Chapter Eight #2
My father would’ve called that sentimental.
My grandfather would’ve called it weak. Neither man believed in leaving uncertainty exposed once it entered the family’s orbit.
Contain it. Control it. Remove choice before choice becomes risk.
That was how the de Witts survived long enough to turn old freight lines and smuggling corridors into something permanent.
Not a street crew. Not chaos dressed up as power.
A dynasty disguised as regional industry, built first by Dutch men who understood how to make legitimacy and brutality share a roof without ever speaking to one another in public.
I know better than to romanticize what that inheritance is.
I was raised inside it. Trained by it. Sharpened into usefulness by it.
And still I left her here.
A bitter, private disgust moves through me.
Willem, who knows me too well, says carefully, “We didn’t have confirmation they’d move on her this quickly.”
“No,” I say. “We had enough.”
Leona is gone. Daan is dark. The courier line is already compromised.
What looked like a breach now begins to resemble infection.
Wind moves through the pines. The farm seems to lean inward around the absence at its center.
I walk back toward the porch, not because there’s more to see immediately, but because motion keeps the violence in me usefully aligned.
On the step I pause and look over the property again.
Briar Hollow without Leona in it feels wrong in a way I resent.
Not merely vulnerable. Off balance. The place bears her everywhere.
In the fencing repairs. In the feed room visible through the half-open barn.
In the water tubs checked before dusk. In the way the animals call differently now, as if the order they recognized vanished between one hour and the next.
A flash of scarlet drops from a barn beam to a lower perch.
The macaw fixes one hard eye on me and makes a rough clicking sound. I hold its stare for one second.
“Not now,” I say quietly.
The bird ruffles once, then screams.
Inside the house, Willem begins a rapid inventory.
Keys present or absent. Wallet. Spare phone.
Computer. Any paper records touched or taken.
I move through the outer structures myself, checking for cameras, memory cards, signs of prior surveillance.
When I reenter the kitchen, I see the note board on the refrigerator.
Feed times. Vet reminders. A scribbled line.
Raccoon @ 1 / call Nora back. My gaze lingers on it far longer than it should.
This was her day. A raccoon. Chores. Tea.
Restlessness. Fear she likely minimized because self-sufficiency teaches people to doubt anything that sounds too dramatic aloud.
Then men came into her home and took her, and the ordinary note board remains behind like an insult.
“Phone records are inbound,” Willem says from the doorway. “And there’s more.”
I look up.
He holds something small and metallic on a cloth. A folding blade.
“Found near the side yard,” he says. “Looks like they searched her and missed a backup, or it fell before they got to her.”
I take it carefully. A small knife. Practical. Worn. Recently sharpened. Not ornamental. Used. Leona’s. I picture it in her pocket. The habit of preparedness. The refusal to move through the world entirely undefended even on an ordinary day. My fingers close around the handle.
“Anything from the watcher?” I ask.
Willem answers from the hall. “He was pulled off perimeter when the unknown vehicle appeared. By the time he repositioned, they were already in motion. He followed until the north turnoff, then lost visual on the old logging roads.”
A mistake. A survivable one for the watcher only because I don’t presently have time to kill him.
“Map every service road within seventy miles,” I say. “State park remnants, ranger huts, decommissioned forestry buildings, hunting structures, utility clearings. Anything remote enough to hold someone overnight.”
“Already being compiled.”
Of course it is.
I look at the folding knife again, then set it down on the counter with deliberate care. “Pull all road cams between here and the north turnoff. Gas stations, highway ramps, county intersections.”
“Doing it.”
“Burn the courier line from the inside out. I want every name that had access to the route, every subcontracted handoff, every map request, every burner contact in the last ten days. If it touches a de Witt road, I want it opened.”
Willem’s expression hardens. “All of it?”
“All.”
That means disruption. Exposure. Internal bloodletting. It means men who were useful yesterday will be dead by tomorrow if the line runs back through them. Good. I want them frightened.
This is what men outside my world never understand.
They think mafia means noise. Ego. Sloppy violence.
Men too stupid to build anything lasting.
But what my Dutch ancestors built in these mountains survived because it was structured.
It adapted. It learned how to wear legitimacy like a second skin.
Freight companies. Timber access. Contracting firms. Land trusts.
Storage facilities. Quiet political debts.
Violence was never the foundation. Violence was enforcement.
The foundation was patience. Memory. Control.
And tonight all of it turns in one direction. Leona.
The first useful call comes seven minutes later. Willem takes it, listens, then switches immediately to speaker without being asked.
A technician’s voice crackles through. “Picked up traffic cam partial on County 14. Dark SUV, plates obscured, heading northwest at 11:12 p.m. We have side profile only.”
“Send it.”
“Already did. There’s a second sighting twenty-two minutes later at the service split near Red Hollow.”
Red Hollow. I turn toward the county map Willem spread across the kitchen table.
Red Hollow is forest country. Older routes.
Patchy reception. State and federal overlaps.
Half-abandoned recreation zones. Cabins, ranger posts, storm shelters, hunter pull-offs.
Good for hiding someone temporary. Bad for keeping them hidden from me for long.
I place one hand on the table and lean over the map. “Here,” I say, tapping the service split. “What’s within fifty miles?”
Willem marks fast. “Old fire roads. Closed ranger station. Two derelict maintenance sheds. One decommissioned trailhead cabin. Private timber parcels.”
“Ranger station’s too obvious.”
“Not if it’s bait.”
“Not bait,” I say. “Storage.”
The word lands and stays. Because that’s how men like this think when they take someone adjacent to a larger problem. Temporary. Functional. Out of sight until instructions change. I feel the urge to put my fist through the table and ignore it.
“Which structure has water access and road approach but no current utilities?” I ask.
He scans, then points. “Abandoned ranger hut off Forest Route 9. Roughly fifty miles from Briar Hollow if they used the split and cut west.”
My gaze fixes on the mark. Fifty miles. The phrase aligns too neatly with the fragments already in my head. I make the decision before he fully lifts his eyes.
“That’s first.”
Willem is already moving. “I’ll call the second team.”
“No sheriff,” I say.
He looks at me. “Not even local backup?”
“Not yet.”
Leona was taken through my breach, by men who either worked for me once, work against me now, or stand close enough to my world that law enforcement would only muddy the response and risk spooking them into relocation.
If the sheriff arrives with lights and procedure, those men will hear about it before sunrise.
And if they move her again, no. I cut the thought off before it finishes.
Outside, another wolf howl tears through the trees. I grab my coat from the chair back, the county map, and the knife from the counter. Willem pauses just long enough to ask the only question that matters.
“Alive recovery?”
I meet his eyes. The answer for Leona is obvious. For the men who took her, it isn’t.
“For her, yes.”
He gives one short nod. “And the rest?”
I turn for the door.
“I’ll decide when I see them.”
We move fast after that. The house empties of stillness and fills with purpose.
Boots on wood. Radios low. Weapons checked.
Coordinates shared. Engines waking in the yard.
As I step back out onto the porch, the cold hits me clean and sharp.
I stop once at the top step and look over Briar Hollow a final time.
The porch light casts a weak, stubborn circle.
Barn doors shut but not latched the way she prefers.
One feed bucket left beside the path. Evidence of interruption everywhere.
I imagine Leona seeing the inside of whatever place they took her to. Assessing. Counting exits. Testing bonds already. Refusing panic until panic becomes useless and then refusing it anyway. She’ll be afraid. Any sane person would be. But she’ll also be watching.
That’s the thought I hold. Not her helpless. Her dangerous.
My hand slips once into my coat pocket and finds the small folding knife there. A promise forms in me, silent and absolute. I’m coming. Too late to stop it. Not too late to end it.
Then I go down the steps, get into the waiting SUV, and send the convoy toward the dark.