Chapter Twelve
Eddy was out of bed before the first siren finished wailing, muscle memory taking over while his brain caught up. Jeans. Boots. Gun from the nightstand. Cut from the chair.
Penny sat up in the tangled sheets, eyes wide. "What—"
"Compound's under attack." He was already at the door. "Cabin by the kennels. Lock yourself in with the dogs. Don't come out for anyone but me."
"Eddy—"
He crossed back to her in two strides, grabbed her face, kissed her hard. "I'm coming back. Now go."
Then he was out the door and running.
The compound had erupted into controlled chaos. Brothers poured from cabins, weapons drawn, heading for defensive positions they'd drilled a hundred times. The siren cut off, replaced by Still's voice booming across the property.
"Road and water! They're hitting both! Cottonmouth, you've got the gate. Eddy, dock. Everyone else, fall in!"
Eddy sprinted for the water.
He found Tailwater already in position, rifle braced against the dock railing, scanning the dark cove. The moon had set an hour ago—perfect conditions for an assault. Nothing but starlight and shadow.
"How many?" Eddy asked.
"Scout counted fourteen, maybe more. Four vehicles on the road, three boats coming in from the east channel." Tailwater's jaw was tight. "This isn't Samples' ragtag bullshit. This is organized."
Welch. Had to be. Kirby's distribution coordinator, the organizational brain behind the whole operation. The kind of man who planned assaults like supply chains—maximum efficiency, coordinated timing, multiple attack vectors.
"They'll hit the dock first," Eddy said. "Draw defenders to the water, then punch through the gate while we're distracted."
"So what do we do?"
"Let them think it's working."
Proof materialized from the darkness, shotgun in hand. "Still says I'm with you. What's the play?"
Eddy pointed toward the tree line on the cove's western edge. "Get in position there. When the boats commit to the shallows, we collapse on them from two sides. Tailwater holds the dock, I flank right, you hit them from the left."
"And if they don't commit?"
"They will." Eddy checked his pistol. "Welch is smart, but he's never fought water. He'll underestimate how vulnerable boats are once they're beached."
Proof nodded and disappeared into the trees.
The night went quiet.
Eddy crouched at the end of the dock, River pressed against his leg, and waited.
The boats came twenty minutes later.
Three of them, running dark, engines barely audible over the lap of water against the pilings. Eddy counted silhouettes—four men per boat, maybe five. Twelve to fifteen from the water alone. Plus whatever was hitting the gate.
Kirby hadn't come himself. Of course he hadn't. Men like Kirby sent others to do the bleeding.
But Welch was here. Eddy could see him in the lead boat—lean figure in the stern, directing the approach with hand signals. The coordinator. The planner. The man who'd helped build a drug empire on strangled dogs and terrorized women.
Tonight, the coordinator was going to learn what happened when you brought logistics to a gunfight.
The boats spread out as they entered the cove, approaching from three angles. Smart formation—harder to defend against, forced the defenders to split attention. Welch knew what he was doing.
But he didn't know the water.
The lead boat nosed toward the dock, aiming for the sandy beach just west of the pilings. Welch wanted his men on solid ground before engaging. Good tactic.
Bad choice of landing zone.
The shallows there were deceptive. Looked like easy beach access, but the bottom dropped away sharply about twenty feet out, and the current—subtle but relentless—pushed everything toward a rocky outcrop that would shred a hull.
Eddy had capsized a kayak there once, teaching a tourist who didn't listen. He remembered exactly how the water moved.
The lead boat hit the shallows and immediately started drifting. The pilot overcorrected, engine whining, and the hull scraped against submerged rock.
Now.
Eddy rose from his position and opened fire.
The night exploded.
Muzzle flash strobed across the water. Men screamed and dove for cover. The lead boat's pilot went down, and the vessel spun wildly, crashing into the second boat coming up behind it.
Proof hit them from the left, his shotgun booming like thunder. One man flew backward off the second boat, hit by a load of buckshot that turned his chest into hamburger. Another tried to return fire and caught two rounds in the face.
Tailwater held the dock, methodical and precise, picking off anyone who tried to make it to the pilings.
The third boat broke off, trying to circle around to the eastern shore. Eddy tracked it with his pistol, waiting for the angle—
There.
He put three rounds into the hull below the waterline. The boat started taking on water immediately, listing hard to port. Men jumped overboard, swimming for shore, easy targets in the dark water.
Gunfire erupted from the gate. Cottonmouth engaging the road team. The whole compound was a war zone now, muzzle flash and screaming and the acrid smell of gunpowder drifting across the cove.
But Eddy's focus was on one man.
Welch had abandoned the lead boat, wading through the shallows toward the tree line. He moved fast, staying low, using the chaos as cover. Most of the defenders were focused on the boats still in the water.
Not Eddy.
He slipped off the dock and into the lake, the cold water hitting him like a punch. River whined from the shore, trained to stay, but every line of the dog's body said he wanted to follow.
"Stay," Eddy said quietly. "Guard the dock."
Then he submerged and swam.
The water was black and cold and absolutely silent.
Eddy moved through it like he'd been born there, pulling himself toward the spot where Welch had entered the tree line. The sounds of battle faded to a dull roar above the surface. Down here, there was only the current and the darkness and the target he was hunting.
He surfaced behind a fallen log, ten feet from where Welch was crouched in the brush. The man had a radio in one hand, pistol in the other, barking orders that nobody was following because half his assault force was dead or drowning.
"Pull back! Regroup at the east channel! Pull—"
Eddy rose from the water like something out of a nightmare.
Welch spun, gun coming up, but Eddy was already on him. He grabbed the pistol and twisted, bones cracking, the weapon clattering away into the underbrush. Welch screamed and swung with his other hand, and Eddy caught the blow, redirected it, used the man's momentum to put him face-first in the mud.
"Kirby sent you," Eddy said, pressing his knee into the man's spine. "To do his dirty work. To die for his operation."
"Fuck you—"
Eddy grabbed Welch's hair and yanked his head back. "Where is he?"
"I don't—"
"Where. Is. Kirby."
Welch laughed. A wet, desperate sound. "You think killing me stops anything? He's got more men. More resources. You're just—"
Eddy slammed the man's face into the mud. Held him there. Watched him thrash and claw at the earth, trying to breathe, trying to survive.
"My woman's mother is in his house," Eddy said quietly. "Living with a monster because she's too scared to leave. Your boss put her there. Put Penny in danger. Killed a dog to prove he could."
He pulled Welch up just enough to gasp for air.
"So I'm going to ask one more time. Where does Kirby operate?"
Blood and mud streamed down Welch's face. His broken hand hung limp at his side. But there was still defiance in his eyes—the stubbornness of a man who'd built a career on organization and control.
"Lake house," he spat. "Meets his supplier there every Thursday. Two guards, nobody else. But you'll never—"
Eddy put him under.
The lake was twenty feet away. He dragged Welch by the collar, through the brush, over the rocks, into the cold black water. The man fought—clawed at Eddy's arms, kicked at his legs, made sounds that weren't quite words.
None of it mattered.
Eddy held him down with both hands, watching the bubbles rise and break.
The battle raged on behind them—gunfire, shouting, the roar of an engine as someone tried to escape—but here at the edge of the cove, there was only the water and the drowning man and the absolute certainty of what needed to be done.
Welch stopped fighting after ninety seconds.
Went limp after two minutes.
Eddy held him under for another thirty, just to be sure.
Then he let the current take the body, the same way it had taken Samples, the same way it would take anyone who threatened what was his.
The compound was chaos when Eddy emerged from the water.
Bodies littered the dock and the shore. Brothers moved through the carnage, checking pulses, collecting weapons. Someone was moaning near the gate—enemy or ally, Eddy couldn't tell from here.
He found Still on the lodge porch, blood on his shirt, surveying the damage.
"Welch?" the president asked.
"Done."
"Road team?"
"Cottonmouth's finishing up. They broke when the boats went down." Still shook his head. "Fourteen men against a fortified compound. Welch was smart, but not that smart."
"Casualties?"
"Two prospects hit, neither critical. Proof took some shrapnel—he's bitching about it, so he's fine." Still's eyes met Eddy's. "Your woman?"
Eddy's blood went cold. "Where is she?"
"Kennel cabin. Last I heard—"
He was already running.
He found her exactly where he'd told her to be.
The cabin near the kennels was dark, door locked, windows intact. Eddy pounded on it twice. "Penny! It's me!"
The lock clicked. The door opened.
She stood in the doorway with a fire extinguisher raised over her head like a club, her three dogs pressed against her legs, every line of her body coiled to fight. When she saw his face, her arms dropped.
"Eddy."
"You okay?"
"Someone tried the door." Her voice was steady, but he could see her hands shaking. "About ten minutes ago. Rattled the handle, then left."
"You didn't open it."
"Of course I didn't open it." She set down the fire extinguisher and stepped into his arms. "I'm not an idiot."
He crushed her against his chest, soaking wet and covered in mud, and didn't give a damn about the mess he was making. She was alive. Unharmed. Safe.
"It's over," he said into her hair. "They're done."
"How many?"
"Enough." He pulled back to look at her face. "You held your position."
"You told me to."
"Most people don't listen."
"I'm not most people." She touched his face, fingers tracing the mud and lake water. "You're a mess."
"I was in the lake."
"Doing what?"
"Handling Welch."
She studied his eyes. Whatever she saw there, she didn't flinch from it. Didn't pull away. Just nodded once, accepting what he was, what he'd done, what he'd do again to keep her safe.
"Come inside," she said. "Let me clean you up."
Behind her, the dogs had settled—Professor on his bed, Ginger at the window still on guard, Waffle investigating Eddy's wet boots with suspicious sniffs. The cabin was intact. The woman was intact.
Everything that mattered had survived.
Eddy let her pull him inside, let her close the door on the carnage outside, let himself breathe for the first time since the alarm had sounded.
Welch was dead. The assault had failed. And Penny had stood her ground with nothing but a fire extinguisher and the stubborn refusal to break.
His woman.
His.
Tomorrow they'd count the full cost. Plan the next move. Figure out how to end Kirby once and for all.
But tonight, in this small cabin with the dogs at their feet, Eddy let himself have one moment of peace.
It was more than he'd ever expected.