Chapter 6
LAUREN
The plan was mine, which was why Cal hated it.
Andersen knew about the cabin. He’d left me on the private road, and by now he would have worked out where the Kentucky Skulls had taken me.
So we made sure he saw me return.
Holt and Briggs went ahead before sunrise and hid their motorcycles beyond the ridge. TK placed other brothers near the logging roads Andersen could use to avoid the locked gate.
Nobody would be visible from the cabin.
Tommy stayed at the clubhouse with Dana. Cal argued about leaving him until I pointed out that the dog couldn’t understand a gunfight was part of a plan.
We left Lexington in my RAV4 shortly before noon.
Cal drove while I sat beside him with my replacement phone turned on. A small club radio rested in the cupholder.
Briggs’s voice came through it twenty minutes outside the city.
“Dark sedan is four cars back.”
Cal’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “Can you see the driver?”
“Not yet.”
We continued east toward the hills. The sedan stayed far enough behind that I only caught occasional glimpses of it.
At the turnoff for the mountain road, Briggs spoke again.
“Driver matches Andersen’s photograph.”
My mouth went dry.
Cal glanced at me. “We can keep driving. TK can take him on the road.”
“For following us? He’ll say he was going somewhere.”
“He has to know we’ve spotted him.”
“He thinks he’s smarter than us.”
“He only needs to be lucky once.”
“So do we.”
Cal didn’t answer.
The sedan disappeared as the road curved into the hills, but that was part of the plan. Andersen knew the logging tracks. He wouldn’t follow us through the main gate where we could see him.
Cal unlocked it and drove through.
Before closing it behind us, he looked down the empty road.
“Last chance,” he said.
“I’m not hiding at the clubhouse while everyone else takes the risk.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
I understood then. He wasn’t ordering me to leave. He was making sure the choice was still mine.
“I want to do this.”
He locked the gate.
At the cabin, Cal checked every room before letting me enter. He tested the generator and placed flashlights where we could reach them. Then he contacted TK on the club phone.
“We’re inside,” he said.
“Brothers are in position,” TK replied. “Nobody moves until Andersen shows himself.”
Cal ended the call and checked his gun.
I looked through the window at the empty road.
We weren’t hiding from Robert Andersen anymore.
We were waiting for him.
We waited until after dark.
No one came up the main road. The club radio stayed silent except for TK’s scheduled check-ins.
At eleven seventeen, every light in the cabin went out.
The refrigerator stopped humming, and darkness swallowed the room.
I waited for the generator to start.
It didn’t.
“Cal?”
He stood beside the kitchen table, completely still.
I knew immediately.
He wasn’t seeing the cabin. He was underground again, waiting for a locked door to open.
I reached across the table for the flashlight he’d left there. My fingers struck it, and it rolled off the edge.
The sound of it hitting the floor made Cal flinch.
“Cal, listen to me.”
No response.
I moved toward him carefully and placed my hand around his wrist. His pulse hammered beneath my fingers.
“You’re in the cabin,” I said. “I’m right here.”
“I know.”
His voice was barely audible.
“The front door is behind you. Nothing is keeping you here.”
“I know.”
“The generator didn’t start. Andersen must have done something to it.”
That reached him.
Cal dragged in a breath, but his body was still rigid.
I grabbed his other hand in mine.
“Four walls,” I said. “Two windows. One door. You know every inch of this room.”
His fingers closed around mine.
“There are Skulls outside,” I continued. “TK knows where we are.”
The floor creaked behind us.
Someone was inside the cabin.
Cal released my hand and drew his gun.
I held my breath.
Another floorboard shifted near the bedroom. It was the same soft complaint I’d heard every time Cal walked through the hallway, except Cal stood beside me.
Somebody had entered through the back of the cabin.
I bent slowly, searching for the flashlight.
A thin beam appeared beneath the bedroom door and disappeared just as quickly.
Cal caught my shoulder.
“Don’t move,” he whispered.
The terror in his voice hadn’t gone away. His hand shook against me.
A metallic click came from the hallway.
The sound of a gun being readied.
Then a man spoke from somewhere in the dark.
“Lauren.”
It was Andersen.
Cal
When Andersen’s voice came from the hallway the cabin disappeared around me.
I felt dirt beneath my knees and restraints cutting into my wrists. The metallic click became a bolt sliding open above my head.
My hand shook so badly I could barely hold my gun.
Lauren pressed against my back.
Andersen had come.
That mattered more than anything my head was showing me.
I bent and found the flashlight on the floor, then guided Lauren toward the pantry beside the kitchen. It had a solid door and only one entrance.
“Get inside.”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You’re not. You’re giving me room to move.”
Another floorboard creaked.
I pulled my backup pistol from the cabinet above the refrigerator and placed it in her hand.
“You know how to use this?” I whispered.
“My father taught me.”
“Close the door. Don’t open it unless you hear my voice.”
“Cal…”
“This isn’t me trying to control you. I need to know he can’t reach you while I deal with him.”
Her fingers closed around the gun.
“I trust you,” she said.
Those words got her into the pantry when an order wouldn’t have.
I handed her the flashlight and waited until the door clicked closed.
Then I faced the hallway.
Darkness filled the narrow space.
My lungs refused to work properly. Sweat ran between my shoulder blades, and every part of me wanted to tear open the front door and get outside.
A thin flashlight beam swept across the bedroom wall.
Andersen was moving.
I placed one hand against the hallway wall and forced my feet forward.
One step.
The door remained behind me.
Two steps.
I was in Kentucky, not Afghanistan.
Three.
Somewhere beneath the floorboards, I heard a prisoner screaming.
I stopped.
The beam vanished.
Andersen knew I was coming.
I couldn’t see the bedroom door or the walls around me. All I could see was the underground room and every way I had once believed I would die inside it.
Then I heard Lauren breathing behind the pantry door.
I tightened my grip on the gun.
The man in the darkness wasn’t coming for me.
He was coming for her.
I moved into the hallway.
My hands were still shaking. My heart was beating hard enough to make me sick, and the old room followed me with every step.
I went anyway.
Lauren
The first gunshot tore through the hallway wall.
I gripped the pistol and listened.
Something heavy struck the floor. Cal grunted, and Andersen’s flashlight rolled into the main room.
“Drop the gun,” Andersen ordered.
Metal hit the floor.
Cal had lost his weapon.
I unlocked the pantry door.
Andersen stood in the hallway with his pistol aimed at Cal. Blood ran from a cut above Cal’s eye, and a dark patch spread across the sleeve of the arm he held against his side.
“You should’ve stayed out of this,” Andersen said.
Cal’s gaze shifted toward me.
Andersen noticed.
He turned, bringing the gun around.
I raised mine. “Drop it.”
His flashlight beam hit my face.
“You won’t shoot a deputy,” he said.
“You murdered a woman.”
“You don’t remember what you saw.”
“I remember enough.”
He aimed at me.
I fired.
The bullet struck his shoulder and spun him sideways. His gun discharged into the ceiling before falling from his hand.
Cal hit him before he reached the floor.
They crashed into the wall. Andersen swung at Cal’s injured arm, but Cal drove his knee into Andersen’s back and forced him facedown.
There was enough light from his flashlight for me to kick Andersen’s gun away.
“His cuffs,” I said.
Cal pulled Andersen’s handcuffs from his belt and locked them around his wrists.
Andersen twisted beneath him. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with.”
Cal leaned close to his ear. “Neither did you.”
His voice was steady, but his hands weren’t.
I retrieved Cal’s gun and switched on another flashlight. He took the club radio from the table.
“TK, cabin breached. Andersen is down.”
“We heard the shots,” TK replied. “Coming in.”
Less than two minutes later, boots struck the porch. TK entered first with Holt and Briggs behind him, all three armed.
They swept the cabin and checked every window and door before lowering their weapons.
Holt searched Andersen and removed two phones from his jacket.
One was mine.
I handed Holt my new phone. He called the number that had sent the photograph.
The second phone buzzed in his hand.
“That’ll make things easier,” TK said.
Briggs looked at the bullet wound in Andersen’s shoulder. “He’ll live.”
“Good,” TK replied. “I want him alive when the state police get here.”
Cal stood and immediately turned to me.
“You were supposed to stay in the pantry.”
“I trusted you to protect me. I didn’t agree to let you die.”
He stared at me for a second, then pulled me against his chest.
Around us, the Kentucky Skulls secured Andersen, photographed the scene and contacted a state police officer TK trusted.
Cal and I were both shaking.
We were also both alive, and I had no intention of ever walking away from the man standing in front of me.