24. Trigger / Rylie
Trigger / Rylie
The first shot wasn’t meant to kill.
It was meant to stop.
Trigger fired once—clean, controlled—shattering the rock face ten feet ahead of the cartel’s lead man. Stone exploded outward, the crack echoing through the ravine like a gunshot thunderclap.
Chaos followed instantly.
Men scattered. Shouts barked in Spanish. Weapons came up too fast, too loud, too late.
Trigger moved.
He’d chosen this bend in the ravine for a reason—the narrow choke point, the unstable slope above it, the water forcing their footing wide and sloppy. He fired again, higher this time.
The rock shelf gave way.
A cascade of stone and mud thundered down, cutting the group in half. One man went down hard, and another was scrambling to pull him free. The rest were forced back, line of sight broken, formation shredded.
Trigger shifted position immediately, never firing from the same place twice.
They were trained.
But he was better.
From her hiding place above, Rylie heard it all—the gunfire, the shouting, the sharp commands snapping through the trees.
Trigger had them exactly where he wanted.
Then something went wrong.
A shape moved where it shouldn’t have—higher up the slope. Too quiet. Too deliberate.
Rylie’s breath caught.
Someone had flanked.
Not Trigger’s blind spot.
Hers.
She saw the man before Trigger did—slipping through brush, rifle angled toward the ridge where Trigger would move next.
Time slowed.
She could scream.
She could freeze.
Or—
Rylie grabbed the rock at her feet and threw it.
It clattered down the slope, loud and wild—wrong enough to pull attention.
The man jerked, instinct snapping his head toward the sound.
Trigger turned instantly.
One shot.
Clean. Final.
The body dropped behind the brush.
Silence crashed down harder than the gunfire had.
Trigger was at her side seconds later, breath hard, eyes sharp, hands gripping her shoulders.
“You okay?” he demanded.
She nodded, heart slamming so hard it hurt. “He was going to—”
“I know,” he said, pulling her into him before she could finish. His arms locked around her, tight and unyielding, like he was anchoring himself as much as her.
She clutched his jacket, shaking now that the moment had passed. “I didn’t think. I’m sorry, I just—”
“You acted,” he said fiercely. “You saw it. You warned me.”
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his hands still firm at her waist.
“You saved my life.”
The words hit harder than the gunfire.
Her throat tightened. “I didn’t want you to die.”
His expression shifted—something raw breaking through the control.
“Neither one of us will die,” he said quietly.
More movement echoed below—retreating this time. Disorganized. Broken.
Trigger glanced toward the ravine, then back to her.
“That was Thomas’s mistake,” he said. “He underestimated you.”
She lifted her chin. “He won’t do that again.”
“No,” Trigger agreed. “Which means this isn’t over.”
He brushed his thumb across her cheek, grounding her, steadying them both.
“But he knows now,” he added. “We’re not running.”
And somewhere below, as the cartel regrouped and pulled back into the trees, Thomas was learning a brutal truth—
The woman he thought he owned had become the reason he was losing.