Dr. Kingston (Brothers Paradise #5)

Chapter 2

Two

Kingston

The rifle feels wrong in my hands tonight.

I carry it for predators—bears nosing for fallen grapes, coyotes testing the fence line—not for people.

But for weeks, someone’s been digging up vines across the valley, yanking out years of work like weeds.

I caught headlights sweeping our rows, and I knew I needed to do something.

I built a house on this land so I could keep an eye on this part of my family’s vineyard.

I was taking a break from work when I noticed the truck in the vines and grabbed the rifle. There’s a storm coming in, and it’s the perfect time for a thief to take advantage. Shadows flicker between posts. One of them moves.

I cock the rifle. It’s purely a scare tactic. I’m a doctor, and I save lives, not take them. “Come out with your hands up!”

My voice snaps the quiet in two and ricochets off the ridge. The only answer is the low hiss of water somewhere it shouldn’t be. A trickle? No, more than that. A steady stream. The sound lifts the hair on my neck. Flooding on a March night means ice by morning. Ice means death.

Boot scuff. Quick. Close.

I sight down the barrel, breath fogging. “Now!”

A figure steps into the light—small, layered up, mud climbing from boots to knees, hands lifted. A beanie under a headlamp. Dirt across the cheek like war paint.

“Don’t shoot me, Kingston.” The voice is sharp, familiar, and absolutely furious. “Unless you plan to take out a burst main while you’re at it.”

For a second, my brain refuses to catch up. My finger freezes near the trigger guard, my breath locked in my chest. Of all the people I expected in the rows, Elise Anderson wasn’t one of them. Shame burns through the adrenaline.What the hell am I doing aiming a rifle at her?

I drop the muzzle so fast my shoulder twinges. “Elise?”

She yanks off her headlamp and squints into my lights. “Yes. And if you’ve got another order, make it ‘Hand me that wrench.’ I’m losing block ten.”

The relief hits first—she’s not a thief—but a different kind of panic follows. “What the hell are you doing out here alone?”

“Trying to keep half your merlot and cabernet from drowning and freezing solid before sunrise.” She jerks a thumb over her shoulder.

“Your main is jammed open. I can’t shut the gate.

The water’s running blind, and the truck got mired.

I was told there was a problem in block ten, but it looks like this is covering close to twenty blocks. ”

I push past her, the rifle bumping my thigh, and listen. She’s right. The water’s not just running, it’s roaring low, a steady press through soil. I angle my light down a row. The ground gleams dark around the trunks, a slick that shouldn’t be there this time of year.

“Pump house,” I say, already moving. “Now.”

Elise keeps pace, her breath huffing beside me. “If we don’t relieve pressure and shut off the flow, this whole block turns into a skating rink when the temperature drops.”

“This close to spring, we won’t survive a freeze,” I murmur. “The ground will be too hard for new growth and roots.”

“Which is why I didn’t wait for the night crew,” she fires back. “Or for you to stop aiming guns at me.”

Point taken. “I thought you were the one digging vines.”

“Trust me,” she pants, boots slapping frozen mud, “if I was stealing your vines, I wouldn’t wear a headlamp.”

The pump house squats at the edge of the block, a metal box with an attitude. I swing the door open. The control panel flickers—then dies—then flickers back. Not right. I kneel, pull open the manual valve cover, and swear. The gate wheel is jammed, metal teeth chewed.

Elise shines her headlamp for me. Her hands are raw through ripped gloves, knuckles nicked. She’s been out there a while. “Someone wedged it?”

“Or worse.” I grab the big wrench off the wall. “Hold the light steady.”

She does, bracing one shoulder against the frame as I lean into the wheel. It groans. Doesn’t give.

“It’s seized,” I grit out. “Or blocked.”

Elise angles closer, lamp steady. I smell damp wool and cold air and the barest hint of citrus shampoo under mud.

Why the hell does that come through now?

It’s disarming how the smallest details sneak past my guard.

I’ve spent years building walls, and one whiff of citrus shampoo makes me wonder if I trust them to hold.

“Again,” she says.

I put my back into it. The wheel moves a quarter turn. The pipes thump. Pressure shifts. With another shove, it moves another notch. The water noise eases a fraction outside.

“Keep going,” Elise says like she’s calling a play. “You’ve got it.”

“Don’t coach me on my own valves.”

“Then move faster.”

I push, breath burning, and the wheel finally spins free. Somewhere down the line, a clamp rattles and settles. The outside roar drains to a good, solid hush.

We both stand there, listening, like we don’t trust it. Then we step out. The flood is still there, but the shine on the soil isn’t growing. The water finds the little trenches Elise must have cut and slithers away from the trunks.

“You did those by hand?” I ask, following the faint channels snaking between rows.

“With a shovel and a lot of swearing,” she says. “The truck’s buried to the axles in mud, but the headlights helped.”

I turn toward the row road. Her pickup sits cocked at a bad angle, deep in muck that shouldn’t exist in this cold unless something warmed the ground—like running water.

“You shouldn’t be out here alone,” I say again, softer.

She tips me a look. The beanie shadows her eyes, but I still catch the spark. “I didn’t think you were in town. If I’d called, would you have answered?”

“Yes.”

She nods once, accepts it, and points back at the pump house. “The panel’s not just glitching,” she notes. “This doesn’t make any sense. It has to have been messed with.”

Cold crawls up my spine. I return to crouch by the control box and pop the lower cover. Inside, the timer wires are neat, except for one that’s been cut and stripped, then twisted back together sloppy. There’s a thin wedge of metal stuffed behind the gate wheel teeth.

“Sabotage,” I say. The word tastes bitter. Somebody isn’t just careless. They’re targeting us. And if they can get to Paradise Hill land, which clearly they can, then every block is at risk.

Elise nods. “That’s my read. This is the first time it’s come to this side of the property. Tarryn is going to be upset.”

I look at her. Mud to mid-thigh. Hands shaking from cold, not fear. My jacket would swallow her, and for some reason, that image comes into sharp focus.

“Move,” I say. “You’re freezing.”

“I’m working.”

“Not an either-or.” I shrug out of my coat and drape it over her shoulders before she can argue. She opens her mouth anyway, then closes it when the heat hits. The collar swallows her chin. She looks smaller, but not fragile. Just stubborn and capable and all too willing to bleed for our land.

“Thanks,” she says, muffled.

“Come on.” I shoulder the rifle and gesture toward her truck. “I’m putting a watch on this block until dawn.”

“We need sandbags,” she says, back to business. “There’s a pallet by the lower shed.”

“I’ll grab them.” I hesitate. “You okay?”

She gives me a look that says don’t be ridiculous and yes, but also you’re not wrong to ask. “I wish you’d recognized me before you tried to scare me out of my skin.”

“I’m not used to catching friends in the rows after dark,” I say. “I’m used to catching trouble.”

Her mouth twitches. “To be fair, I can be trouble.”

I don’t smile. But it’s close. “Let’s go.”

We jog to the lower shed, our lights bouncing.

A coyote yips way off on the ridge, and another answers.

The night feels thinner now that the water is quiet.

Elise helps me muscle the sandbags into the bed of my truck.

The sleet falls from the sky. We build a lip around the worst pooling.

It’s ugly but effective. The water runs off toward the ditch instead of hugging the trunks.

Fifteen minutes later, the crisis is contained. My fingers are numb. Hers have gone from red to pale under the ripped gloves. I load the spent shovel. We stand there, steam rising from our clothes in the headlights’ heat, breathing like we just ran a race we didn’t train for.

“Whoever did that to the valve knew exactly what to hit,” she says, watching the trench carry the last of the overflow. “Timer wire. Gate teeth.”

“The thief rumors,” I say. “All those vines pulled up in the valley—maybe not just theft. Maybe a campaign.”

“Against the valley or against Paradise Hill?” she asks, and the way she says Paradise Hill carries both meanings—the place and my family.

“Don’t know yet.” I scan the ground. The mud is a mess, but there are prints besides ours—wider stride, deeper heel. Not work-boot treads I recognize. I take a picture. “But whoever it was has been here recently.”

She nods. “The water was already running when I arrived.”

“You came alone,” I say.

“You were alone too,” she counters.

“I live here.”

“You pointed that rifle at me.”

“Because I care about the land.”

Her chin lifts. “So do I.”

We stare each other down for a beat, breath fogging between us. Then she shifts, practical nature winning over pride. “We should flag the bad rows for the morning crews and call Tarryn. And Trace. They’ll want to know.”

“They’ll hear it from me.” I pull out my phone, snap a few shots of the panel, the wedge. “And from you. You’re staying while I make the calls.”

“I’m not leaving until I’m sure the flow is staying off,” she says. “And my truck still needs rescuing.”