Chapter Two
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Brenna lowered her phone, the cool edge of the night air pressing against her skin. She didn’t feel the coolness. Not really. Not after showing them that list. The stew of emotions she felt about Timberline was always going to run hot, like a fire that just kept burning away at her.
It was no doubt doing the same to Colt and Harlan.
She’d watched the shock register in their eyes. The way Colt’s jaw had locked up like he was already planning how to fight it. Same as always. Push forward, take the hit, get the job done.
But this wasn’t just a job. This felt the worst kind of personal. This felt as if they were all being dragged back into their worst nightmare.
Trying to steady herself, she stared out at the dark horizon, her pulse climbing, her breathing nowhere near level. Marcus had been twenty. Barely a man. He hadn’t even known the full truth about what had happened to his uncle at Timberline. Now he never would.
She should have stopped this from happening. She should have already tracked down the person or persons responsible for the nightmare that’d gone on at Timberline three years ago.
But she hadn’t.
Now, whoever was behind it had just drawn a target on the backs of the people on that list. On Colt’s, Harlan’s, and hers, too. After all, the message had read All of you have to die. Not they. You. Brenna was certain that you had been meant for the three of them.
She shifted her attention back to Colt when he groaned and scrubbed a hand down his face.
Brenna watched the motion, saw the tension ripple through his shoulders and settle in the corners of his eyes.
He didn’t say anything right away, but she could see it.
Grief, frustration, guilt. All of it raced just beneath the surface.
That hadn’t changed in three years.
But Colt had.
Still had that same steady presence. The black hair that always looked like he had run a hand through it too many times.
The clear blue eyes that used to cut through chaos like a blade.
But there was something else now. A weight he carried in the way he moved, as if the world had shifted under him and he was still trying to stay upright.
Failure had left its mark on him.
And it was the same mark she saw etched into Harlan’s rugged face. The edges were different, but the root was the same. Timberline had carved something into all of them. Not just the physical scars. The kind that didn’t fade. The kind that shaped everything that came after.
Brenna felt it in herself, too. The ache of everything they couldn’t undo.
And now someone was dragging that pain back into the light. Piece by piece. Name by name.
“The other five people on that list… they have to be notified,” Harlan snarled.
“I’ve already started,” Brenna said. “I managed to reach three of them on the drive here from San Antonio. Gave them as much information as I could without scaring the hell out of them.”
She paused, eyes on the gravel at her feet. Marcus’s murder, the weight of the photo, and the list pressed heavily on her.
“I left voicemails for the other two,” she added. “Told them it was urgent, that they needed to call me back right away.” Brenna paused. “I also asked Noah to step in to provide security.”
It wasn’t an off-the-wall kind of request. She’d known Noah for nearly a decade.
Back then he’d been the tech guy at Strike Force, where Colt, Harlan, and she had all worked.
Then, when the Strike Force owner had formed Crossfire Ops, he’d made Noah the head guy of it.
Noah was not only reliable and trustworthy, he had the resources they desperately needed.
“I don’t trust the local police to keep the people on that list safe,” she went on. “Not completely.”
That obviously got Colt’s attention. “You think this thing’s connected to law enforcement?”
“I think, but I don’t know,” Brenna said, choosing her words carefully. “And with everything that went down at Timberline, I can’t afford to ignore the possibility.”
She looked up and met Colt’s eyes. “You remember how fast it fell apart. We were ten minutes out, and someone inside that lodge knew we were coming. We never figured out how.”
Colt’s jaw tightened. Harlan shifted his weight but said nothing.
“I don’t know what went wrong at Timberline,” Brenna continued. “But I want to stop it from happening again.” She looked toward the dark stretch of highway beyond the ranch. “For those people on that list. For us.”
“Does Noah already have security on the three you’ve already contacted?” Colt asked.
“Bodyguards are on the way.” But she wouldn’t breathe easier until she knew there was protection in place.
“We need to find the other two,” Colt insisted, and Harlan made a grunt of agreement. “The ones you couldn’t reach.”
Brenna nodded. “I was hoping they’d call me back by now but nothing yet.”
“Let me see the names again,” Colt insisted.
She pulled out her phone, opened the photo of the list, and sent it to both Colt and Harlan. A moment later, their phones buzzed with the incoming message.
Colt’s arm brushed hers as he reached for his phone, and she felt the heat. It had always been there between them, low and steady, like a fuse waiting to be lit. But it couldn’t continue.
Not when she still questioned whether that heat had interfered with her focus at Timberline.
“It’s in your inbox,” she said, after she cleared her throat. “Both the photo of Marcus and the list.”
Colt was already reading. “Second name right after Marcus’s is Leah Grayson.” He looked up, the instant recognition in his eyes. “That’s the older sister of Zachary Grayson, right? He was the youngest hostage. Nineteen.”
Brenna felt her chest tighten. “Yeah. I drove by her place first, but she wasn’t home.
” She stopped, gathered her breath. “Since Timberline, Leah’s stayed in the limelight.
She’s pushed hard for an internal investigation after the rescue went sideways.
She’s the one who keeps publicly stating that someone tipped off the killer that we were coming. ”
“Which someone probably did,” Colt said. And Brenna and Harlan made quick sounds of agreement. “We’re going to see her.”
Brenna looked at him. “Tonight?”
“Now,” Colt confirmed.
Harlan nodded, already pocketing his phone. “We’re not losing anyone else if we can help it.”
“Leah lives about thirty miles out,” Brenna let them know. “In Bulverde. Like I said, I dropped by earlier, but no one was home.”
“Then we go there first, if she’s still not home, we track her down,” Colt replied. “We’ll take the Crossfire SUV. It’s stocked and ready. I’ll have Noah arrange for your vehicle to be picked up,” he added, already reaching for his comms.
“Thanks,” Brenna said. She glanced back toward the ranch as the ambulance pulled away, red lights fading into the dark. “Do you need to finish up here first?” she asked after Colt had made the text request to Noah for vehicle pick-up.
Colt shook his head. “It’s finished. The hostage was rescued and is on the way to the hospital. The scene’s secure. Noah will stay behind to handle the rest.”
Brenna looked at him for a long second, then turned toward the waiting SUV. The past wasn’t finished. Not by a long shot. But for now, they had somewhere else to be.
She climbed into the back seat while Colt took the driver’s side and Harlan settled up front. The SUV smelled faintly of dust, coffee, and the sharp tang of gun oil. Comfortable, in a grim sort of way.
Brenna texted Colt Leah’s address. He read it and plugged it into the GPS without a word.
As they pulled out onto the narrow road, the beams from the headlights cut across low mesquite trees and patches of sun-bleached grass.
The Hill Country stretched around them in quiet waves of stone and cedar.
It was early October, warm and dry, the kind of night where the wind didn’t cool you so much as it carried the scent of earth and faint smoke.
Brenna leaned back in her seat and tried to call the two people she hadn’t been able to reach. And she got the same results as before.
“Still no answer from either of them,” she relayed to Colt and Harlan.
“What details do you have on the other one you haven’t been able to reach?” Harlan asked. “Wallace Kemp,” he added, reading the list again from his own phone.
“He’s the uncle of Jennifer Kemp. She was the second hostage we found at Timberline. She was thirty-two, used to teach middle school in Austin. Wallace raised her after her parents died. They were close.”
She forwarded the second address to both Colt and Harlan. “He lives in Canyon Lake,” she added. “We should head there, too, after we find Leah.”
Colt gave a short nod, eyes focused on the road.
The SUV sped steadily through the dark, headlights washing over the narrow two-lane highway that curved through low hills and scattered brush. Brenna kept her eyes on the landscape for a while, watching fences blur past and live oaks dip into shadow.
Then her gaze shifted forward and caught Colt’s in the rearview mirror.
The jolt hit her fast. Not just Timberline. Not just the blood and wreckage and failure.
She saw a different night. One filled with laughter, music, and way too much liquor.
A Christmas party when they’d still been with Strike Force.
Colt had found her near the back deck, under a string of flickering lights.
They had talked, close and quiet, then he’d kissed her. No hesitation. No agenda.
That kiss had been heat and promise and something real. For a moment, she had let herself believe it could go somewhere.
But it hadn’t. Because two weeks later, Timberline happened. And everything had changed.
After that, Colt wasn’t just Colt. He was a reminder of the mission that went sideways. Of the lives they couldn’t save. Of what she had almost let herself want. She had no choice but to walk away. From the job. From him.
From all of it.
And now, here he was. Right back in her life again. Right back in the middle of another mess. Only this time, she was the one who had brought the nightmare to his doorstep.
They turned off the highway and wound through a quiet subdivision on the edge of Bulverde. The road narrowed and curved gently between thick clusters of oak and cedar, the kind of natural cover that gave a false sense of safety.
The houses out here sat on large lots, each one set back from the road with long driveways and wide lawns that faded into dark tree lines. The silence was heavier than it should have been, broken only by the crunch of tires over gravel and the low hum of the SUV’s engine.
“Third house on the right,” Brenna said, watching the GPS map shift.
They slowed in front of a long, sloping driveway flanked by limestone pillars. The house beyond was a single-story ranch-style, stone and wood with a wide front porch and soft amber lights glowing behind thick curtains. Clean. Quiet. Too still.
Brenna leaned forward between the seats to fill them in on some additional info about the woman.
“Leah Grayson is thirty-four. Unmarried. She’s a lawyer and works in victims’ rights advocacy. Runs a nonprofit that pushes for reform and support legislation. Mostly families of the missing or murdered.”
“Fitting, considering what happened to her brother,” Harlan said.
Brenna nodded. “She stayed loud about it. Even when nearly everyone else moved on, she didn’t.”
Colt eased the SUV to a stop along the shoulder, just off the drive. “Plenty of trees. A lot of privacy,” he said.
“Yeah,” Brenna murmured, eyes on the quiet house. “Exactly the kind of place you could disappear from without anyone noticing.”
Colt turned into the driveway, and Brenna sat forward, her eyes scanning the tree line, the side yard, the shadows between the porch columns. They were all doing it. Looking. Listening. Watching for any flicker of movement, any shape that didn’t belong.
No vehicles. No lights turning on. No sound except the soft hum of the engine and the occasional chirp of a night bird.
Colt parked near the edge of the driveway, cutting the engine. The silence that followed stretched too long.
“Let’s move,” he said.
They got out, doors shutting with quiet thuds, and approached the front porch with practiced caution. Brenna’s boots barely made a sound on the flagstone path as she climbed the steps behind Colt and Harlan. Her heart picked up pace, not from the walk but from the stillness of the place.
She reached the door and raised a fist. Knocked once just as she’d done on her earlier visit. This time though, the door creaked open.
Brenna’s breath caught. Colt stepped in front of her, Harlan close behind. The air inside the house smelled wrong. Metallic. Damp. Then she saw it.
A smear of blood across the tile floor. Just inside the threshold. Fresh. Red. Real.
Hell.
They were too late. Again.
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