North’s smile didn’t falter. “Chaos,” he said, “is where the best deals are made.”
The man’s head tilted, considering him like a specimen under glass. Then his eyes flicked to the treeline—too sharp, too direct. For one heartbeat, I swore he was staring straight at me.
My pulse kicked. “Forest,” I whispered. “He knows.”
Before Forest could answer, Jason’s voice cut across comms, low and clipped. “Confirm—hostiles flanking left. Five, maybe six.”
Movement rippled in the dark—shadows slipping through trees, rifles glinting. Not buyers. Not muscle. Hunters.
North had laid the stage, all right. And we’d walked straight into it.
Forest
Through the scope,I tracked the flanking men. Professional. Coordinated. They weren’t here to protect the deal—they were here to flush us out.
Jason’s tone hardened. “They know we’re here. We either spring the trap or choke in it.”
Lane’s whisper snapped over comms. “Do it. Take them down before they pin us.”
I exhaled slow. Choices like this were never clean. If we fired first, we risked a massacre. If we waited, North would box us in.
Zoe’s hand brushed mine, fierce and steady. “Then let’s stop being his audience.”
Decision made. I squeezed the trigger.
The shot cracked the night wide open.
Chaos followed.
The rifle bucked against my shoulder. One of North’s flankers dropped into the dirt before his shadow even hit the ground. The rest erupted like hornets from a kicked nest—shouts, gunfire snapping through the trees, sparks biting off metal.
“Contact left!” Jason barked.
Lane’s deputies opened fire from the treeline, muzzle flashes strobing the night. Bullets chewed bark inches from Zoe’s head as I dragged her lower, shielding her against the rocks.
She shoved me off, eyes blazing. “Don’t you dare cage me now.” Then she popped up, Glock spitting fire toward the lake.One of North’s buyers spun and fell, splashing red across the silver water.
Headlights swung wild as drivers panicked. A van lurched backward, tires skidding on gravel. North didn’t move. He stood in the chaos like it was a stage show written for him, smile fixed, eyes locked on me through the storm of gunfire.
And then the man from the SUV raised a hand. Calm. Deliberate. His men surged forward like unleashed wolves, cutting across the line of deputies with brutal precision. Whoever he was, he wasn’t just buying guns—he was trained. Military, or worse.
“Pull back!” Jason shouted. “We need cover!”
I grabbed Zoe’s arm, hauling us toward the rocks along the shoreline. Gravel sprayed as bullets slammed the ground where we’d been. The air burned with cordite, the lake itself thrashing as rounds punched into the water.
“Forest!” Zoe cried, firing over my shoulder. One of the wolves had broken through, charging straight at me. I swung the rifle, too close to aim—until Jason’s shot took the man clean in the chest, dropping him mid-stride.
The comms hissed with Lane’s fury. “We’re outgunned! If we don’t move, they’ll bury us here!”
Zoe’s breath was ragged, face streaked with dirt and firelight. But her voice was steady. “Then we don’t move.”
I blinked at her. “What?”
Her jaw clenched. “We flip it. This isn’t their kill box—it’s ours.”
And in that moment, with chaos screaming around us, I saw the truth in her eyes. She wasn’t just surviving this.
She was about to end it.
