Chapter Two
Kristin couldn't stop her hands from shaking.
She stood in the doorway of her office, watching Ripcord move along the perimeter fence with the systematic focus of a man who'd done this a thousand times.
He checked sight lines, tested the chain-link for weak points, scanned the tree line like he expected threats to materialize from the Carolina pines.
Who the hell was this guy?
Twenty minutes ago, she'd been certain she was about to die.
The one called Mitch had made that perfectly clear—tell us where Danny hid it or join him in the ground.
She'd been running out of ways to say she didn't know when a stranger in a leather cut had exploded through the hangar door and dismantled three men like they were made of paper.
Now that stranger was securing her airfield like it was a forward operating base, and she wasn't sure if that made her safer or just a different kind of screwed.
"Clear on the north side." Ripcord's voice carried across the tarmac as he walked back toward her. "No vehicles on the access road. They're not coming back tonight—not after losing face like that. But tomorrow's a different story."
"You sound like you've done this before."
"Done what?"
"Assessed threats. Secured perimeters." She crossed her arms, studying him as he approached. "You move like military."
Something flickered in his expression—there and gone so fast she almost missed it. "Former. Long time ago."
He didn't elaborate, and she didn't push. Everyone in Fayetteville had a military story. Half the town had served at Fort Liberty at some point. But the way Ripcord moved wasn't regular Army. It was something sharper. Something that had seen the worst and learned to survive it.
"Come inside," she said. "I'll show you what I showed the sheriff—for all the good it did."
Her office was a converted storage room attached to the main hangar. Filing cabinets lined one wall, a battered desk dominated the center, and a corkboard covered with aviation charts and scheduling notes hung above a coffee maker that had seen better decades.
Danny's office was through a connecting door.
Or what was left of it.
"Jesus." Ripcord stopped in the doorway, taking in the destruction. File drawers pulled out and dumped, desk overturned, papers scattered across every surface. Even the ceiling tiles had been pulled down, insulation hanging like diseased cotton. "They did this?"
"First visit. Three days ago—same day Danny's plane went down." Kristin stepped past him into the chaos, her boots crunching on broken glass from the shattered picture frames. "I came back from the crash site and found this. They'd already been through everything."
"What were they looking for?"
"That's the thing—I don't know." She picked up a torn photograph from the floor.
Danny, grinning in front of his first plane, twenty years younger and full of dreams that had led him here.
To this. "Danny and I were partners for two years.
We split the business fifty-fifty, shared the maintenance, shared the clients.
I thought I knew everything about this operation. "
"But you didn't."
"Apparently not." She set the photo on the ruined desk. "The men who came today—that was the second time. First time they just searched. Today they decided to ask questions."
"What kind of questions?"
"Where Danny hid 'it.' What he told me before he died.
Whether I was stupid enough to think I could keep whatever he took.
" Her voice hardened. "I told them the truth—I don't know what Danny was into, don't know what he hid, don't know anything except that my partner is dead and my airfield is being torn apart by people who want to kill me. "
Ripcord was quiet for a moment, his eyes moving over the destruction with an assessment that felt clinical. Professional.
Then he looked at her.
"Show me the threatening messages."
She pulled out her phone, opened the text thread that had started the morning after Danny's crash. Three messages, all from blocked numbers.
We know Danny gave you something. Return it or end up like him.
Last chance. The airfield burns at midnight if we don't hear from you.
Running won't help. We know where your mother lives in Kansas.
Ripcord read them without expression, but something shifted in his posture. A tension that hadn't been there before.
"They mentioned your mother."
"Crop duster's wife in Hutchinson. Seventy-two years old and the toughest woman I know." Kristin heard the crack in her own voice and hated it. "I called her after that message. Told her to go stay with my aunt in Colorado until this blows over."
"That was smart."
"It was terrified." She took the phone back, shoved it in her pocket.
"I've been sleeping in my office with a shotgun by the door because I don't know what else to do.
The sheriff says there's no evidence of foul play in Danny's crash.
The FAA says mechanical failure. And the only people who seem to believe something's wrong are the ones trying to kill me. "
Ripcord moved further into Danny's destroyed office, picking his way through the debris. He stopped at the filing cabinet, pulled out one of the few folders that hadn't been dumped.
"Financial records?"
"What's left of them. They took most of it."
"But not the hard copies of flight logs." He held up a battered ledger. "This go back far?"
"Five years. FAA requires us to keep them." She watched him flip through the pages, his expression sharpening. "What are you looking for?"
"Patterns." He set the ledger aside and crouched to examine something on the floor—a torn piece of paper with numbers that didn't make sense. "Your partner was flying routes that weren't on your official schedule. Night flights, looks like. Landing at strips you don't have agreements with."
"How do you know that?"
"Because I know what drug running looks like.
" He stood, meeting her eyes with an intensity that made her breath catch.
"Small airfields, private planes, pilots who fly under radar coverage and land at rural strips where nobody asks questions.
Your partner got involved with an operation, and whatever he took from them was valuable enough to kill for. "
The words hit her like a physical blow.
Drug running.
Danny—her business partner, her friend, the man who'd helped her build this airfield from nothing—had been running drugs through their planes.
"That's not possible." Even as she said it, pieces started clicking into place. The unexplained cash deposits. The nights he'd insisted on handling flights alone. The new watch he'd worn last month that cost more than their best Cessna. "Danny wouldn't—"
"Danny did." Ripcord's voice wasn't cruel, but it wasn't soft either. "Whatever he got into, he got greedy or got scared. Either way, he took something from the wrong people, and now they think you have it."
"But I don't."
"I believe you." He stepped closer, close enough that she could smell leather and motor oil and something underneath that was purely male. "But they don't. And they're not going to stop until they get what they want or eliminate everyone who might know where it is."
Kristin felt the walls closing in. Everything she'd built—the airfield, the business, the future she'd clawed out of nothing—was crumbling around her because of choices her partner had made without her.
"So what do I do?" She hated how small her voice sounded. "I can't fight these people. I can't run—they know where my family lives. I can't even go to the cops because nobody believes me."
Ripcord was watching her with those calculating eyes, the ones that seemed to measure distance and threat and something else she couldn't name.
"The men who came today—the one running the show, Mitch. You know his last name?"
"Garvey. I heard the nervous one call him that."
"Mitch Garvey." Ripcord pulled out his phone, typed something, waited. When the response came, his expression went cold. "He's a pilot. Ten thousand hours, most of it bush flying. Known associate of a man named Boyd Stanton."
"Who's Boyd Stanton?"
"Former DEA agent who switched teams about eight years ago.
Runs cocaine through every corrupted airstrip in North Carolina.
" Ripcord's jaw tightened. "Your partner didn't just stumble into drug running, Kristin.
He got involved with one of the biggest operations in the region.
And the man running it doesn't leave loose ends. "
The name meant nothing to her, but the look on Ripcord's face said it should.
"You know these people."
"I know what they're capable of." He pocketed his phone, and when he looked at her again, there was something protective in his gaze that made her heart stutter.
"This is bigger than a business partner who made bad choices.
This is an organized operation with professional cleanup, and they've decided you're a problem that needs solving. "
"Can your club help?"
The question surprised her even as she asked it. She knew about the Black Ops Brotherhood—everyone in Fayetteville did. Military veterans who rode together, protected their own, and handled problems that law enforcement couldn't or wouldn't touch.
She'd never imagined she'd be asking them for help.
Ripcord studied her for a long moment. She felt the weight of his assessment, the calculation happening behind those sharp eyes.
"Maybe." His voice was low, rough. "But you need to understand what you're asking. My brothers don't play nice with drug operations in our territory. If we get involved, this doesn't end with a warning. It ends with bodies."
"Danny's already a body." The words came out harder than she intended. "And I'll be next if someone doesn't do something."
Something shifted in his expression. Respect, maybe. Or recognition.
"Then we need to get you somewhere safe tonight. Somewhere they can't find you while I bring this to the club."
"And if your club decides I'm not worth the trouble?"
He moved closer still, and suddenly the destroyed office felt very small. His presence filled the space—not threatening, but overwhelming in a way that made her pulse race for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.
"You held it together when three men cornered you in your own hangar.
You checked your partner's wreckage yourself when everyone told you it was an accident.
You sent your mother to safety before worrying about yourself.
" His voice dropped, intimate and intense.
"You're not the kind of woman anyone writes off as not worth the trouble. "
Kristin swallowed hard.
"You don't know me."
"I know enough." His eyes held hers, and she felt something electric pass between them. "I know you built this place from nothing. I know you're tougher than most people who've had it easier. And I know that walking away from you right now isn't something I'm willing to do."
The words hung in the air, heavier than they should have been.
Then he stepped back, breaking the spell.
"Pack a bag. Whatever you can't replace if this place burns tonight." His voice had gone professional again, but the heat in his eyes remained. "You're coming with me to the compound. Legion—our president—needs to hear this. And you need more protection than one jumper can provide."
Kristin looked around the office—the destruction, the betrayal, the ruins of everything she'd worked for.
Then she looked at the man offering her a lifeline.
"Give me five minutes."
She turned and headed for her apartment above the hangar, already calculating what mattered enough to save.
Behind her, she heard Ripcord make another call.
"Ghost. Change of plans. I'm bringing her in tonight."