The first man tries the door, finding it open. I direct the security system to lock the door as soon as it shuts. If he tries to shoot his way out of the downstairs, I’ll know, but I’ll be safe. The glass is bulletproof.

Once the first man is further inside and away from the windows, I check on the progress of the others. The man headed for the front door enters the house, and just as before, it’s set to lock him in. The man in the garage is the one I can’t trap behind glass. When I’m satisfied with his proximity from the garage doors, I focus on the guard headed toward the boathouse. His attention is honed on the door of the structure, the gun poised between his tensed hands, his finger hovering over the trigger. I’m going to have to hope for the best.

As he takes one hand away to reach for the door, I let my arrow fly. It strikes through his neck.

With a garbled, gurgling growl, he falls, dropping the gun.

I keep low as I run toward him. He’s dying fast. I take his Glock and the earpiece when the first shots ring from inside the house.

“Bentley is down. I see her. North side. It’s bulletproof glass,” a voice says over the earpiece. There are more shots. “Fuck.”

I run back to the tablet where I left it at the rocky outcrop. The man in the garage rushes to the door. I take my belongings and run into the woods, joining a hidden path that leads to a door on the north side of the house. I unlock it and creep inside.

The first man is still shooting the glass. It’s starting to crack with the repeated shots to the same weakened section. He doesn’t see my reflection in the damaged glass as I approach behind him. I shoot him in the head, blood and brain and bone spattering across the chipped window.

“Simmons? Simmons!” The voice of the man upstairs crackles in my earpiece. His footsteps thud above me. “Fuck. Simmons is down. She’s in the house.”

“Copy,” another voice says.

The man upstairs creeps across the room. The one from the garage closes in on the house. He passes the locked front door without trying the handle, continuing on to the north side.

I head back to the door I used to enter the house and open it just a crack, then backtrack into the house to the laundry room. From here, I can see part of the hallway and the entrance of the den where I just killed Simmons.

After hiding my bow and quiver in the closet, I open the cupboard door beneath the counter next to the sink and climb inside, careful not to tip over the few bottles resting inside. The man outside creeps closer to the open north-side door, his movement cautious as he reaches for the edge of the thick steel and pulls it open. His gun is ready but he finds nothing there on the other side. He enters and leaves it open behind him.

“What’s your position, Reid?” the man asks. I hear him both in the earpiece and at the entrance of the hall.

“Upstairs, south side.”

“Copy.”

The man close to me arrives at the entrance of the laundry room and sweeps the barrel of the gun across the open space. I keep my Glock pointed toward the cupboard door just in case, but he doesn’t linger in the room. He turns and continues toward the den.

As soon as his back is turned, I push the cupboard door open and fire.

The first shot hits him in the ass. The second shot tears through his skull as he falls.

“Toric! Shit…shit…” There’s running above me as Reid heads toward the stairs. I close my cupboard door. I watch on the screen as he descends to my level, keeping his gun ready as he takes the last step and enters the hallway at the far end. He spots Toric and takes careful steps toward him. I see him look up toward the open door. Chances are, he’ll think I’ve run.

I wait until Reid starts to step over Toric’s body to open the cupboard and fire, counting on imbalance and distraction to work in my favor. He fires back and misses, but I don’t. My bullet passes through the side of his throat.

Reid’s legs are working like he’s trying to walk out of his pain as I exit the cupboard. Gurgling, desperate sounds rumble from his throat. He presses his hand to the gushing wound in a futile attempt to stop the flow of blood.

“Seems to be neck day,” I say as I approach, kicking his gun away. The blood trickles between his fingers in rivulets, coating the floor. “You’ve made a fucking mess.”

He blinks up at my expressionless face, his eyes a mix of pain and loathing and fear as he watches me withdraw my hunting knife and kneel next to his writhing body. I observe his struggle for a moment, wondering if I’ll feel that same mix of emotion when I die.

“When you get to hell, tell Donald Soversky Jr.… Tell him I’ll be seeing him soon, I think.”

I plunge the knife into Reid’s temple, holding it steady until his limbs stop twitching against the floor.

Rage and satisfaction twine together in my chest as I withdraw my blade and wipe it clean on the dead man’s chest. I survey the mess around me. My molars grind together. Caron Berger is making it really fucking hard for me to want to keep him alive.

At least now that I’ve killed these Praetorian fuckers, I might have a chance to take the bike and make it to Honeycomb House. I grab my tablet and check the security cameras where the SUV is still parked in the driveway, then I check the cameras down the quiet road in both directions.

Two blacked-out SUVs speed toward the cabin on the camera that’s ten miles out.

“Shit…”

I turn the tablet off and toss it into the cupboard along with my sweater, pants, and shoes, and then I run.

I bolt out the north door, running toward the lake, gaining speed down the hill. My foot touches the wooden planks of the dock when I hear a bang. Pain burns through my arm on delay.

A fifth man.

I fall on the dock, landing on my knees with my hand around the wound as another bullet screams past, pelting into the wood. I push myself up and run, shots hitting the planks behind me.

The last thing I see before I’m sailing through the air is that little cherry tree sitting at the end of the dock, its petals sprayed with a crimson rain of blood.

OceanofPDF.com

33

OceanofPDF.com

ELI

“You look like dog shit,” Fletcher says as she plops down in the chair across the desk from me.

“Thanks,” I reply, watching my pen as I tap the paper with dots of ink. “I feel like dog shit, so it’s probably fitting.”

It’s been four days since Ogden. I haven’t seen or heard from Bria since. I’ve hardly been able to get out of bed. I’ve barely eaten. Every hour that passes scours my soul raw.

It doesn’t get better. It only gets worse.

Fletcher is the only person who knows we imploded. I guess she’s the only one who really knew anyway. She knows there was a fight and we haven’t talked, that Bria disappeared, and that I drove away and left her there in the woods or wherever the fuck she went. I fucking left her there. With bears.

The rational part of my brain says that Bria did reveal herself to be a serial fucking murderer, and she’s probably just fine.

But the larger, louder part of me, the man who’s still in love and heartbroken, drowns in a well of guilt that only seems to deepen.

You abandoned her, I berate myself. You promised you’d love her. You promised she could trust you. And the first chance she did you fucking left her. 

You’re no better than the people who raised her. 

I drop my pen and drag my hands down my face as the same cyclical thoughts play round and round in my head. It’s a battle of secrets and lies. Truth and love. Fear and hope and loss. I don’t even know which sides are which, or who’s fighting who, or if any of them are winning. I only know I’m fucking miserable, and no matter how hard I try to push it down and rise above it, I feel at the core of me that it’s wrong. It’s wrong to be without Bria.