Chapter 10
Annie pressed her back into the rough bark of a massive pine, forcing her breathing to slow even as her heart pounded hard enough to rattle her ribs.
The tree towered above her like a sentry, its branches swallowing moonlight and casting the forest floor in shifting patterns of shadow.
Resin and damp earth filled her lungs, grounding her as she peered through the narrow break in the trees toward the logging station below.
The rockslide distraction had worked. She could see the two guards moving away from the vehicles, flashlights sweeping uphill as they investigated the noise she’d created by dislodging stones along the slope. Their attention was exactly where it needed to be.
Now all she had to do was wait for Jack’s signal.
She tightened her fingers around the strap of the canvas bag and glanced down at her watch, counting the seconds as they slipped past. They had done this sort of thing a hundred times in investigations—setups, diversions, controlled movements meant to shift the advantage just long enough to gather evidence or make an arrest. Only this time there were no uniforms coming. No perimeter. No backup on the way.
Only Jack. And her.
Thirty more seconds, she told herself. Just thirty.
She lifted her gaze again—and froze.
A sound had risen behind her that didn’t belong to the forest. Not the rustle of a deer or the careless crack of a branch under wandering boots, but something measured. Deliberate. Controlled.
Footsteps.
Annie’s pulse thundered in her ears as she slowly shifted her weight, careful not to disturb the pine needles beneath her shoes. She turned her head by degrees, scanning the darkness between the trees. At first, she saw nothing but shadow and layered trunks. Then one shadow moved.
A figure detached from the darkness and advanced directly toward her, not searching, not sweeping the area, but moving with quiet certainty straight for her position, and the realization sent a chill through her—this wasn’t a random approach.
This wasn’t chance. Whoever it was knew exactly where she stood.
She had chosen her route carefully. She had avoided snapping branches, doubled back, stepped where rock met soil.
Jack had taught her how to move through terrain without leaving an obvious trail.
Yet the figure continued forward with quiet confidence, closing the distance as if following a clear line only she could see.
A memory surfaced with sickening clarity—the small drilled hole in the bathroom wall at her shop, Sarah Mitchell asking to use the restroom, the faint brush of unease she had dismissed as imagination—and the truth slammed into her all at once.
They hadn’t just found her. They’d been tracking her.
Her breath caught as the truth settled into place.
They hadn’t needed to search. They’d never lost her.
Every place she had gone, every step she had taken since the shop—they had known.
The figure moved into a wash of moonlight. Sarah Mitchell.
She was taller than Annie had remembered, her posture athletic, her stride unhurried. A pistol hung at her side, not raised yet, but present. Ready. Her face held no panic, no desperation. Only focus.
This was not a grieving descendant guarding an old family shame.
This was an operative.
Annie’s mind raced, forcing itself to stay sharp. Running blindly would only delay the inevitable. Hiding was pointless if Sarah could track her position. Fighting hand-to-hand against an armed woman trained to hunt was not courage—it was surrender.
Her hands flew to her jacket, her pockets, the strap of the canvas bag. She fought the urge to panic as she searched, fingers sweeping fabric, seams, folds. For one terrifying second she felt nothing.
Her fingertips brushed a rigid edge beneath the lining near her collarbone, and she peeled it free, revealing a thin disk that lay cold and deceptively simple in her palm.
It looked like nothing more than a coin, smooth and ordinary—but coins didn’t guide killers through the wilderness.
Sarah was less than twenty yards away now.
Annie could see the faint glint of her weapon. The concentration in her eyes.
There was no more time to consider.
Annie drew her arm back and hurled the tracker downslope toward the logging station with everything she had, praying the sudden shift in location data would send anyone monitoring it in the wrong direction.
Then she turned and ran.
The forest exploded into motion behind her. Branches cracked. Leaves tore. Footsteps surged.
Sarah’s voice cut through the night, sharp and precise as she spoke into a radio.
“I have visual on the target. She’s moving uphill toward grid four. Cut her off.”
The words sent a fresh surge of fear through Annie’s chest, but they also snapped something into clarity. They weren’t improvising. They were coordinating.
She forced her thoughts to slow even as her legs burned.
Panic gets you killed.
She had seen it too many times in case files. Victims who ran without thinking. Who made themselves predictable. Who exhausted themselves before the real danger ever reached them.
Think like a detective.
Think like Jack.
Jack wouldn’t let himself be driven where they wanted him. He would use the land. He would break patterns. He would refuse to become prey.
Annie veered sharply, changing direction and angling back toward the cave system. If she could reach the tunnels, she might vanish into the mountain the way they had before. Stone didn’t care about tracking devices. Rock didn’t care about radios.
But as she scrambled downslope, her boots slipping on loose shale, a terrible realization struck her.
She was heading straight toward the logging station—toward Jack, toward the sabotage site—and the truth slammed into her with crushing force.
If they were tracking her, she wasn’t escaping danger.
She was delivering it. Her chest constricted as distant flashes of light burst below, followed an instant later by the unmistakable crack of gunfire.
“Jack!” The cry tore from her before she could stop it, echoing across the mountainside.
She staggered as the image formed too clearly in her mind—Jack alone near the vehicles, limited ammunition, no warning.
I led them to him.
The guilt was crushing, immediate, threatening to drop her to her knees.
“No,” she whispered fiercely, forcing air into her lungs. “Not happening.”
She changed direction again, this time deliberately, recklessly, driving herself downhill. She was no longer trying to escape.
She was trying to intervene.
She tore through the forest, branches whipping her face, roots snagging her feet. Sarah’s voice rang behind her, barking coordinates, redirecting unseen teammates. Annie no longer cared about silence or strategy. Only speed.
“Please, Lord,” she prayed as her lungs burned. “Please let him still be alive. Please give me time.”
The slope steepened, forcing her into a half-slide, half-run. Rocks scattered beneath her weight. Pine needles slicked the earth. The sound of gunfire echoed again, closer now.
She burst from the trees into the clearing.
The sight stopped her cold.
Two men stood near the disabled SUV, their weapons lowered but ready. Between them lay a body.
Even in the fractured light, even from this distance, she recognized the shape of him. The breadth of his shoulders. The fall of his dark jacket.
Jack.
He wasn’t moving.
The world seemed to tilt.
For one suspended moment, the forest, the voices, the danger all blurred into irrelevance.
Jack lay motionless on the ground.
And Annie Whitaker refused to let that be the end.
***
Jack lay motionless beside the disabled SUV, his cheek pressed against cold gravel, every breath measured, every muscle locked in restraint.
The bullet had torn through his shoulder in a burning line of pain that radiated down his arm and into his chest, but it had missed bone and artery.
He knew that much from experience. What he didn’t know was how long he could stay conscious if he kept bleeding like this.
Two sets of boots stopped within arm’s reach.
“Check him.”
Rough hands rolled him just enough to search his jacket and waistband.
They found his service weapon and stripped it away, along with the radio he had taken from the SUV.
He let his head loll, forced his body to go slack, even as agony flared through his shoulder and spots swam at the edges of his vision.
He focused on staying still. Staying quiet. Staying alive.
“This is him,” one of the men said. “Matches the description.”
“Alive or dead?”
“Alive. The employer wants answers.”
The word tightened something cold and hard in Jack’s chest. Employer. Not client. Not family. Someone was paying for this operation, and paying well enough to field trained teams, specialized equipment, and coordinated search patterns across a mountain range.
“What about the woman?”
“Mitchell’s tracking her. She planted the device herself. Should have her within minutes.”
Jack’s blood chilled. Sarah Mitchell wasn’t just connected to this. She was running it.
A beam of light swept the tree line. “Movement. Upslope.” The guards turned, weapons lifting, and Jack cracked one eye just in time to see Annie breaking through the trees.
She wasn’t running away. She was running straight toward him.
A surge of urgency tore through him, sharp enough to override the pain.
She must have heard the gunfire. Must have thought he was down.
She was walking straight into a kill zone.
“Target acquired,” one of the men said into his radio. “Female approaching from sector seven. Moving to intercept.”
Both guards shifted position, stepping away from Jack, attention locked uphill.
It was the opening he had been waiting for.
Jack drove his good heel into the gravel and rolled hard behind the SUV just as the men advanced. His hand went straight to his ankle, fingers closing around the grip of the backup revolver they hadn’t found. He pushed himself upright, braced his back against the vehicle, and rose.
“Annie, get down!”
The words tore from his throat as he brought the revolver up and fired.
The first shot struck the nearest guard in the chest. The man went down without a sound.
The second guard spun, startled, weapon rising. Jack fired again, but his injured shoulder screamed and the round went wide, chewing into the concrete pad instead. The guard dove behind the pickup, returning fire in a brutal burst that shattered glass and sent sparks ricocheting across metal.
Annie dropped flat behind a concrete barrier as bullets chewed the air above her.
Jack moved, half-falling into cover as the recoil jarred his wounded arm. He forced himself to breathe through the pain, forced his vision to steady, and raised the revolver again.
Three rounds left.
The guard behind the truck had a rifle, cover, and backup closing fast.
“Jack, you’re hit!” Annie shouted.
“Shoulder,” he called back. “I’m still in it.”
Voices echoed from the tree line. Multiple. Organized. Closing distance.
“Team One, converge on base. We have contact.”
Jack risked a glance. Dark figures were already moving between the trees above them.
They were being boxed in.
He shifted, pressed tighter to the SUV, and assessed the terrain with the part of his mind that never shut off.
To their left, the drainage ditch he had used for approach cut away from the clearing and funneled downhill.
Beyond it lay a series of access roads that fed toward the main highway.
It was rough terrain, but it was movement. It was escape.
Annie was already reading the same landscape.
“The ditch,” she said. “Does it go anywhere?”
“It connects to an old service road. Half a mile down.”
“Can we reach it?”
“Under fire?” He grimaced. “Only if we’re fast and lucky.”
Another burst of gunfire slammed into the SUV, punching holes through the rear panel.
They were out of time.
“On my mark,” Jack said. “We move together. Low. Straight for the ditch. No hesitation.”
Annie nodded once. Jack counted silently—three, two, one—then fired his third shot, not to hit but to force the guard back.
In the same instant, he surged from cover, grabbed Annie’s wrist, and pulled her with him as they broke into a sprint.
Bullets cracked overhead. Gravel tore up around their feet.
Jack felt one punch into the SUV behind them as they dove into the drainage cut and slid hard into mud and shadow.
Jack didn’t stop. He hauled Annie after him, boots slipping as they scrambled down the narrow channel, bending low, letting the ditch swallow them.
Above them, voices shouted.
“They went down the run-off!”
“Move! Cut them off!”
The ditch twisted downhill, choked with brush and slick rock.
Jack forced his injured arm to work, using his body to shield Annie where the banks narrowed, his breath tearing harshly through his chest as blood soaked his sleeve.
The cold water slowed the bleeding, but it also stole strength from his fingers.
They broke from the ditch into a rough cut of trees and old ruts—the abandoned service road.
Jack slowed only long enough to check Annie’s face. Dirt streaked her cheek. Her eyes were clear. Focused.
“We keep moving,” he said. “No straight lines.”
They ran.
Branches whipped their arms. Roots tore at their footing. The forest swallowed sound, but behind them, he could still hear pursuit. Coordinated. Relentless.
And then another sound rose above the forest and the pounding of their own feet—the low, distant growl of engines.
Not close, but not far either. More than one.
Jack slowed despite himself, lifting his head as he listened, counting by instinct, his unease sharpening with every second.
Multiple vehicles were climbing the mountain road.
Too many. The realization made something inside him shift and widen, the situation suddenly feeling larger than the men hunting them through the trees.
Annie heard it too. She looked at him, the question already forming in her eyes. “That’s not local response,” he said quietly. “And it’s not backup.”
“Then what is it?”
Jack didn’t answer right away. He watched headlights begin to flicker through the trees far below, thin blades of light cutting through the darkness. Reinforcements. Or extraction.
Either way, someone had escalated.
And whoever was directing this operation had just committed far more than mercenaries to silencing Eleanor Blackwood’s past.
Jack tightened his grip on Annie’s hand.
“Whatever’s in that safe deposit box,” he said, “it’s bigger than we thought.”
And the mountain was no longer the only thing closing in.