Chapter Nineteen
They moved like a single, efficient animal—no wasted motion, no theatrics—because there wasn’t time for either.
Sheriff Chase was on a makeshift gurney, blood slowed and pressure applied, her breathing ragged but steady enough for now.
Isla had the comm open with the ambulance team, giving them a corridor to come in on as soon as Noah cleared it.
Rena’s hands shook a little as she checked the binding on the sheriff.
The mask still left her face raw from the gas and the flash, and her lungs tasted of metal and smoke.
She had that sharp, stupid rush of grateful panic.
Grateful that the sheriff was still with them, panicked because it had been close enough to count every heartbeat.
She should have been purely clinical, but the anger beneath the adrenaline wouldn’t let her be. Corrine’s voice, cold and triumphant, kept replaying in her head. Collateral damage. God help her, Rena wanted to scream.
Gage was at her shoulder, silent, his fingers steady when they brushed hers. For a second their eyes locked and the world narrowed to the small, ridiculous human need that had nothing to do with tactics. It was relief that they were breathing, grief that someone else had taken the hit for it.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t need to, but his jaw was tight, and she felt the promise behind it. They would finish this. They hadn’t come this far to lose the ground now.
The EMTs lifted Chase into the waiting ambulance. One of them tightened straps, another barked a short status. Rena followed the movement until the doors shut, then stepped back into the night and met the eyes of the team.
Haggard, raw, all of them marked by the same narrow escape.
“You think she’ll make it?” Cal asked.
“She will,” Rena insisted. Because she didn’t want to consider the alternative.
Moving faster now, they started back toward the van and the dark road to Crossfire Ops.
Tonight had been a close call. That closeness had a taste that didn’t leave.
Rena let it harden into something useful, a promise that they’d make sure nobody else ever had to pay for Corrine’s vendetta.
The rest of the night would be for answering that.
Once they were all back in the van, Cal took off, the tires chewing up the rough trail. The ride back to Crossfire Ops was a blur of low light and comm checks. Isla kept one hand on the field console, feeding intel and keeping the drone circling over the compound.
“Sheriff’s stable,” she relayed to them. “Ambulance ETA to hospital in twelve.”
Rena could see on the monitors that deputies were already sweeping the perimeter where they’d fought. More cruisers from the county were on the way to Crossfire Ops to bolster the compound. It felt like a small mercy, people moving, responding, not panicking.
They were still several miles out when Beck’s voice came through on the comm. “Four Hummers inbound at high speed, heading for the security gate of headquarters. I’m marking them now.”
Her stomach dropped. Isla overlaid the feed with Beck’s live video. Four boxy Hummers roared along the access road, lights off, silhouettes heavy with weapon mounts.
“Noah?” Cal asked.
“Noah’s en route,” Isla said. “He’s diverting units. He wants every available operative at the gate. He’s got a dozen ready to go, armed and waiting.”
Rena felt a cold focus settle over her, the same clarity that surfaces in the worst moments. Prioritize, position, protect.
“We’re five minutes out,” Isla said into the mic. “Hold that perimeter.”
Gage’s hand found Rena’s for a fraction of a second—steady, brief—and then he was back to the radio, to the plan. The van pushed harder down the dirt, headlights slicing the black. Behind them, deputies moved to cordon and clear. Ahead of them, men in heavy Hummers were bearing down on the gate.
They were running toward the next danger, the wedge of the night that promised more of the same. Chaos, bullets, decisions with no perfect answer. Rena let the steady, terrible certainty fill her.
The fight wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
All that money Corrine had spent. All that meticulous hatred poured into metal and men so someone could try to burn down the life Noah had built. Rena wished that the pain could land on Corrine and no one else.
Rena’s thoughts were interrupted when Beck’s voice crackled in her ear. “I’m going to make some problems for our friends in those Hummers. Hold tight.”
On the monitor in front of her, the live feed from Beck’s chopper flickered, black sky, pale moonlight, and the four Hummers barreling down the narrow country road toward Crossfire Ops. Their headlights were still dark, their engines throwing up plumes of dust as they ate the distance.
She watched as the helicopter dove lower.
Rena could almost feel the vibration through the speakers and the rhythmic chop of blades hammering the air, turning the quiet Texas night into a storm.
Dust and debris exploded across the screen as Beck’s spotlight cut on, slicing through the dark and painting the lead Hummer in blinding white.
The first driver jerked the wheel instinctively, trying to escape the glare.
The heavy vehicle fishtailed on the loose dirt, tires spitting gravel.
The second Hummer swerved to avoid it, clipping the back bumper, and both went spinning.
Rena gripped the seat, watching as metal slammed into metal.
Sparks flared as one of the vehicles rolled, landing on its side in a choking cloud of dust.
Beck wasn’t done. He pulled the chopper even lower, rotor wash flattening the dry grass along the road.
The remaining two Hummers tried to power through, but the turbulence was too strong.
Debris lashed their windshields, engines whining as the drivers fought to stay on the road.
One veered off and plowed into a ditch, nose first. The last screeched to a halt, tires smoking.
“Targets down,” Beck reported, his voice clipped, breathing heavy. “All four stopped.”
Cal muttered, “Hell of a way to stop a convoy.”
The chaos was indeed brutal, efficient. “But it worked,” she said softly, more to herself than to the others. “Let’s hope no one else has to pay for Corrine’s war.”
Rena leaned closer to the monitor, her pulse a steady drum in her ears.
The live feed from Beck’s chopper showed a streak of flashing red and blue tearing through the night.
County deputies arriving fast, their sirens fracturing the quiet.
The four Hummers sat crippled along the dirt road like beasts gutted mid-charge.
Two were on their sides, one buried nose-first in a ditch, another stalled crosswise across the road, smoke bleeding from the hood.
Dust still churned in the rotor wash as Beck hovered low, his spotlight sweeping across the wreckage. The comms crackled with layered voices. Deputies shouting commands, operatives calling out positions, the faint metallic clatter of weapons being kicked aside.
“Hands where I can see them,” a deputy barked over the open line.
Another voice, Colt’s, cut in from Team Two. “We’re securing the perimeter now.”
Rena blew out a long breath. Relief didn’t come easy, that’s for sure. Her body stayed wound tight.
The view shifted as Beck banked, circling once before lowering the helicopter to the ground.
The rotor wash whipped up the dirt again, sending the deputies ducking their heads and shielding their eyes, but it worked.
Anyone still thinking of running would have to get through a wall of spinning blades and men with guns trained on them.
“No one’s going anywhere,” Beck reported.
On the screen, she could see the suspects being dragged out of the Hummers, their faces half-obscured by masks, hands bound behind their backs with zip ties.
The flashing lights from the cruisers threw everything in stuttering color—red, blue, red, blue—across the twisted metal and the armed silhouettes of law enforcement.
The moment Cal pulled to a stop on the road, Rena and the rest of the team climbed out of the van. The air smelled of oil, burnt rubber, and the acrid bite of exhaust still settling.
Cal and Garrett were already moving ahead, checking IDs while Isla set up her portable console to start logging data. Rena’s gaze swept the wreckage. Four Hummers, all disabled, their heavy frames scarred by dust, bullet pocks, and the rough stop Beck’s helicopter had forced.
The men who’d been inside the Hummers were all on the ground now, wrists bound behind them, their faces slick with sweat and frustration. They looked like soldiers, but there was no unity in them. Just hired muscle.
“Their leader’s gone,” Gage said, his voice carrying enough weight for everyone nearby to hear. “Corrine Astor is dead.”
The words hung there a beat, a single, hard fact cutting through the noise of radios and sirens.
One of the mercs, a stocky man with a shaved head and a busted lip, spat into the dirt. “Figures,” he muttered. “She stiffed us on the rest of the pay.”
Another, still kneeling, laughed darkly. “Guess that means the job’s officially over.”
Rena stared at them, disgust rising like bile. No loyalty. No conviction. Just greed. Corrine had bought their violence the same way she’d tried to buy her revenge, and they’d taken the money without a second thought.
“You were willing to kill kids for a paycheck,” she said, not really expecting an answer. The stocky man looked away, jaw tight, saying nothing.
Gage’s voice hardened beside her. “You’re done. Every one of you.”
Deputies moved in then, guiding the men to their feet, cuffing them tighter, reading rights as flashlights and cameras documented everything. Isla’s drone hovered above, recording every angle, every face.
As one of the deputies led the last man away, Rena exchanged a look with Gage, tired, fierce, unspoken. They’d stopped the attack. Crossfire Ops was still standing.