Page 27 of Growly Trapper Daddy
We roll out in a silent convoy. Mason and Brock in the lead truck, Nate and Ryker flanking, Jax riding with Silas for the legal angle, Kane on comms with me. My truck cuts the first trail,one only I know exists, and the whole crew moves like a single animal, tight and lethal and completely without hesitation.
The mansion rises out of the trees like a bad dream made out of stone and glass and too many lights, arrogant in a way that makes something cold settle into my chest. I circle it once while the team takes their positions.
Kane's voice crackles in my ear. “Perimeter's set. Nate and Ryker east flank. Mason and Brock sweeping south. Distraction ready at the gate on your word.”
“Negative. Going in quiet. Keep your distance unless I call for you.”
“Copy. Bring her home, Colt.”
I cut the radio and move.
The wall's high, but I've climbed worse in worse weather. I wait for the guard rotation, drop on the first one from above, quick and quiet, strip his radio and keycard, drag him out of sight. The second never sees me coming. Two down. The mansion's mine now, whether anybody inside knows it yet or not.
I use the keycard on the service entrance. Warm air hits me, thick with money and something underneath it that smells like fear that's been sitting in this house a long time. I move through the lower level like I belong here. Voices down one hall, two men laughing about something. I don't need to hear the words to know what they're laughing about. I take the first from behind before either of them finishes the joke. The second turns too slow. Two more down. The house gets quieter with every hallway.
Third floor. East wing. My heart's beating hard and even at once, that particular calm that only shows up right before the part that matters most. She's close. I can feel it in my bones the same way I can feel weather coming before the sky admits to it. A guard at the end of the hall goes down to a weighted snare I rigged from fishing line and a rock, an old trick that still works exactly as well as it did the first time my father showed it to me. One more down.
The corner room door's locked from the outside. The keycard beeps green. I push it open.
She's there.
Nora sits on the edge of a big bed, arms wrapped around herself, looking small in that ridiculous fancy room and nothing at all like small in the way her chin comes up the second the door opens. Her eyes go wide when she sees me, relief and fear and something fierce all tangled together.
“Colt.” Just my name, breathed out like she's been holding it for hours, which she probably has.
I cross the room in three strides and pull her against me hard, arms locking around her. She fits. She always fits. Her body shakes once, and then she presses closer, face buried in my chest, and I breathe her in, alive, real, untouched in every way that would have broken something in me permanently.
“I've got you.” My voice comes out rough against her hair. “Nobody's taking you from me again.”
She makes a sound that's half sob, half laugh, the specific sound that always undoes me a little. “Took you long enough, mountain man. I was starting to plan my own exit strategy.”
I pull back just enough to look at her properly. Pale but fierce, exactly the woman I fell for in a wrecked car three feet from a tree. “We're not clear yet. Talk fast. Anything I need to know?”
And this is where she surprises me, the way she's been surprising me since the day I met her. She doesn't just nod and follow. She talks, quick and precise, like she's been rehearsing this exact briefing since the moment they locked that door. “Two guards outside this door when they brought me in, maybe more by now. There's a second door behind the bookshelves in the study one floor down, looks like a servants' passage, doesn't match the room's layout. Motor court's on the east side, two vehicles under a portico last I looked. And the window latch in here is old hardware under new glass, I already worked it half loose with a hairpin in case you didn't make it in time.”
I stare at her for one full second, something fierce and proud cutting straight through the fear still sitting in my chest. “You've been running your own intelligence operation in here.”
“I had time to kill and a captor who underestimated me. Seemed like a waste not to use it.” She's already reaching for her boots. “The passage behind the bookshelves might be faster than backtracking the way you came.”
“Copy that.” I mean it two ways, and she can hear both of them in my voice. “Stay close. Do exactly what I say the second I say it. We're taking your passage.”
She nods, already moving. My girl is smart. She knows exactly when to fight and when to trust somebody else's hands on the wheel, and right now she's choosing both at once, which might be the most her thing I've ever seen her do.
We move fast, her intel cutting a full two minutes off the route I would have taken blind. The servants' passage spits us out near a side stair instead of the main one, and it saves us from the two guards stationed exactly where she said they'd be, guards we never have to fight because we're simply not where they're watching. One guard does spot us near the service door, raises his weapon fast, and I put him down before he gets a shot off clean, though not before something hot and sharp opens along my forearm, a graze, nothing that'll slow me down tonight but enough that I feel it with every movement after.
Two more come around the corner of the house as we hit the open air. I shove Nora behind a stack of crates and meet them both, knife finding the first man's shoulder before he can level his gun, two hard strikes finishing what the blade started. The second fires wide, the bullet close enough to hear before I close the distance and take him down into the snow, the fight short and ugly and over before Nora's even finished flinching at the gunshot.
Kane's voice crackles again. “We're on you. Mason and Brock just cleared the last two on the south perimeter. Mansion's secured. Silas is handling the scene on paper. Get your girl to safety, we'll clean up the rest.”
“Copy. Line shack. Don't wait up.”
I grab Nora's hand. “Run.”
We run through the trees, snow slowing us both but I know every path down to the roots under it. My arm's throbbing steady now, warm under the sleeve in a way that means it's bleeding more than a graze usually should, but it's not the kind of thing that stops a man from getting the woman he loves off a mountain full of armed strangers. Her breathing goes ragged behind me,but she keeps up, stride for stride, stronger than she looks and stronger than she's ever given herself credit for.
A snowmobile engine roars somewhere behind us. I pull her off the main trail into a stand of pines, my old cache, and yank the tarp off the hidden machine, lifting her onto it in front of me before I climb on behind. “Hold on. I've got you.”
We fly through the trees, branches whipping past, the engine behind us fading fast because they can't follow where I go. Twenty minutes of hard riding brings us to the old line shack I use sometimes, one room, one bed, isolated enough to disappear into for a night.
