Chapter Thirteen
The lake betrayed her.
Tamsin had paddled Birch Lake a hundred times.
Knew the depth at every point, the current between the narrows, the way the wind channeled through the eastern gap at mid-morning and kicked up chop that could swamp a loaded canoe.
She'd mapped this water the way other people mapped neighborhoods—every bay, every island, every submerged rock that could gut a hull.
So when three boats appeared from behind Osprey Island moving in formation, she knew—before the first shot cracked across the water—that this wasn't a coincidence.
This was a kill box.
"Get down." She grabbed her client by the collar and shoved him flat in the canoe. Matthew White, fifty-three, a dentist from Minneapolis who'd booked a three-day solo expedition and was getting a very different experience than the brochure promised. "Stay below the gunwale. Do not move."
"What the—"
"Down!"
A bullet punched into the water six feet off the bow. The sound hit a half-second later—flat crack, rifle, shooting from the lead boat maybe two hundred yards out. A warning shot or bad aim. Didn't matter which.
Tamsin was already paddling.
Not toward shore—too far, too exposed. Not toward the boats—suicide.
She drove the canoe hard left, toward the narrow channel between Birch Lake's eastern shore and a granite outcropping that most boaters avoided because the passage was barely six feet wide and lined with rocks that would shred a motorboat hull.
The canoe fit.
The boats didn't.
Another shot cracked over her head, closer this time.
Matthew was whimpering into the bottom of the canoe, his two-thousand-dollar fly rod crushed under his body.
Tamsin kept paddling, arms burning, driving the canoe through the channel with strokes that would have impressed her grandmother and terrified everyone else.
The granite walls closed around them. The motor noise changed—frustrated, circling, engines throttling back as the boats realized they couldn't follow.
"Stay down," she told Matthew. "We're not clear yet."
They weren't.
The channel opened into a shallow bay that connected to a chain of smaller lakes—routes Tamsin had mapped over four years, routes that nobody else guided because the portages were brutal and the navigation required knowledge you couldn't get from a map.
But Duane Solberg would know these waters.
Former DNR officer. Decades in the backcountry. If anyone on Pruitt's crew could predict where she'd run, it was the man who'd worn the badge and learned the land before turning it into a weapon.
She heard the engines split. Two boats going left, one going right.
Flanking.
They knew the bay had two exits.
Tamsin made a choice in three seconds.
She beached the canoe, hauled Matthew out by his life jacket, and dragged him into the tree line. The dentist was shaking so badly he could barely walk, but fear made people fast and Tamsin wasn't gentle about it.
"Move. Stay behind me. Don't talk."
"They're shooting at us—"
"And they'll hit us if we stay on the water. Move."
She pulled him through underbrush that tore at their clothes, navigating by memory and the angle of sunlight through the canopy. A hundred yards in, she found the game trail she was looking for—a deer path that cut through the ridge and dropped down to a logging road on the other side.
The logging road where Lockjaw's escort was supposed to be waiting.
Lockjaw had insisted on it. She'd fought him—I've been guiding alone for four years, I don't need a babysitter on the water—and he'd looked at her with that jaw clenched tight and said humor me.
She'd humored him.
Thank God she'd humored him.
The game trail was steep. Matthew stumbled twice, caught himself on branches, made enough noise to alert every animal within a mile.
Tamsin kept pushing, one hand on her client and one hand on the bear spray holstered at her hip because her rifle was in the canoe and the canoe was on a beach that might already have men on it.
Behind them, engines. Getting closer.
They'd found the bay. Found the beached canoe. Would find the trail in minutes if Duane was reading sign.
"Faster," Tamsin said.
"I can't—"
"You can. Move."
They broke through the tree line onto the logging road and Tamsin's heart nearly stopped.
The truck was there.
Coldstart's truck, parked at the trailhead with the engine running and a prospect she recognized behind the wheel. The kid—barely twenty, still earning his patch—saw them burst from the trees and had the passenger door open before Matthew finished stumbling down the embankment.
"In," the prospect said. "Now."
Matthew didn't need to be told twice. He dove into the back seat with the enthusiasm of a man who'd never been shot at before and intended to make this his last time.
Tamsin slammed the door and turned to the prospect. "How far out is backup?"
"Lockjaw's ten minutes south. Tundra's coming from the compound." The kid's hands were steady on the wheel, but his eyes were wide. "They're on the radio. They know."
"We need to move. Pruitt's people are in the bay—three boats, armed. They'll find the trail."
"Copy."
The truck peeled out, spraying gravel, logging road blurring past the windows. Tamsin sat in the front seat with her hands in her lap and watched the forest stream by and tried to process what had just happened.
Three boats. Coordinated approach. Flanking maneuver through water routes that required local knowledge.
Duane Solberg.
It had to be. No one else on Pruitt's crew would know Birch Lake well enough to set up a three-point ambush, to predict the channel exit, to position boats at both ends of the bay before she could escape.
The former DNR officer had used his badge knowledge to build a trap on water Tamsin had always considered safe.
Public water. Her water. The lakes she'd paddled since the day she arrived in Ely with nothing but a truck and a broken marriage.
And Pruitt had turned them into a shooting gallery.
Her hands started shaking.
Not fear. The fear had been on the lake—the animal terror of bullets hitting water, of her client's whimpering, of granite walls closing around a canoe that was the only thing between them and death.
This was fury.
White-hot, bone-deep fury that started in her chest and radiated outward until her whole body vibrated with it.
Fury at Pruitt for thinking he owned the water.
Fury at Duane for betraying the badge he'd once worn.
Fury at herself for needing a game trail and a prospect's truck instead of handling this the way she'd handled everything for four years—alone, on her terms, without running.
They met Lockjaw's bike five miles south.
He was coming fast—engine screaming, cut flattened against his back by wind, the kind of speed that said he'd heard the radio traffic and stopped caring about road conditions.
When he saw the truck, he braked hard enough to lay rubber and was off the bike before it finished rocking on its kickstand.
He reached the truck in three strides. Yanked open her door. His eyes swept her—head to feet, cataloguing, assessing, looking for blood the way he looked for everything. Fast and thorough and desperate.
"I'm fine," she said.
He didn't answer. His hand came up and gripped the back of her neck—not gently, not carefully, the possessive hold of a man confirming that the thing he valued most was still intact.
His forehead dropped to hers. She felt him breathing.
Felt the tremor in his fingers that said the ride here had been fueled by something beyond adrenaline.
"Three boats," she said against his mouth. "Rifles. They boxed us in on Birch Lake."
His grip tightened on her neck. "Duane."
"Has to be. Nobody else knows those waters well enough."
He pulled back. His jaw was clenched so tight she could hear his teeth grinding.
"The client?"
"Terrified. Uninjured." She glanced at the back seat where Matthew was staring at nothing with the thousand-yard look of a man reevaluating his hobbies. "His trip is over."
"Your canoe?"
"Beached on the east shore of the bay. Might still be there. Might be kindling by now."
His eyes came back to hers. Dark. Hard. Reading her the way he always read her—past the surface, past the competence, into the thing she was trying to hide.
"Your hands are shaking."
"I know."
He didn't comment. Didn't tell her it was okay, didn't offer comfort, didn't try to fix it. He just shifted closer—half a step, the distance between concern and contact—and let his body block the wind.
Close enough that she could lean into him if she chose.
She chose.
Her forehead hit his chest and she stood there, shaking, letting the fury burn through her while his hand stayed locked on the back of her neck and his heartbeat thudded against her temple.
"He used the water against me." Her voice came out muffled. Rough. "My water. The routes I've been paddling for four years. He turned them into a trap."
Lockjaw's chest expanded under her forehead. A slow, controlled breath.
"He won't get the chance again."
"That's not a promise you can make."
"It's exactly a promise I can make."
She pulled back and looked at him. At the set of his jaw, the ice in his eyes, the absolute certainty in every line of his body. He wasn't posturing. Wasn't making empty threats to make her feel better.
He was making a decision.
And the decision looked like violence.
"Pruitt's done with property damage," she said. "Done with intimidation. That was a kill attempt. On the water, in daylight, with a client in my canoe."
"I know."
"So what happens now?"
His hand slid from her neck to her jaw, tilting her face up. His thumb traced her cheekbone, the gesture impossibly gentle from a man whose eyes held murder.
"Now we stop waiting for him to come to us."
Behind them, Tundra's bike roared up the logging road. Brothers were coming. The club was mobilizing. The machinery of outlaw justice grinding into motion because a woman had been shot at on water that belonged to everyone.
Tamsin's hands were still shaking.
But standing in the circle of Lockjaw's attention, feeling his grip on her jaw like a brand and his promise in the air between them—the fury didn't feel helpless anymore.
It felt like a weapon.
And she intended to use it.