50. Blaze
BLAZE
Frank’s body slammed backward into the mud.
Flick screamed.
The sound ripped straight through me.
“DOWN!” I roared again, dragging her toward the floor as glass exploded inward.
Another sniper round tore through the farmhouse window.
Shadow Division moved instantly.
Pure chaos.
Pure training.
Operators shoved furniture sideways while Wolf killed the remaining lights. Trigger grabbed Ava and Mia, hauling them behind the kitchen island as bullets hammered the outside walls.
Ava pulled out her gun and waited to see if they tried coming through the door.
Thunder exploded overhead.
Gunfire followed it.
Rook was already moving.
Fast.
Controlled.
Terrifying.
“Tree line!” one of his operators shouted.
“Muzzle flash northwest ridge!”
Another shot cracked through the storm.
One of the convoy SUVs outside erupted with sparks.
The sniper wasn’t aiming at us anymore.
He was cleaning up survivors.
Rook’s steel-gray eyes hardened instantly.
“Mercer sent a kill team.”
“No shit,” Trigger barked from the floor.
Flick clung to my arm beside me, breathing hard.
“Frank…”
I looked toward the doorway.
Frank lay motionless in the mud twenty yards from the porch.
Blood washing away in the rain.
But something felt wrong.
Very wrong.
Rook saw it too.
“Hold fire,” he snapped suddenly.
Everybody froze.
Even the sniper fire stopped.
Rain hammered the roof.
Wind screamed through broken windows.
And then?—
Frank moved.
Barely.
But enough.
Flick gasped beside me. “He’s alive!”
Frank dragged one arm through the mud painfully.
Trying to reach the porch.
Trying to reach us.
Then headlights exploded deeper in the tree line.
Not the convoy.
New vehicles.
Fast.
Too fast.
Rook swore under his breath for the first time since arriving.
“That’s not Mercer’s security.”
Wolf checked the darkness outside. “Then who the hell?—”
The first explosion rocked the ranch before he finished.
BOOM.
Fire erupted near the back vehicles.
One SUV flipped sideways violently.
Men screamed outside.
Trigger blinked. “Okay now we officially have too many psychopaths at this party.”
Automatic gunfire erupted from the woods.
Not aimed at us.
At the convoy.
The men outside scrambled for cover instantly.
And that’s when I saw them.
Dark figures moving through the rain.
Military precision.
Suppressed rifles.
Night vision.
Not cartel.
Not security.
Hunters.
One of Mercer’s men barely made it behind an SUV before a suppressed shot dropped him straight into the mud.
Another tried to run.
Didn’t make it three steps.
Flick stared in horror beside me. “Who are they?”
Rook’s expression turned colder than I’d seen yet.
“Cleanup crew.”
The words hit hard.
Mercer wasn’t just eliminating witnesses now.
He was erasing his own people.
Frank lifted his head weakly from the mud.
And screamed toward the farmhouse:
“HE LEFT YOU SOMETHING!”
A sniper round tore through his shoulder.
Flick cried out.
But Frank kept fighting.
Kept dragging himself forward through the rain and blood.
“THE BARN!” he shouted hoarsely.
Another shot slammed into the dirt beside him.
“YOUR FATHER HID IT IN THE?—”
The next bullet hit Frank in the back.
His body jerked violently.
Then went still.
Flick made a broken sound beside me.
I pulled her hard against my chest instantly.
Her entire body shaking now.
Outside—
the firefight intensified.
Mercer’s remaining men were getting slaughtered.
Professional.
Efficient.
Terrifyingly fast.
Rook’s operator checked the ridge through a scope.
“Three shooters northwest.”
“Two east.”
“Movement closing south side.”
Rook turned toward me sharply.
“The barn matters.”
I already knew.
Frank died trying to tell us.
Whatever Flick’s father hid there?—
Mercer was terrified of it being found.
Wolf slammed a fresh mag into his rifle.
“So how do we get there?”
Lightning flashed violently across the ranch.
Illuminating the old red barn about a hundred yards behind the farmhouse.
And moving toward it through the storm?—
were black-clad mercenaries with suppressed weapons.
Rook’s eyes narrowed.
“Like this,” he said coldly.
Then he looked directly at me.
“Blaze.”
“Yeah.”
“You stay on my six.”
The look in his eyes said the rest.
Protect Flick.
Kill anyone who touches her.
And honestly?
Nothing had ever sounded more natural to me in my life.