Page 102 of Ruthless Enforcer

When we reach the ranch house, there are signs of life everywhere. I shake my head. I can’t believe I didn’t think to check here.

“Warden,” Mason’s voice drops into my ear. “Runner is stepping out the back mudroom door. Black tactical jacket, carrying an antenna case. He’s heading for the 4Runner tailgate.”

“I have visual,” Jake murmurs as we both drop behind the split-rail fence fifty yards out.

Through my low-power variable optic, the tech runner snaps into sharp focus. Mid-thirties. Ballcap pulled low. Wearing a heavy fleece over a plate carrier, carrying a ruggedized laptop case in his left hand and a suppressed pistol holstered on his right hip. He sets the case into the truck bed, turns, and reaches for the ratchet straps.

“The south porch,” I whisper to Jake. “Cut the front door. I’m taking the rear mudroom.”

Jake nods once, shifting his grip on the shotgun, and disappears into the shadows along the cedar windbreak without a sound for a man who weighs two hundred and twenty pounds.

I rise, keeping low, my boots eating up the distance across the frozen gravel.

Twenty yards.

Ten yards.

The tech runner suddenly freezes.

He doesn’t see me. He senses the shift in the air—the subtle, predatory pressure that enters a space when a hunter closes within striking distance. His head snaps to the right, his hand dropping toward the holster on his hip.

“I wouldn’t.” Smiling coolly, I shake my head.

He doesn’t listen. He draws, bringing the weapon up with fast, trained reflexes.

Before I can react, a crack sounds, and a spot of blood appears high on the runner’s right shoulder, spinning him violently against the rear quarter panel of the 4Runner. His pistol clatters against the tailgate and drops into the snow.

Before he can recover, I close the gap, driving the muzzle of my carbine into the center of his chest, pinning him against the truck’s steel paneling.

The guy gasps, his face pale, blood already soaking through the torn fabric of his tactical fleece.

“Where is he?” I ask, my smile backed by cold steel.

“Fuck you,” he spits out, wincing.

“If that’s how you want to play it.” I raise my gun to his head and shoot him, moving away before he hits the ground. I glance at the open mudroom door as I speak into my comms. “Who do I have to thank for the assist?”

“That’d be me,” Mason says through my earpiece.

“South side secure.” Jake’s voice follows instantly. “Front door is locked from the inside. Deadbolted. Moving to secondary entry.”

I nod. “I’m going in too.”

I step past the open doorframe and enter the Turner house.

The mudroom opens into a kitchen that looks like someone walked out of it ten minutes ago. Not abandoned or neglected—lived in.

A coffee cup sits beside the sink. A dish towel hangs neatly from the oven handle. Firewood is stacked beside the stone hearth in the adjoining great room.

The son of a bitch came home.

Of course he did.

We searched hotels, safe houses, airfields, properties owned by shell companies and every goddamn hole Cole Turner might crawl into. Nobody thought he'd come back to the one place we'd already taken from him.

Shaking my head, I move deeper into the house.

“First floor clear,” Jake says through my earpiece as he appears through the doorway on the opposite side of the great room.