54. Felicity
FELICITY
The barn exploded inward.
Wood shattered across the floor as the breach charge detonated hard enough to rattle my teeth.
“CONTACT LEFT!” Trigger roared from the loft.
Gunfire erupted instantly.
Shadow Division moved like violence had been wired into their bones.
Wolf dropped one of the attackers before the guy fully cleared the smoke. Rook fired twice through the breach without hesitation while two more operators rolled toward cover beside the stalls.
The Hollow Men hit fast.
Black tactical gear.
Suppressed rifles.
Night vision.
No yelling.
No panic.
Just death moving through smoke and rain.
One rushed through the broken doorway?—
and Hersh put him down center mass before the bastard even saw him.
I flinched hard at the deafening crack of the rifle beside me.
Hersh didn’t.
He didn’t even blink.
He shoved me lower behind the stall instantly.
“Stay down.”
Another attacker crashed through the side entrance.
Wolf met him head-on.
The fight turned brutal immediately.
No clean shots.
Just fists.
Knives.
Pure aggression.
The attacker slammed Wolf into a support beam hard enough to crack wood.
Wolf answered by driving a combat knife straight into the man’s throat.
Blood sprayed across the hay.
My stomach twisted violently.
Dear God.
This was real.
All of it.
Another Hollow Man appeared in the loft above?—
Trigger tackled him over the railing.
Both men crashed onto the barn floor below in a brutal tangle of limbs and weapons.
The attacker reached for a pistol.
Trigger snapped his arm backward with a sickening crack.
Then ended it.
Fast.
Cold.
Efficient.
Outside, thunder exploded across the valley again.
But over the chaos?—
I heard something else.
Vehicles.
More coming.
Rook heard them too.
“We’re out of time,” he barked.
Another operator rushed to his side.
“South ridge movement!”
“How many?”
“Six minimum!”
Hell.
The Hollow Men weren’t just trying to retrieve the ledger.
They were trying to bury everyone connected to it.
Forever.
Eddie struggled against the wall suddenly, coughing hard.
“You have to go,” he wheezed painfully.
Rook reloaded smoothly. “Not leaving without answers.”
“You won’t survive long enough for them if you stay.”
Hersh crouched beside the open lockbox quickly, flipping through the photographs.
His expression kept getting darker.
“What is it?” I whispered.
He held up another photo.
And my blood ran cold.
Children.
Rows of them.
Scared.
Dirty.
Different ages.
Different years.
Some crying.
Some drugged.
Behind them?—
the raven symbol.
No.
No no no.
Tears burned my eyes instantly.
My father investigated this.
He tried to stop this.
Hersh looked furious enough to kill someone with his bare hands.
“These sick bastards…”
Rook took the photo from him slowly.
Then pulled another paper from the ledger.
His jaw tightened hard.
“What?” Wolf demanded.
Rook looked up.
And suddenly all the air disappeared from the room.
“There are names.”
Silence.
The storm pounded harder outside.
“Whose names?” Trigger asked quietly.
Rook’s eyes lifted toward me.
“Politicians. Judges. Federal agents.” His voice turned lethal. “Military contractors.”
Mercer hadn’t built a trafficking ring.
He’d built an empire.
A protected one.
My knees nearly buckled.
All this time…
Dad had been trying to expose something enormous.
Something powerful enough to get him killed.
Something powerful enough to hunt me now.
The realization hit so hard I could barely breathe.
Hersh saw it immediately.
His hand slid against my lower back.
Grounding me.
Keeping me standing.
“You’re okay,” he said quietly.
But I wasn’t.
Because suddenly I understood something horrifying.
“They were never trying to scare me away from the ranch,” I whispered.
Everybody looked at me.
My voice shook harder.
“They thought Dad gave me the list.”
The barn went silent again.
Because they all realized it too.
Every threat.
Every attack.
Every lie.
Mercer believed I had inherited evidence capable of destroying powerful men.
And outside?—
the Hollow Men were still coming.