“The Casc—what the fuck are you doing out there?” He really sounded freaked out now. “Jesus, I thought you were in Idaho!”

  “I was. And now I’m here. And I can explain that in the windowless van I’m sure is in my fucking future. What’s going on?”

  Will took a breath as if he were trying to calm himself down, which did nothing to calm me down. This was the most unflappable man I’d ever met, and the only other time I’d seen him remotely agitated was the night he and the other marshals had scooped me up out of Coeur d’Alene. This was not good.

  “Talk to me, Will,” I pleaded.

  “I spoke to an investigator embedded in the Knights of Eastern Washington.”

  I blinked. The Knights were a rival of the Brotherhood—fellow white supremacists and right-wing nationalists with an equally stupid name, but not exactly friendly with each other. “Um. Okay?”

  “One of their boys got a call last night from Coeur d’Alene. The embedded agent couldn’t hear who was on the phone, but the guy who answered passed on the word that someone had a lock on ‘that cop who narced on the Brotherhood’.”

  I wavered on my feet. “A lock? As in—”

  “As in, someone tracked down your whereabouts. And they’ve got ties to a group in Eastern Washington who’s more than happy to handle the situation.”

  “Shit…”

  “Yeah. So I need to get to you before they do. I’ve got marshals in Western Washington who can meet you. I just need to get a location on you, and then—”

  “Fuck!” The word burst out of me as another synapse connected.

  “What? What’s happening? Talk to me, Brandon.”

  “Will.” I swallowed, gazing back at the house. “We found AirTags in Seth’s things.”

  “Oh. Shit.” Something thumped in the background, like a fist hitting a desk. “Brandon, listen to me—you have got to get out of there. Leave everything behind unless you’re absolutely sure it’s free of tracking devices.”

  I was already striding back toward the cabin, my skin crawling as the sun beat on my back and reminded me how exposed and vulnerable I was. Panicking, I broke into a run. “Where can your boys meet me?”

  “I’ll get you a location ASAP. Keep your phone on. It’s—I don’t like you having an unsecured electronic device, but you’re already made, so keep this line open. Got it?”

  “Got it.” I picked up speed, certain a bullet was going to drop me at any moment. “Did you hear about Seth’s housemate?”

  “His housemate? What?”

  “The guy my boyfriend was living with.” I pulled open the door and stepped inside, grateful for the shelter. “He was murdered last night. Looked like a home invasion, and there might be a hostage.” I paused. “Or she may have been involved. All we know is she wasn’t found at the scene, and the place was ransacked. She could be a hostage or a suspect.”

  The curses rolling off my handler’s tongue would’ve been hilarious under any other circumstances. “Does this lady friend of his have a name?”

  “Lisa O’Neill.”

  “All right. I’ll do some looking, and I’ll get in touch with the local P.D. As for this whole situation, if I had to guess, this is someone trying to flush the two of you out and get you back to Idaho.”

  “Shit,” I hissed.

  “Yeah, Big time. I need to do some more digging and figure out what the fuck is going on, but listen to me, Brandon: whatever you do… don’t stay put, but do not come back to Coeur d’Alene until I give you the all clear. In fact, stay the hell away from Idaho.”

  I wanted to argue that that would look seriously suspicious to the people investigating Marcus’s murder. But he was right, and we were limited on options that wouldn’t cause us problems, so I just said, “Copy that.”

  “Good. For now, you two just focus on getting the hell out of Dodge and someplace safe.”

  “Will do.” After we ended the call, I hurried up the stairs and into the bedroom, where Seth was still going through our things. “We have to go.”

  He stared at me with wide eyes. Then he looked at the phone in my hand. “What now?”

  “I’ll explain on the way.” I hurried down the hall, throwing over my shoulder, “Some bad people know where we are, and we need to go. Now.”

  That prompted some swearing, and Seth wasn’t far behind me.

  Halfway down the stairs, though, he planted his feet. “Wait.”

  Frustration surged in me. “Wait for what? Seth, we have to—”

  “My dad’s guns.” He gestured behind him. “We don’t know how close these assholes are, and we’ve got a long drive through the middle of nowhere.” He started back up the stairs. “Let’s not go out there unarmed.”

  Okay, that was a valid reason to wait.

  His dad wasn’t what I would call a gun buff or—as Seth “affectionately” called a certain subset of the population, an ammosexual—but he did have a healthy collection of guns and ammo. Smart, given the location. He was a hunter, and out here in the wilderness, bears and cougars were a thing.

  Seth opened the gun safe, and we wasted no time arming ourselves. My own gun was in its holster at my right hip. One of his dad’s pistols went into a shoulder holster under my left arm. I felt a little over-the-top, slinging a 30-30 rifle over my back, but under the circumstances, there were worse things to be than over-the top. Things like, outmanned and outgunned. We were likely the former already; didn’t need to tempt fate with the latter.

  Seth holstered the weapon he carried as a secondary when he was on duty, along with one of his dad’s revolvers. He didn’t care for revolvers, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He also took a shotgun and a rifle, and we shoved a few boxes of ammunition into a couple of backpacks. Then he shut the safe and locked it. Good—no point in leaving a loot drop if our pursuers swung into the cabin.

  Weapons and ammo in hand, we headed down to the car and got the hell out of there.

  Chapter 17

  Seth

  I was way too fucked up in the head to drive right now, so Brandon took the wheel. As we followed my dad’s familiar driveway back toward the barely maintained county road, I tried not to squirm in the passenger seat. The thick canopy of trees kept the driveway dark no matter what time of day, and there’d always been something about emerging from either end that made me feel like I was going into another world. Either crossing into the firebreak-ringed yard of the cabin, or returning to the real world like we were doing now. Even as an adult, that feeling had remained.

  Today, it made my neck prickle. As if we were leaving the relative safety of the cabin and stepping out into the line of fire. Irrational, of course—we were sitting ducks at the cabin. But from the time I was a kid, that building and its surrounding land had been an oasis of calm and safety. Leaving it behind today, especially knowing why we were bailing and what waited for us back in Idaho, felt like stepping out from behind a bunker into a firefight.

  Or maybe I’d just lost my goddamned mind because my friend and housemate was dead, his girlfriend was possibly either a killer or a captive, and apparently someone was hunting down the man sitting next to me.

  I studied Brandon as he followed the meandering road through the woods. His expression was steely and focused. Taking him in now, I wondered how the hell I’d ever missed that he was a cop. He fucking looked the part. And like a lot of cops, he was good at hiding fear. There was no sign of it in his hard eyes or his rigid features.

  His white knuckles gave him away.

  Andrew was one of the most relaxed drivers I’d ever known. Even when something happened, like a car cutting him off or nearly clipping him, he stayed cool and collected, evading the hazard like it was nothing. He’d grumble, roll his eyes, mutter some choice words at people—all the usual shit—but nothing ever seemed to rattle him when he was behind the wheel.

  Today, Brandon was gripping the wheel like he was expecting a strong wind to whip the car to one side.

  Fuck. If he was actually scared…

  I tried to sound… Well, not calm, but less freaked out than I was. “So, that call—what exactly is going on?”

  Brandon swallowed hard, and he loosened his hold on the wheel enough to drum his fingers rapidly. “That was my witness inspector. My handler, I guess. With the marshals.”

  Okay, fuck. That sounded ominous.

  “And?”

  He glanced at me. “Federal investigators intercepted some communications with a militia. Not the one I was involved in breaking up. In fact, it was one of their rivals and—Anyway, they’re still trying to figure out who the call came from, but the punchline is that the caller had located me.”

  My blood ran cold.

  Brandon continued, “My handler is getting in touch with some marshals in Seattle. He wants us getting the fuck out of here, going anywhere but back to Idaho, and as soon as they can, they’re going to give us a location to meet up with them. Then they’ll get us someplace safe.” He flicked his eyes toward me again as a curve in the road straightened out. “Both of us.”

  “Whoa. Shit.”

  “Yeah. My thoughts exactly. And this militia has been in touch with one of their affiliates in Eastern Washington, so there’s no telling how soon they’ll…” He trailed off into a sigh, pressing his elbow under the window and rubbing his neck. “I’m sorry, Seth. This is all on me. I never should’ve come back to Idaho.”

  There was a part of me that wanted to angrily agree with him. Had he never returned, I’d probably still be having frustrating conversations with Marcus about how I needed to get the fuck over Andrew. Marcus would still be alive, Andrew would still be an ex who ghosted me, and Brandon Gaines would be a name I’d only heard in news coverage.

  I wanted to have a lot of feelings about him and us and this entire escalating shitshow, but I was just numb. I’d been through the wringer the last few days, and I didn’t know what to feel about anything.

  But damn if I had a chance to make sense of it all or say anything to Brandon, because he took us around a curve, and the whole world went to shit.

  I didn’t even see the truck until a split second before it collided with the driver-side fender. Brandon gave a shout of surprise just before we were hit, and then we were spinning, gravel pelting the undercarriage, the windows, and everything in between.

  The ground beneath us was suddenly soft. The spinning slowed a little, and I had time for an “Oh, fuck!” before we were weightless. The car slammed into something solid, wavered a bit, then dropped again before something screeched against the passenger side, and we jolted to another stop.

  Brandon was in motion before I even knew which way was up. He was there, and then he was gone, the driver-side door swinging closed behind him. I tried to open my own door, but it wouldn’t move.

  Gunfire boomed, and I instinctively kept my head down. Glass showered the back of my neck, a few pieces sliding under my collar, as I fumbled with my seat belt. When it came loose, I crawled across the passenger and driver seats, my ears ringing from adrenaline and the guns firing up and down the hillside.

  Leaning against the driver seat, I tried to peer in the side mirror to assess the scene, but it was gone. Damn it.

  I scooted down a little so I was fully hidden by the seat. The car and the seat wouldn’t stop any bullets, but they did make me harder to see, so there was that. Then I unlatched the door and carefully nudged it open with my foot.

  That prompted a hail of bullets, one of which took a chunk out of a tree while another ricocheted off the car. I jerked my foot back inside and swore.

  And that was when I realized there was no return fire. There was no movement near the car. No sounds at all.

  Oh, no…

  I listened, which was a challenge given the way my ears rang and my heart pounded. There were voices in the distance. Shouts. Adult males, from the sound of it. At least three. Two were coming closer, and a stick broke as—I assumed—someone came down the embankment we’d apparently gone over.

  I slid my pistol out of the holster and clicked off the safety. I listened as undergrowth gave away someone creeping up on this side of the car. Stepping slowly and carefully, but not enough to mask the whispers of ferns and the crunches of twigs. The metal along the bottom of the window showed an approaching reflection, and I watched it, holding my breath and curling my finger around the trigger of my weapon.

  Though it was dim down here thanks to the heavy foliage, the man’s shadow still appeared, and I slowly and stealthily twisted toward the window, ready to—

  Gunfire exploded behind the car. Someone screamed. The man behind the car shouted, his shadow and reflection vanishing as he took cover. Then more bullets flew. Something dark and wet hit the tree—blood and brain matter, I realized a heartbeat later—and the forest went silent.

  For long seconds, I stayed there, ears ringing and heart still pounding.

  Then… “Seth? You okay?”

  I closed my eyes and blew out a breath. Brandon was alive.

  “I’m good,” I called, and then I shoved the door open with my foot and got out. My legs were shaky and rubbery, probably because of the adrenaline still surging through me, and they almost dropped out from under me when I found Brandon behind the car. He had a cut on his jaw and blood running down the left side of his face, but he was alive and on his feet.

  “You good?” He sounded out of breath.

  “Yeah. Yeah, I’m…” I leaned against the car as the adrenaline waned and I took in the scene. The car had ripped a path through the undergrowth on the way down, and we’d stopped maybe twenty feet below the road. There were two vehicles up there—a pickup truck and a Jeep—and I could see at least one person lying still on the ground. Down here, there was a guy in camouflage sprawled a few feet behind the car, and the man who’d been creeping up on me was slumped back against the rear door, eyes open and sightless.

  “Seth.” Brandon came closer, approaching me like he would a shaken victim at a violent crime scene—slow, calm, and cautious. “We’ve got to go. Come on.”

  “Go?” I looked around the scene. “We can’t just leave a—”

  “Yeah, we can.” He reached past the sitting body and gestured for my hand. “Let’s get the guns, and let’s go. We have to—”

  “Brandon, we have to—”

  “We have to go!” he snapped, dropping the calm façade. “They were radioing for backup, and their boys know exactly where we are. We have to go.”

  Fuck. He was right. We weren’t fleeing the scene of a crime—we were getting the hell out of here until the threat was neutralized. Which it clearly wasn’t.

  “Shit,” I muttered, and gestured at the trunk. “Can we still get that open?”

  “Probably. Can you get the keys?”

  I leaned back into the car, which was when my body let me know that, oh, hey, we’d just been in a pretty serious fucking accident. Apparently unaware that the threat was still very much active, my brain had decided it was time to drop the endorphins and adrenaline so I could take stock of injuries. Everything decided to fucking hurt.

  There was no time to lick our wounds, though, so I bit back a curse and grabbed the keys. As I straightened, a spasm in my lower back knocked some curses from my mouth.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Brandon took the keys from me. “We should see if one of their trucks has a first aid kit. We can put something on…” He gestured at his face. At first, I thought he was referring to the bloody mess of his own, but then I touched my cheek and realized I, too, was bleeding.

  “Jesus, how bad is…” I bent a little to find my reflection in what remained of the back window. Oh. No wonder Brandon had been worried about me—I had cuts all over one side of my face, and there was definitely some blood coming from my scalp. The sight of that much blood on my face, neck, and shirt gave me a visceral oh fuck reaction, but my jostled brain still fortunately remembered that cuts to the head and face had a tendency to bleed like mad. I didn’t have anything gushing, and the trickle along my hairline was slow.

  I’d be fine. Hopefully.

  We gathered our weapons and trudged up the embankment, which my body didn’t appreciate. Brandon wasn’t moving very quickly either, and he was heavily favoring his left leg. When we got to the top, he peered into the Jeep, probably unaware that I noticed him not putting any weight at all on that foot.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” I asked. “What’s wrong with your leg?”

  “It’s fine,” he gritted out as he pulled open the door. “I think I hit my knee on the dash.”

  Made sense. In fact…

  “I’m kind of amazed the airbags didn’t go off,” I said.

  “Let’s not look that gift horse in the mouth,” he grumbled over his shoulder.

  I grunted in agreement. Given how stunned and even concussed I’d seen people thanks to the punch of the airbag, no, I wouldn’t look that gift horse in the mouth.

  Brandon emerged from the Jeep with an armload of stuff—a radio, a battery pack, a cell phone, and a pistol with a couple of extra magazines. “Check the back of the truck.” He nodded toward it. “I can almost guarantee they’ve got first aid stuff back there.”

  He was right. One thing I could say about these militia wackjobs was that they definitely came prepared. First aid kit, GPS, a satellite phone, a few weapons that I knew for a fact were illegal (at least in Idaho), two coolers of food and water, and—

  “Oh, hey, look at this.” I chuckled and held up what I’d found.

  Brandon blinked. “Is that—did they bring a drone?”

  “Yep. It’s…” My humor faded as I realized there was a camera attached. “Probably how they were reconning.”

  Brandon sobered too, and he swore under his breath. Then, “There’s probably more coming, too. Especially if they can’t contact their buddies who are already out here. Which means we need to get away from here. Now.”

  “But where do we go? Because there’s only one road out.” I gestured the way we’d been heading.