had left. He doubled over, wheezing.
That felt good. Way too good.
But I needed to handle this just right. Couldn’t beat him bloody, no matter how much I wanted to. I had to play smart if I wanted to walk out of here alive.
I stepped back, let my hands drop. Forced my posture into frustrated loss.
“This is just fucking fantastic.” I made my voice bitter. “You just cost me a fine piece of ass, Oliver. Can you blame her for flagging down a stranger?”
Oliver straightened slowly, one hand pressed to his stomach. His gaze flicked to Bishop, then back to me. “A stranger.”
Bishop stepped closer, his voice thick and nasal through the blood.
“Couldn’t get the plate. Too far by the time I reached the road.
” He was still watching me. Still calculating.
“Black SUV. Older model. Could have been maintenance crew from the mine. They’re the only ones who regularly use this road. ”
“She’ll bring the police,” Oliver said.
I forced a harsh laugh. “Will she? Even if she can find this place again—which I doubt—what’s she going to tell them? Her word against multiple witnesses who will tell a very different story.”
I spread my hands, warming to the lie. “We had a private gathering on private land. She got lost in the woods trying to leave and flagged down a passing car. Confused hiker. Happens all the time.”
Oliver’s jaw was tight, but I could see him working through it. Testing for weaknesses.
“At worst,” I continued, “she sends cops after me. I’m the one who brought her here. I’m the one who kept her in my cabin. If she points fingers, they’ll point at me. Not you. Not your operation.”
Silence stretched between us. Bishop shifted his weight, and I tracked the movement without turning my head. His hand had drifted toward his sidearm he wasn’t supposed to have. Not drawing, not yet. But ready.
I tried to suppress my satisfaction that she’d obviously broken Bishop’s nose. Fought back hard enough to draw blood and buy herself crucial seconds. Something fierce moved through my chest—pride, maybe. Wonder, sure as hell.
Oliver pulled a phone from his pocket.
“What happened to ‘just men and nature’?” I kept my voice mocking as I pointed to the phone. “Thought technology was against the rules.”
“The hunt has rules.” He moved his thumb across the screen. “I don’t.”
“Funny. That’s almost exactly what Snake said right before he pulled the knife he wasn’t supposed to have. Told me you had sensors up all over the property.”
Oliver paused. Bishop went still.
“Snake,” Oliver said.
“Tried to gut me during the hunt. Figured nobody would notice one more body in the woods.” I met his eyes. “He figured wrong.”
The words hung in the mountain air. I watched Oliver process them—the confirmation that one of his men was dead, that I was the one who’d done it.
“Sorry if that’s inconvenient. But when someone tries to kill me,” I said, “I don’t give them a second chance.”
Oliver studied me for a long moment. Then something shifted in those colorless eyes. Not warmth—nothing about Julian Oliver was warm—but a cold kind of recognition.
“No,” he said finally. “I don’t suppose you do.”
He lifted the phone to his ear. “Start packing. We may have a situation.” A pause. “Strip the compound. Move everything to the backup location.”
He ended the call and slid the phone away.
Bishop spoke for the first time since reporting on the license plate. “What about the buyers? The demonstrations we had scheduled?”
“Postponed. An inconvenience, nothing more. We’ll reschedule once things settle.” His eyes cut to me. “Walk with me, Coop.”
Not a request. I fell into step beside him, acutely aware of Bishop trailing behind us. The weight of his attention pressed between my shoulder blades like a targeting laser.
The trek back to the compound took hours.
Hours of silence where anything could happen—where Oliver could decide I was more liability than asset, where Bishop could put a bullet in my spine and claim I’d tried to run.
My Glock was back in the cabin. I had nothing but my hands and much more of a desire to make it out of this mission alive than when I’d started it.
But that wouldn’t stop a bullet.
I cataloged every sound. The crunch of our boots on gravel. The rhythm of Bishop’s breathing behind me, steady and controlled.
Oliver didn’t speak until we crested the last ridge and the compound came into view.
The place swarmed with activity—men loading crates into trucks, carrying equipment from buildings, shouting orders at each other. Not panic, exactly. More like a well-rehearsed evacuation, everyone moving with purpose. Oliver had clearly planned for this contingency.
The buyers’ expensive vehicles were already streaming down the mountain road.
Several of the men required assistance getting to their cars—the Russian with cracked ribs, the yakuza’s translator cradling his dislocated shoulder.
A few others sported black eyes and split lips.
Trophies from my efforts to slow them down during the hunt.
One of them—the Hong Kong buyer whose jaw I’d nearly broken—paused to stare at me as we passed. Pure hatred in his eyes. He said something to his companion in rapid Cantonese, and they both looked at me like men memorizing a face for later.
Oliver noticed. Of course he did.
“You made enemies tonight,” he observed.
“They were between me and my property. Didn’t take kindly to being moved.”
We stopped at the edge of the compound. Oliver surveyed the organized chaos, his expression unreadable. The Gathering was over. His carefully orchestrated weapons demonstration, his entertainment, his profitable weekend of illegal arms dealing—cut short because his prey had escaped.
“This is your fault.” His voice was quiet. Controlled. More dangerous than shouting. “If you hadn’t brought her—”
“If I hadn’t brought her, you’d have used some other woman, and the same thing might have happened.
” I met his glare without flinching. “You threw her into an impossible situation, then acted surprised when she did whatever it took to survive. Any woman with half a brain would’ve done exactly what she did. ”
“She was supposed to be caught. The hunt—”
“How about next time, you focus on business first and games later.” I stepped closer, using my height. “Half your buyers didn’t care about chasing some woman through the woods. They came for weapons. For deals. Give them what they want before you play with your food.”
Bishop’s hand moved toward his gun. I saw it in my peripheral vision, felt the shift in the air behind me. One wrong word and this went sideways. One wrong move and I ended up like Snake.
Oliver raised a hand, barely a gesture, and Bishop went still.
The silence stretched. I could hear my own heartbeat, steady despite everything. Could feel the absence of my Glock like a missing limb. If I had to kill Oliver right now—if Bishop drew and I had to move—I’d go for the throat. Collapse the windpipe before Bishop could get the shot off.
If I was going to die here, this fucking bastard was going down with me.
Then Oliver laughed.
Not warmth. Nothing like warmth. But something that might have been amusement.
“You know what I like about you, Coop?” He shook his head slowly. “Everyone else trips over themselves to tell me what I want to hear. You tell me I’m wrong to my face.”
I waited. Still not sure this wasn’t ending with a bullet in my brain.
“I’ve been thinking about expanding operations. I need men who don’t flinch when things get complicated.” Oliver’s pale eyes held mine. “I want you on my team. Full time. Not just weapons consulting—running things. Building something that lasts.”
Every part of me recoiled. This undercover gig was supposed to be a one-time favor—help the feds gather intel, then go back to my life at Warrior Security. I wasn’t law enforcement. The darkness that let me play men like Oliver wasn’t something I wanted to feed.
And now there was Mia. Alive. Safe. Back in my life in ways I hadn’t dared to hope for. Whatever came next, I wanted her in it.