Chapter 24
There were only a few things that brought Dillon Elliot joy in his life. One of them was getting revenge on any person who wronged him, which was why he had shot Maggie in the canoe.
Dillon’s revenge had never been against Maggie. It was against John. And there was no better way to wound a man than to hurt the woman he loved. It would have been too simple to just kill John. John was the kind of man who didn’t fear death, not like Dillon did, though he would never admit that.
Dillon’s persona was built on the appearance of invulnerability. People believed he was scared of nothing. But that wasn’t true. Because he still wanted to live. Which was why he had run after shooting Maggie. He considered making a stand there, but he knew he was still outnumbered.
Dillon didn’t stop running after he pulled the trigger. He wasn’t sure if Maggie would die, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to send a message to John that his family wasn’t safe. They would never be safe.
When Dillon finally reached the barn, he took a moment to catch his breath.
He was alone, his men dead, but he couldn’t stick around for long.
He needed a ride out of here. He still had the truck, but he looked to the barn, remembering the lockers that belonged to the farm hands.
He wondered if any of them had ammunition he could steal or other supplies he might need for the road.
Dillon ripped open the lockers and quickly searched the contents. He discarded anything that wasn’t useful, pocketing the few things he did find. He was halfway through the lockers when he opened one of them and did a double take from a picture taped on the inside of the door.
“Well, well, well,” Dillon said, peeling the tape from the picture’s corner. “Look who we have here.”
Maggie was smiling, along with her husband and what appeared to be their two children. Her son, who was supposedly still back at the hospital, and a teenage girl. A girl Dillon had seen before. The same one who had been causing so much trouble with his men here at the farm.
Maggie had known all along where Dillon was taking her. The moment he had mentioned the farm was a dead giveaway. But she had played it so cool.
“Clever girl,” Dillon said.
Dillon took his time as he searched through all of Maggie’s daughter’s things. But of all the pieces of information he got his hands on, there was a piece of mail along with another photograph that caught his attention above all else.
The picture had the same family members, but this time, they were standing out in front of a cabin in the middle of the woods. Written over the picture was a caption that read “Our New Forever Home.”
It appeared that Maggie and her family had built a new home on a nice piece of land. It reminded Dillon of a homestead his own family used to live on when he was a child.
Dillon imagined that this would be a place where Maggie and her family would retreat from the farm.
If Dillon wanted to seek revenge on John, to truly upend his life, then he could think of no greater surprise than infiltrating them at their forever home.
And thanks to Sydney, Dillon knew exactly where to find it.