Chapter Seven
They came at dawn, because men like Darrell Sizemore thought dawn meant surprise.
Pitfall had been awake for three hours.
He'd heard them coming a mile out—engines cutting through the mountain silence, headlights flickering through the trees like fireflies with bad intentions.
Eight vehicles, maybe more. They weren't trying to be subtle.
They thought they were coming for a craft shop owner and a prospect, easy pickings that wouldn't require stealth.
They were wrong.
"Nadine." He touched her shoulder, and she came awake fast, no confusion, no questions. Good. She'd been learning. "We've got company. Get dressed, grab the bag by the door, and get to the fallback position we talked about."
"How many?"
"Enough." He was already moving, checking the Glock at his hip, the knife in his boot, the shotgun he'd staged by the front window two days ago. "You remember the signal?"
"Three shots, then silence. That means it's safe to move."
"And if you don't hear that signal?"
"I run. Don't stop, don't look back. Head for the coordinates you gave me."
He wanted to kiss her. Wanted to pull her close and promise that nothing would touch her, that he'd burn down anyone who tried. But there wasn't time, and promises were for people who knew they'd survive to keep them.
"Go," he said instead. "Now."
She went. No argument, no hesitation. Just movement, efficient and controlled.
Pitfall watched her disappear into the back room, toward the cellar entrance he'd reinforced yesterday. Then he turned to the window and watched the headlights grow closer.
Sizemore's arm was in a sling. That was the first thing Pitfall noticed when the man stepped out of the lead truck, flanked by muscle that looked borrowed from every dive bar in coal country.
Eight men total. Armed. Angry. Moving toward the cabin with the swagger of people who'd never met real resistance.
"Come on out!" Sizemore's voice echoed through the hollow. "We know you're in there, prospect. You and your little shopkeeper. Come out now, and maybe we make this quick."
Pitfall didn't answer. He was counting instead—positions, angles, the way the men spread out to cover the perimeter. Sloppy. They were clumping together, creating kill zones they didn't even realize existed.
Two days. He'd had two days to prepare this ground, and he'd used every hour.
The tripwires were invisible in the pre-dawn light. So were the pressure plates he'd buried along the most obvious approach routes. The trees he'd marked with subtle cuts—those were positioned for crossfire from angles the attackers couldn't see until bullets started flying.
And in those trees, waiting for his signal, three brothers who'd arrived in the night like ghosts.
Grit. Timber. Switchback.
Not enough to overwhelm eight armed men. But enough to turn a cabin into a kill box.
"Last chance!" Sizemore raised a pistol, pointed it at the front door. "You've got ten seconds before we come in shooting!"
Pitfall sighted down the shotgun barrel. Breathed out slow.
"One!"
The first man hit a tripwire. The flare that erupted painted the hollow in hellish red light, blinding everyone looking at the cabin.
Pitfall fired through the window.
The shotgun blast caught Sizemore's nearest guard center mass, lifted him off his feet, dropped him in the dirt like a puppet with cut strings. Pitfall racked another shell, fired again, took a second man in the shoulder before the rest scattered for cover.
Then the trees opened up.
Grit's rifle cracked from the east, methodical and precise. Timber's shotgun roared from the west, each blast followed by screaming. Switchback moved through the chaos like a knife through water, appearing and disappearing, his pistol speaking in controlled bursts.
The attackers had expected a siege. They got a slaughter.
Pitfall pushed out the back door, circling to cut off retreat. Two men were running for the trucks—he dropped the first with a shot to the leg, watched him crumple and crawl. The second spun, raised a weapon, and Pitfall put two rounds in his chest before he could fire.
Movement to his left. He pivoted, finger tightening—
Nadine.
She'd come out of the cellar, face pale but jaw set, a tire iron gripped in both hands like a baseball bat. One of Sizemore's men had found the back entrance, was reaching for her with hands that would never touch anything again.
Because Nadine swung first.
The tire iron connected with his temple, a sound like a melon hitting concrete. The man dropped. She stood over him, chest heaving, weapon raised for another strike that wasn't necessary.
"Told you to stay hidden." Pitfall grabbed her arm, pulled her behind him. His body between her and everything else—automatic, instinctive, the only position that made sense.
"He found the door." Her voice was steady despite the tremor in her hands. "Was I supposed to let him?"
"You were supposed to run."
"I don't run from men like that." She met his eyes, and what he saw there wasn't fear. It was fury. Cold and controlled and aimed at everything threatening her world. "Not anymore."
Something shifted in his chest. Pride. Possession. The absolute certainty that this woman was his, even if neither of them had said it yet.
"Stay behind me," he said. "And if anyone gets close—"
"Hit them until they stop moving. I understand."
He almost smiled. Would have, if there wasn't still shooting happening fifty yards away.
The battle lasted four minutes. It felt like hours.
By the time the last echo faded, five of Sizemore's men were down—dead or close enough that the difference didn't matter. Two had fled into the woods, running blind through terrain they didn't know. Grit was already tracking them, unhurried, certain. They wouldn't get far.
That left Sizemore.
Pitfall found him behind one of the trucks, trying to crawl toward the driver's seat with his one good arm.
The sling had come off during the chaos, and the broken arm hung useless at his side.
He was whimpering—the same high sound he'd made in that parking lot, when he'd learned what happened to men who threatened things that belonged to the Reapers.
"Going somewhere?" Pitfall kicked him onto his back, planted a boot on his chest. The man's face was ghost-white, slicked with sweat and terror.
"Please." Sizemore's voice cracked. "Please, I was just following orders. Maggard—he's the one who wanted—"
"I know who gives your orders." Pitfall crouched, resting his forearm on his knee, looking down at the broken man like he was something found on the bottom of a boot. "That's not going to save you."
"I can help! I can tell you where he is, where he keeps his product, everything—"
"Already got that from you. Remember? Two nights ago, when Grit asked nicely." Pitfall tilted his head. "You told us everything useful. Now you're just loose ends."
Sizemore's eyes went wide. "No. No, wait—"
"You threatened her." The words came out quiet. Worse than shouting. "You waited in a parking lot like a coward, planning to do God knows what to a woman whose only crime was refusing to help you poison her community."
"I wasn't going to—"
"You were going to do whatever Maggard told you." Pitfall drew his knife, watched the blade catch the morning light. "That's the problem with men like you. No spine of your own. Just following orders until someone makes you stop."
"Please—"
"I'm making you stop."
The knife moved. Sizemore didn't.
Pitfall cleaned the blade on the dead man's shirt, stood, and turned to find Nadine watching from ten feet away. Her face was unreadable—not horrified, not approving, just... processing. Taking in what she'd seen and filing it somewhere she could examine later.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I just watched you kill a man."
"Yeah." No point lying about it. "You did."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "He would have hurt me. In that parking lot. If you hadn't been there."
"Probably."
"And today. If your plan hadn't worked. If your brothers hadn't come."
"Yeah."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Good," she said finally. "I'm glad he's dead."
Pitfall felt something release in his chest. He'd been bracing for disgust, for fear, for the realization that she'd gotten tangled up with monsters and needed to run. Instead, she was looking at him like he'd done exactly what needed doing, no more and no less.
"The others?" she asked.
"Handled." Timber emerged from the treeline, shotgun over his shoulder, nodding at Pitfall in greeting. "Grit's running down the runners. Won't be long."
"And the bodies?"
"Club'll handle it. This land's got plenty of places things don't get found." Timber's eyes moved to Nadine, assessed, moved back to Pitfall with something like approval. "She swing on Monroe back there?"
"Put him down before I could get to him."
Timber's mouth twitched. "Good arm."
"You should see her with a baseball bat."
Nadine made a sound that might have been a laugh, raw and shocked. The adrenaline was hitting her now—Pitfall could see it in the way her hands were shaking, the way her breath kept catching. He moved to her, put his hand on the back of her neck, steadied her with his presence.
"Breathe," he said. "It's over."
"Is it?" She looked up at him, and the vulnerability in her eyes nearly broke him. "You said Maggard's still out there. This was just..."
"The opening shot." He didn't let go of her neck. Couldn't. "But yeah, for right now? It's over. We won."
Switchback appeared from behind the cabin, dragging a groaning body. "Got a live one. Took a round in the leg, but he'll keep. Figured Grit might want to have a conversation."
"Smart." Pitfall finally released Nadine, though every instinct screamed against it. "We need to move. This location's burned now—they know where it is. Time to get her somewhere safer."
"Compound?" Switchback asked.
"Compound."
Nadine straightened, squaring her shoulders like she was preparing for a fight. "What happens there?"
"You meet the rest of the brothers." Pitfall moved toward his bike, parked behind the cabin where he'd staged it for exactly this moment. "And they meet you."
"Will they... accept me? Being there?"
Pitfall thought about the way she'd swung that tire iron. The cold fury in her voice when she'd said she was glad Sizemore was dead. The backbone that had kept her standing when most people would have crumbled.
"Yeah," he said. "They'll accept you."
The survivors were already scattering through the woods, running back toward Maggard with a message written in blood and bodies: the craft shop owner wasn't alone anymore. She had the Mountain Reapers at her back.
And God help anyone who came for her again.