24. Colt
Colt
The diner's bell jingles as we push through the door, snow melting off our boots in wet patches on the checkered floor.
Mason, Kane, Ryker, Brock, and me. Silas James is already at the counter, sheriff's badge catching the light, the same steady presence he's had every time I've needed him in the fifteen years I've known him running this county, small enough that he could probably name every person in it on sight.
We came here tonight to go over Levon intel together, coffee and pie, the kind of planning session that was supposed to happen calm and unhurried before tomorrow's operation.
Instead Greta's face stops me cold the second I walk in.
“What do you need? I'm here.” She's already reaching for a rag to wipe down the back table, reading the room correctly before I've said a word.
“Back room.” My voice comes out rough. “We need a workstation.”
Greta doesn't hesitate. She's seen enough mountain trouble pass through this diner to know when men like us go quiet, it means something's already gone wrong. “It's yours. Coffee's coming.”
We file into the small office behind the kitchen.
Kane's already cracking open his laptop, pulling up satellite overlays before anybody's told him what we need.
Mason spreads a rough map of the north ridge across the table.
Jax and Brock check comms and extra mags with the kind of practiced calm that means they've done this before and hope they never have to again.
Ryker stands near the door, eyes scanning every shadow out of habit more than expectation.
Greta bustles in with a tray of steaming mugs, strong and black, and sets it down without spilling a drop despite her hands not being quite steady. “Nate's on his way. I called him the second I heard what happened to your girl. Ex special forces. He'll want in on this.”
“Good.” The word comes out rough. “We need every man who knows how to work quiet.”
Nate Bishop walks in four minutes later, built like he could bench press a fence post, Greta's man through and through from the way his eyes find her first before he takes in the rest of the room. He looks at the setup and nods once, no questions wasted. “Where is she?”
“Levon's mansion.” Kane's voice stays steady. “North ridge. Eight guards inside, minimum, based on what we could piece together.”
Silas slides his laptop across the table. “Camera footage. County cams on the main road, plus a couple private feeds from folks on the ridge who still owe me favors from one thing or another. Already pulled it.”
We crowd in. The video's grainy, snow flecked, but clear enough to gut me anyway.
The curb beside the diner. Snow swirling under the security light.
Nora steps out the front door. Two men in dark clothes grab her fast. She fights, twisting hard against their grip, kicking, probably mouthing off with something sharp even scared half to death, because that's exactly who she is.
They shove her into the back of a black van.
It pulls off toward the ridge like the men inside think these mountains belong to them.
They don't. These mountains are mine. Every tree. Every ridge. Every trail nobody else knows exists.
My jaw locks. “They die for touching her.”
“We go in coordinated,” Nate says, already checking his sidearm.
I shake my head. “I go in quiet. Trapper style. You boys set the perimeter, create a distraction at the gate if I call for it, handle anybody who runs. Silas, you keep this legal on paper once it's done. We bring her home first and sort the rest of it after.”
Nobody argues. These men know the code well enough by now. Woman in danger. Protect what's yours or burn the world trying.
We gear up in the parking lot ten minutes later.
Rifles, vests, knives, my trapper kit, snares and line and the small tools that make me dangerous in these woods in a way no amount of firepower alone ever could.
Snow's falling harder now. Good. It'll cover our tracks and bury whatever we leave behind.
We roll out in a silent convoy. Mason and Brock in the lead truck, Nate and Ryker flanking, Jax riding with Silas for the legal angle, Kane on comms with me.
My truck cuts the first trail, one only I know exists, and the whole crew moves like a single animal, tight and lethal and completely without hesitation.
The mansion rises out of the trees like a bad dream made out of stone and glass and too many lights, arrogant in a way that makes something cold settle into my chest. I circle it once while the team takes their positions.
Kane's voice crackles in my ear. “Perimeter's set. Nate and Ryker east flank. Mason and Brock sweeping south. Distraction ready at the gate on your word.”
“Negative. Going in quiet. Keep your distance unless I call for you.”
“Copy. Bring her home, Colt.”
I cut the radio and move.
The wall's high, but I've climbed worse in worse weather.
I wait for the guard rotation, drop on the first one from above, quick and quiet, strip his radio and keycard, drag him out of sight.
The second never sees me coming. Two down.
The mansion's mine now, whether anybody inside knows it yet or not.
I use the keycard on the service entrance.
Warm air hits me, thick with money and something underneath it that smells like fear that's been sitting in this house a long time.
I move through the lower level like I belong here.
Voices down one hall, two men laughing about something.
I don't need to hear the words to know what they're laughing about.
I take the first from behind before either of them finishes the joke.
The second turns too slow. Two more down.
The house gets quieter with every hallway.
Third floor. East wing. My heart's beating hard and even at once, that particular calm that only shows up right before the part that matters most. She's close.
I can feel it in my bones the same way I can feel weather coming before the sky admits to it.
A guard at the end of the hall goes down to a weighted snare I rigged from fishing line and a rock, an old trick that still works exactly as well as it did the first time my father showed it to me. One more down.
The corner room door's locked from the outside. The keycard beeps green. I push it open.
She's there.
Nora sits on the edge of a big bed, arms wrapped around herself, looking small in that ridiculous fancy room and nothing at all like small in the way her chin comes up the second the door opens. Her eyes go wide when she sees me, relief and fear and something fierce all tangled together.
“Colt.” Just my name, breathed out like she's been holding it for hours, which she probably has.
I cross the room in three strides and pull her against me hard, arms locking around her.
She fits. She always fits. Her body shakes once, and then she presses closer, face buried in my chest, and I breathe her in, alive, real, untouched in every way that would have broken something in me permanently.
“I've got you.” My voice comes out rough against her hair. “Nobody's taking you from me again.”
She makes a sound that's half sob, half laugh, the specific sound that always undoes me a little. “Took you long enough, mountain man. I was starting to plan my own exit strategy.”
I pull back just enough to look at her properly. Pale but fierce, exactly the woman I fell for in a wrecked car three feet from a tree. “We're not clear yet. Talk fast. Anything I need to know?”
And this is where she surprises me, the way she's been surprising me since the day I met her.
She doesn't just nod and follow. She talks, quick and precise, like she's been rehearsing this exact briefing since the moment they locked that door.
“Two guards outside this door when they brought me in, maybe more by now.
There's a second door behind the bookshelves in the study one floor down, looks like a servants' passage, doesn't match the room's layout.
Motor court's on the east side, two vehicles under a portico last I looked.
And the window latch in here is old hardware under new glass, I already worked it half loose with a hairpin in case you didn't make it in time.”
I stare at her for one full second, something fierce and proud cutting straight through the fear still sitting in my chest. “You've been running your own intelligence operation in here.”
“I had time to kill and a captor who underestimated me. Seemed like a waste not to use it.” She's already reaching for her boots. “The passage behind the bookshelves might be faster than backtracking the way you came.”
“Copy that.” I mean it two ways, and she can hear both of them in my voice. “Stay close. Do exactly what I say the second I say it. We're taking your passage.”
She nods, already moving. My girl is smart. She knows exactly when to fight and when to trust somebody else's hands on the wheel, and right now she's choosing both at once, which might be the most her thing I've ever seen her do.
We move fast, her intel cutting a full two minutes off the route I would have taken blind.
The servants' passage spits us out near a side stair instead of the main one, and it saves us from the two guards stationed exactly where she said they'd be, guards we never have to fight because we're simply not where they're watching.
One guard does spot us near the service door, raises his weapon fast, and I put him down before he gets a shot off clean, though not before something hot and sharp opens along my forearm, a graze, nothing that'll slow me down tonight but enough that I feel it with every movement after.