75. Hendricks
HENDRICKS
For three seconds I can’t think.
Then training slams back into place. “Harper, is her signal still active?”
“Active. Moving.”
Moving. That word does something to my chest that I don't have time to examine. “Which direction?”
“East wing,” Harper says. “Fast.”
Jake reads my face and doesn't like what he sees. “Hendricks.”
I shake my head. “I'm fine.”
“We’re getting her out.”
Yes, we are. I don’t make promises I don’t keep.
The corridor opens into a room that used to be a study—leather, glass, art that costs more than most people's lives.
It's the room Ashford took her into. I know because I mapped this house for two days before I let her walk into it, memorizing every hallway, every door, every place a man could hide a threat.
I did not map for this.
The room is wrecked. A lamp shattered against the far wall. One of the chairs on its side, a long gouge in the leather like something—someone—was dragged across it. A single man’s shoe near the doorway.
Then I see it—on the floor, near the window, catching what little light filters through the shutters.
The pin.
Six inches of sharpened steel, the one she'd twisted into her hair before we set out today. The one she'd told me, casually, like she was discussing the weather, could put a man down before he knew he was already dying.
She never goes anywhere without a weapon.
She wouldn't have left this behind unless she didn't have a choice.
I'm on my knees before I realize I've moved, my hand closing around it like it's something that can tell me she's still okay.
It doesn't tell me anything. It's just metal. Cold. Silent.
“Hendricks.” Jake's voice, quiet, close. Not an order—a tether. “She's not here. Get up.”
Taking a deep breath, I pull it together. Because not getting her back isn’t an option.
Luke's voice comes through, breathless, satisfaction under the strain. “Gate's a mess. Two guards down, nonlethal. The rest are chasing their own tails out here. Tell me we've got her.”
I look at Jake.
“Guys.” Luke again, sharper now. “Tell me we've got her.”
“We don't,” Jake says.
Silence on the line. Then, quieter, “Copy.”
Mason's voice cuts in, steady despite the shift. “No movement on the grounds that matches extraction. If they moved her, it wasn't through the front or the north face.”
“Basement,” Luke says. “Or a tunnel. This kind of money, there's always a secret way out.”
“It wasn’t in the blueprints,” I mutter.
“Harper.” Jake's already thinking three steps ahead, the way he always does. “Mandy’s comms?”
“Still transmitting.” A pause, keys clicking somewhere on her end. “Comm's still transmitting. She's got maybe forty minutes of battery left on that thing, and I can triangulate as long as it's active.”
“Ashford's people know about the comm?” Mason asks.
“It’s still working so I’d say no. If they found it, they’d have destroyed it,” Jake says. “Unless they put it on a decoy to lead us on a false trail.”
I shake my head. “We don’t have intel to that end, so we still follow it.”
“They'll jam it eventually,” Harper says. “Or destroy it. I need you moving now, not later.”
I'm already walking. Fast. The pin is in my pocket, and it feels heavier than six inches of steel has any right to feel.
“Direction,” I say.
“East, then south. Vehicle speed. She's on a road, not on foot.”
“Ashford's with her?”
A beat. “His signal—the one we were tracking on his phone—went dark eight minutes ago. Right when the diversion started.”
That lands hard.
Ashford didn’t run because of us. He was already moving. “He’d already planned to take her somewhere.”
Jake’s expression hardens. “And our diversion gave him cover.”
Fuck. We didn’t flush Ashford out. We opened the goddamn door for him.
Luke catches up to us, blood across his knuckles and none of it his. “Tell me I’m misunderstanding the part where we just helped the asshole kidnap her.”
Harper’s voice cuts through the comms. “The signal’s coming from a vehicle that just crossed onto the county road. If you move now, you can close the gap before they hit the highway.”
“We move now,” I say, already in motion.
Mason's already sliding down from the ridge, rifle collapsed and slung, footsteps sure on the gravel. “I'm bringing the truck around.”
Luke falls in stride beside me, some of the humor gone from his voice, replaced by something harder. “We're getting her back, Hendricks.”
I nod. “I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.” There's no version of tonight that ends with me standing in this house, holding a piece of her hair pin, and calling it done.
Jake meets my eyes as we hit the door. “Let's go.”
The truck's engine roars to life behind us.
I climb into the passenger seat, the pin still in my fist, and stare down the road ahead like I can see her at the end of it.
Forty minutes of battery.
I intend to use every second of it.