Chapter Two
The smell woke her before the heat did.
Josie's eyes snapped open in the darkness of the Lindquist barn, her brain processing smoke and wrong and move before she was fully conscious. Diesel was already on his feet, hackles raised, a low growl vibrating in his chest.
She grabbed her boots and ran.
The barn doors were twenty feet away. By the time she reached them, the air had gone thick and orange, flames licking up the walls of the structure attached to the main building—the equipment shed where she'd parked her truck for the night.
No.
No.
Josie burst through the doors and into a nightmare.
Her truck was a fireball. The cab, the bed, the portable forge bolted to the frame—all of it engulfed in flames that roared toward the sky like something hungry. The heat hit her face in a wave, driving her back, and she could only stand there watching as twelve years of work turned to ash.
Her tools. Her anvil. Her stock. The sleeping bag and pillow that were the closest thing she had to a home.
Everything.
"Fire! Call 911!" The Lindquists were spilling out of their farmhouse in pajamas, Mrs. Lindquist screaming while her husband ran for a garden hose that wouldn't do a damn thing against an inferno like this. "The barn's going to go! Get the horses out!"
Josie moved on autopilot, years of working around panicked animals taking over while her mind went somewhere cold and far away.
She helped evacuate three horses from the main barn, her hands steady even though her chest felt like someone had reached in and torn something loose.
Diesel stayed at her heels, whining, pressing against her legs whenever she stood still.
The fire trucks wouldn't make it in time. They were forty minutes from the nearest station, maybe more, and by then there'd be nothing left but metal and memories.
Through the smoke and the chaos, Josie saw it.
The mud-splattered pickup, pulling away from the tree line at the edge of the property. No headlights. Moving slow, like the men inside wanted to watch what they'd done.
The same truck from this afternoon.
The same men who'd asked about her schedule.
They'd found where she was sleeping. They'd waited until dark. And they'd burned everything she owned while she was still inside.
If Diesel hadn't woken her—
Josie's knees went weak. She locked them, refusing to fall, refusing to give the men in that truck the satisfaction even though they were already gone.
Twelve years.
She'd built her business from nothing. Aged out of foster care at eighteen with a vocational certificate and three hundred dollars to her name.
Bought her first anvil at a farm auction for forty bucks.
Rebuilt a truck engine herself because she couldn't afford a mechanic.
Built her client list one horse at a time, one handshake at a time, one winter at a time.
All of it was gone.
The rumble of a motorcycle cut through the roar of the flames.
Josie turned, some part of her expecting more trouble, expecting the men in the pickup to come back and finish what they'd started.
Instead, she saw the man from earlier—the one with shoulders like a wall and eyes that measured every threat before it materialized—rolling up the driveway on a bike that gleamed in the firelight.
Anvil.
She remembered the name from his cut. Sergeant at Arms for a club she'd heard rumors about but never encountered directly. The North Star Savages. Outlaws who ran the Iron Range and protected the territory most people had written off.
He killed the engine and crossed to her in strides that covered ground without seeming to hurry.
"You hurt?"
"No." Her voice came out steadier than she expected. "But my truck—"
"I see it." His eyes swept the scene—the burning equipment shed, the firefighting efforts that were already too late, the tree line where the pickup had disappeared. "Those men from earlier?"
"Same truck. No headlights."
His jaw tightened. Something dangerous flickered behind his eyes, there and gone so fast she might have imagined it.
"What did you see?"
"What?"
"On the back roads." He stepped closer, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to meet his gaze. "They came looking for you this afternoon. Now they've burned everything you own. What did you see that made you worth killing?"
The question hit her like a fist.
Worth killing.
She'd known, somewhere in the back of her mind. Known since she'd spotted faces near the old Mesabi mine shaft three weeks ago. Known since she'd seen trucks on logging roads that didn't lead anywhere legal. Known since the feeling of being watched had crept into her days and stayed there.
But she'd told herself it was nothing. Told herself she was being paranoid. Told herself that keeping her head down and her mouth shut would be enough.
It wasn't enough.
"Faces," she said. "Near the abandoned mine sites. Trucks where they shouldn't be. Men moving equipment in the middle of the night."
"Brogan."
The name meant nothing to her, but the way Anvil said it—like a curse, like a death sentence—told her everything.
"Who's Brogan?"
"The man who's going to keep trying to kill you until he succeeds." Anvil's voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. "He runs meth through those mine shafts. Uses roads nobody watches because nobody lives out here anymore. And witnesses end up in holes so deep nobody ever finds them."
Josie's stomach dropped.
She'd known the Iron Range had problems—what dying mining town didn't? But meth labs in abandoned mines? Murder and shallow graves?
"I didn't see anything that matters," she said, hearing the desperation in her own voice. "I don't know names or faces. I was just passing through—"
"Doesn't matter." Anvil cut her off. "Brogan doesn't deal in probably. If you might have seen something, you're a loose end. And he ties off loose ends."
The fire crackled behind her. Mrs. Lindquist was sobbing somewhere, and the horses were screaming in the paddock where they'd been moved, panicked by the smoke and flames.
Josie looked at the wreckage of her life.
Twelve years. Everything she'd built. Everything she'd accomplished. Gone in a single night because she'd been on the wrong road at the wrong time.
She had nothing now. No truck. No tools. No money saved because every dollar went back into the business. The clothes on her back, the dog at her heels, and that was it.
"I don't—" She stopped, swallowed hard. "I don't have anywhere to go."
"Yes, you do."
Anvil said it like it was obvious. Like the answer had been decided before she'd even asked the question.
"You're coming to the compound. Tonight. You'll be safe there while we figure out how to deal with Brogan."
"I can't just—"
"You can." He stepped closer again, and this time Josie felt the heat of him even through the heat of the fire at her back. "Those men will be back. Probably before sunrise. And next time they won't be satisfied with burning your truck."
"You don't even know me."
"I know you didn't shake when three armed men rolled up on you this afternoon.
I know you evacuated horses from a burning barn instead of falling apart.
I know you've been sleeping in your truck because you don't have anywhere else.
" His voice dropped, something fierce underneath the flat calm.
"And I know that if I leave you here, you'll be dead by morning. "
Josie wanted to argue. Every instinct she'd developed over eighteen years of surviving alone screamed at her to refuse, to handle this herself, to prove she didn't need anyone's help.
But she looked at the fire consuming everything she owned.
She thought about the men in the pickup, watching it burn.
She thought about mine shafts and shallow graves and the faces she'd seen on roads that didn't lead anywhere legal.
And for the first time in her adult life, Josie Kinnear didn't argue about accepting help.
"Okay," she said.
Anvil nodded once, like he'd expected nothing less.
"Get your dog. We're leaving."