CHAPTER 40
Boone
My phone is already hot in my hand before I even get out of the truck. My fingers fumble with the screen like I’m trying to unlock the part of my brain that says “think.”
There is no time to think. There is only movement—orders, people, an answer to a scream I heard in a video that keeps looping through my head.
“Boone?” I bark into the phone when it connects on the second ring. Gabe’s voice is raw, tight as a wire.
He tells me fast—Shepard is hurt, Sadie’s been taken, there’s a video, Scott’s pack is in town. The names land like blows. My mouth goes dry so fast I choke.
“I’m on my way,” I say, not giving him time to argue. I throw the cooler into the back, grab my radio and a spare magazine, slide on my boots.
The grill in my chest is already a furnace. There’s a part of me that wants to throttle every bastard who’s touched her, but there’s another part—wiser, older—that knows how plans get made and how people get home with their limbs in one piece.
I’m not going to hand that pack an excuse to finish what they started by going in blind.
I punch Jake’s number first. The mayor picks up on the third ring, voice thin and high with strain. “Boone. What do you know?”
“She’s been taken,” I say flat. I don’t waste time. “We need to lock every exit to town. Shut the highway. Plugs at the usual spots—Folkside, the ridge, the old mill road. Don’t let anyone out and don’t let any cars in without ID. Rope off the access points and hold ’em.”
There’s a stutter of breath on the line. “I can—I’m on radio with Julian?—”
“Do it,” I cut in. “Use the flaggers. Call the county. If you need troopers, get them. If you need volunteers, get them. We need to net this place tight. They’ll try to get her out of town fast.”
He swears and repeats my orders. I hang up and hit the contact for the county sheriff. He answers on the first ring. The way he breathes, I know he’s already hearing the helicopters and the smoke.
“This is Boone Walker,” I tell him. “You’ve got to seal Highway 7 and the slip at Northridge. Put up roadblocks. Pull every deputy you can. Anyone with a K-9—bring them. We have a pack moving through town. They’ve got a woman. We need to stop them before they clear county.”
There’s a pause, and then the sheriff says two words that make my gut loosen just a fraction—“I’m on it.”
The man knows me. He knows what I sound like when I don’t give myself room for doubt.
I call in favors the way I used to hand out bandages after a call—fast, without drama. I text my old EMTs. I buzz Declan, Rowan and Rhys.
They’re at the harbor with a truckload of volunteers, but those guys already know how to move. Declan answers and says he’ll tack east to block Ridge Road. Rhys says he’ll grab two ATVs and meet me at the north exit.
Millie, bless her, is already on the phone with Marjorie, telling them to keep people indoors; we don’t need anyone wandering into a trap.
I dial Gabe next. “I’m closing the highway,” I tell him. “Who’s got Shepard?”
“He’s alive. Bad shape,” Gabe spits. “Maddox has crews holding the main blaze. He’s sending what he can to Shepard’s location. You need to find Sadie.”
“On it,” I say. I hear him curse and the line cuts.
I don’t know where Sadie’s headed. I know Scott’s men like to move quick, quiet, and goddamn violent. Their truck could already be downriver, could already be across the county line.
Closing the highway is the first piece. Tracing those men is the second.
I slide the truck into gear and fly. By the time I pull onto Main, the town is chaos—a tangle of hoses, people hauling what they can out of buildings, reporters shouting over shoulder mics.
My stomach clenches with all of it, but I push through. I don’t have time for outrage, not now. I have time for action.
I dispatch two guys—Riley and Marco, my best scrappers—from the grill and tell them to take my pickup and barrier tape to the north exit. I point them toward the ridge road and tell them to refuse passage to anything that isn’t an emergency vehicle.
I make them swear on my name and they laugh in that brittle way only people who’ve seen too much do. They leave like they’re walking into a fight. I don’t care how they move, as long as they move.
Next I call an old buddy upstate—Frank “Knuckles” Moretti. Knuckles still runs security for the casino up on Route 9 and he owes me for the time I pulled him out of a jam with a drunk uncle.
