Chapter 3
Z
The blade sank six inches deep into Webb’s right thigh, severing the femoral artery with ruthless precision.
Webb shrieked—a high, horrifying sound that didn't sound human—and his suffocating grip instantly vanished from my throat. Blood, dark and thick, erupted from the wound, spattering across my face and coat. He collapsed sideways into the crushed drywall, clawing wildly at his leg, his face draining of color within seconds as his own life force pumped out onto the freezing dust.
I dragged myself backward, coughing violently, gasping for the icy air that flooded through the shattered room.
"Jake!" Daniel’s voice echoed over the deafening hiss of the leaking oxygen tank. "We have to move! Now! The snipers are realigning!"
THWACK. THWACK. THWACK.
Three armor-piercing rounds punched through the outer plywood, leaving fist-sized holes. One round obliterated the wooden chair Rebecca had just escaped from, sending splinters exploding like shrapnel.
"Get the baby!" I screamed, my voice raw and hoarse.
Hannah was already on her feet, driven by pure motherly instinct. She didn't look at the blood soaking the floor, nor at Webb, who was now writhing in a dying spasm as his shock set in. She threw open the transport warmer, wrapped Owen in her heavy wool scarf, and pulled him tightly against her chest. Owen let out a sharp, piercing cry—the healthiest sound I had ever heard in my life.
"Rebecca, go!" I yelled, grabbing the doctor by her arm and hauling her toward the interior stairwell, away from the exterior walls where the laser sights were frantically searching for targets.
Daniel took the lead, his gun trained down the dark stairwell. "The paramedics are clear! They made it to the trees! But we have at least three shooter assets outside on the north ridge!"
"They're using night-vision thermals," I said, my tactical brain operating on pure military muscle memory even as my shoulder burned with hot blood. "The snowstorm is giving them a clear heat signature of this building. We stay inside, we die. We need to reach the boathouse."
"How?" Daniel demanded as we bounded down the concrete steps, the sound of snow boots heavy behind us. "They have the perimeter locked!"
"The loading dock," I said, grabbing a heavy flare gun from an open emergency tool kit resting on a workbench at the bottom of the stairs. "Webb’s men are trained to watch movement, not light. Cover your eyes."
We hit the ground floor. The air down here was freezing, filled with the smell of sawdust and old gasoline. Outside, the headlights of Webb’s idling ambulance cut through the storm, throwing long, eerie shadows across the snow.
I loaded a high-intensity magnesium flare into the heavy plastic pistol.
"When I open this loading bay door, do not look back," I ordered Daniel and Rebecca. "Run straight for the pine line behind the ambulance. Hannah, stay between Daniel and me."
Hannah nodded, her teeth chattering uncontrollably as she held Owen wrapped beneath her jacket. "I trust you, Jake. I always trusted you."
Those words hit me harder than any bullet. Fourteen months of horror, betrayal, and manufactured lies, and she still held onto that trust.
I grabbed the heavy metal chain of the loading dock's roll-up door.
"Three," I counted. "Two. One!"
I yanked the chain down with all my strength. The heavy steel door screeched upward. Instantly, a red laser sight swept across the opening.
I pointed the flare gun straight up at the wooden rafters above the loading dock and pulled the trigger.
FOOM!
A blinding, brilliant ball of white-hot magnesium light exploded right in the doorway, illuminating the storm in a dazzling, blinding flash of 2,000-degree light. To anyone wearing night-vision goggles on the north ridge, it was like looking directly into the sun.
Distorted screams of temporary blindness echoed from the distant treeline across the snow.
"GO! GO! GO!" I roared.
Daniel surged forward, pistol raised, escorting Rebecca and Hannah into the freezing darkness. I brought up the rear, backing out into the knee-deep snow, my weapon raised, covering the tree line.
A shadow burst out from around the corner of the resort—one of Webb’s surviving operators, his night-vision goggles ripped off his face, firing his rifle blindly from the hip.
TAP. TAP.
I double-tapped him in the center mass before he could acquire his target. He collapsed into the snow drift without a sound.
We reached the idling ambulance. Daniel threw open the rear doors, helping Hannah and Rebecca inside.
"Jake, get in!" Daniel yelled from the driver's cab, jumping into the front seat and ripping the gear shift into reverse.
"Drive!" I yelled, slamming the rear doors shut from the inside just as a hail of sniper bullets peppered the ambulance’s reinforced steel body like heavy hail.
The vehicle lurched violently, its heavy winter tires spinning on the ice before gripping the gravel underneath. Daniel slammed his foot on the accelerator, tearing away from the construction site, smashing through a wooden security gate, and plunging into the blinding white darkness of the logging road.
Inside the back of the ambulance, the silence was deafening, broken only by the rhythmic beat of the engine and Owen's soft, rhythmic breathing.
Rebecca sank against the metal wall, her head resting against her knees, shaking uncontrollably as the shock finally washed over her. "He's dead... Webb is dead..."
"He was just the top layer," I said grimly, leaning against the emergency gurney, trying to stem the bleeding from my shoulder with a piece of sterile gauze from the paramedic kit.
Hannah slid across the floor, sitting right next to me. She reached out with a trembling, tear-stained hand and touched my blood-soaked jacket.
"Jake..." she whispered, her voice cracking. "They told me you died in a helicopter crash in Syria. They showed me a flag. They gave me a sealed coffin. Your father... he signed the papers..."
"My father sold me, Hannah," I said, the bitter reality tearing through my chest like jagged glass. "He and Logan took Webb’s money to clear their debts. They knew I was alive. They paid off the right people to keep me off the radar, waiting for the day they could declare me legally dead and claim the grandfather's land."
"Your mother..." Hannah sobbed. "Patricia... she took my phone, Jake. She threatened to take Owen away if I tried to leave the farm. She said I was mentally unstable... that I was hallucinating your voice..."
I pulled Hannah into my good arm, drawing her and Owen tight against my chest. The warmth of my son against my skin washed away fourteen months of nightmare. "It's over, Hannah. I'm home."
"It's not over," Rebecca's voice cut through the darkness, cold and grim.
I looked up at her.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
Rebecca lifted her bruised head, her eyes wide with a terrifying realization. "Webb said someone else paid him, Jake. Remember? Before you fought him. He said, 'It was between your future and the men who paid me to take it.' Webb was a high-level contractor, yes... but he didn't have eighty million dollars to build a resort or bribe federal judges."
My stomach sank into a deep, dark abyss.
Just then, the ambulance’s radio console in the front cab crackled violently with static. Daniel’s voice came over the internal intercom, sharp and laced with panic.
"Jake! You need to hear this! The main road is blocked!"
"By police?" I called back, standing up and sliding open the partition window to the driver's cab.
"No," Daniel said, his eyes wide as he stared through the snow-caked windshield at the highway ahead. "Not police. Blacked-out state trooper vehicles. Four of them. Pincer formation."
I leaned over Daniel’s shoulder and looked through the glass.
Parked across the frozen two-lane bridge ahead were four heavy armored SUVs, their strobe lights flashing blue and red against the falling snow. Standing in front of the middle vehicle was a man in a crisp, pristine tailored overcoat, completely unaffected by the sub-zero wind.
Even through the blinding snow, I recognized him immediately.
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It wasn't a soldier. It wasn't my father.
It was Senator Thomas Sterling—the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and the man who had delivered the folded American flag to my wife at my fake funeral.
