23. Thomas
Thomas
Thomas felt it before he admitted it.
Something was wrong.
The men moved through the ravine with practiced ease, boots silent against stone, eyes sharp. This was their terrain—remote, unforgiving, perfect for pressure. He should have felt satisfied.
Instead, irritation crawled up his spine.
“They’re moving west,” Diego said quietly, crouching near the water’s edge. “Tracks are fresh. Sloppy.”
Thomas frowned.
Sloppy didn’t fit the Ranger.
Trigger had been careful in town. Controlled. He hadn’t panicked—not even when Rylie disappeared from the church. Men like that didn’t suddenly forget themselves.
Unless…
Thomas scanned the trees, the rocks, the narrow bends of the ravine. Everything looked right. Too right.
“Slow down,” he ordered.
Diego glanced at him. “We’re losing daylight.”
“I said slow down.”
The men obeyed, spreading out, their formation tightening. Thomas stepped closer to the false trail, studying the scuffed mud, the torn scrap of thermal blanket fluttering faintly on a branch.
A smile tugged at his mouth.
There you are.
“So,” he murmured. “You’re tired.”
That thought pleased him.
Rylie had always believed she was stronger than she was. This—this flight, this desperation—proved she’d been wrong. She would fold. She always did.
But the unease didn’t fade.
Thomas straightened slowly.
“Diego,” he said. “Where’s the echo?”
Diego hesitated. “The… what?”
“The echo,” Thomas snapped. “Footfalls should carry more here. Water amplifies sound.”
Silence followed.
Too much silence.
Thomas’s smile vanished.
He lifted his gaze sharply, scanning higher ground, the slope to their left steep and choked with brush. Perfect for concealment. Perfect for overwatch.
Perfect for an ambush.
“No,” he muttered.
His phone buzzed in his pocket.
He didn’t like surprises.
Thomas answered. “What?”
The voice on the other end was tight. “We lost visual on the Ranger.”
Thomas’s jaw clenched.
“When?”
“Just now. He doubled back. Or vanished.”
The word hit harder than it should have.
Vanished.
Thomas exhaled slowly, forcing his temper back under control. Rage would make him sloppy—and he refused to give Trigger that satisfaction.
“He wants us here,” Thomas said quietly. “He’s leading us.”
Diego looked uneasy. “So what do we do?”
Thomas’s eyes hardened.
“We continue,” he said. “But tighter. Quieter. And if you see the woman—”
“Yes?”
“You take her alive,” Thomas said coldly. “She’s the leverage.”
A pause.
“And the Ranger?”
Thomas’s gaze drifted back to the ravine, to the path that suddenly felt like a throat closing around him.
“Break him,” he said. “Slowly.”
Even as he gave the order, the unease returned—stronger now.
Because deep down, Thomas knew the truth.
He wasn’t chasing prey anymore.
He was walking into a man who had stopped running.
And men like that…
Were the most dangerous kind.