Chapter 18 #2
"Signals are moving. South side of the property, heading for the tree line." His voice sharpens. "Drone has visual confirmation. Harlan has Raven. They're in a vehicle and accelerating."
I catch movement from the hallway to my left, pivot, and fire, dropping a man who was trying to flank from the kitchen. Behind me, Torque and Beckett breach through a side entrance, sweeping the rear rooms. Beckett's voice crackles through the comms.
"I've got Alvarez. He's down. Alive."
Alvarez is worth more alive than dead. The information he carries about the cartel's ATF infiltration will dismantle their entire federal protection network. But Alvarez isn't the one who has Raven.
I'm through the back of the house in seconds.
The rear door hangs open, and the boot prints in the dirt tell me what I already know.
There are two sets of tracks in the soil, one heavy and deliberate, one lighter and dragging.
He pulled her. She fought, and the scuff marks prove it, but Harlan had her restrained and a gun to her head, and fighting a bullet at point-blank range isn't courage, it's suicide. Raven knows the difference.
Harlan's truck is already gone, swallowed by the tree line. "Cipher, where are they?"
"Drone is on them. They're on a ranch road that doesn't appear on any of our maps, moving due south from your location." A pause. "Transmitters confirm, but I'm only reading two signals now. Lost two."
"Do not lose those signals. Keep that drone on them as long as you can."
"Copy."
Two transmitters is enough if Cipher keeps the signal clean and the drone stays with them. But Harlan searched her before he moved her, and he's still thinking ahead.
Knox's voice cuts through the channel, raw in a way I've never heard from him. "Jesse." Just my name, and something under it cracks.
"I just got a call. Devil's Acre. Someone broke in. There's a woman on the property, and she's hurt."
The timing is bad. Everything about it is wrong. But the rawness in Knox's voice is real, and what comes next confirms it.
"One of our hands found her in the barn, beaten half to death." His voice drops, and the control he's maintained through the entire operation fractures along a fault line I didn't know existed. "Her name is Delilah King."
She is Preacher King's daughter, the woman who has been missing for a year, the name that shut Knox down cold every time it surfaced. Whatever he told himself about not caring, whatever wall he built around it, just came apart.
"Go," I tell him.
Knox doesn't hesitate. In the distance, his engine roars and tires tear through gravel as he clears the gate.
I turn back to the tree line where Harlan's vehicle disappeared.
"All units. Harlan has Raven. He's mobile, heading south on an unmarked ranch road from the compound's southern perimeter.
Cipher is tracking with the drone and transmitter signals.
Federal teams, tighten the perimeter and set up roadblocks on every paved road in the area.
Shadow team, reposition south and cut off access to I-10. "
Carmichael's voice comes back immediately. "Federal teams are converging. I'll coordinate the roadblocks."
"Rook, relocate south."
"On it."
Hawk appears beside me, breathing hard, weapon still raised. "What's going on with Knox?"
"Delilah King turned up at Devil's Acre, half dead. Knox went to handle it." I check my magazine and holster the weapon, then move toward my truck. "I'm going after Harlan."
"I'll come with you."
"No. Stay here and secure the compound. Beckett has Alvarez in custody, and the federal teams are inbound. Somebody needs to manage the handoff."
Hawk's jaw tightens, but he nods. Too many vehicles chasing one target on back roads creates chaos, and chaos is what let Harlan slip in the first place.
I'm behind the wheel before the door is fully closed. I follow the tire tracks in the afternoon sun south along the ranch road, pushing the engine hard over rough terrain. Cedar branches scrape the side panels. Limestone dust billows behind me.
"Cipher, talk to me."
"The signal is holding steady. He's still heading south, speed increasing. He's approaching the junction with 534."
If Harlan reaches 534, he has options heading east toward I-10 or west toward the backcountry. A man who's lived in this county his entire life knows every dirt road, every gate, every ranch crossing that doesn't show up on a GPS.
I will not let that happen.
Harlan doesn't know what he's taken. He thinks he grabbed a hostage, a bargaining chip, a federal agent he can leverage for safe passage.
He doesn't understand that the woman in his truck is the one I spent years in Shadowland to protect, the one I'm still breathing for when better men have died.
He doesn't understand that every mile he puts between her and me is a mile I will cross with a gun in my hand and nothing in my chest but the cold, absolute certainty that he will not keep her.
Nobody keeps what's mine.
Alvarez is in custody. The compound is secure. Federal sirens wail in the distance as the response teams converge on the property behind me.
I grip the wheel and push the truck harder. Raven's transmitters are still broadcasting, two steady signals moving through the dark, and I follow them the way I've followed Raven Bishop since the night I carried her off that ranch a decade ago.