Page 67 of Screwed

Nate slammed the basement hatch shut and slung the loaded rucksack over his massive shoulders. He exchanged a grim nod with Deacon. Together, they slipped out through the ruined, mud-choked kitchen entryway, disappearing into the rain and the deep shadows of the mountain ridge. I knew they had the home-field advantage here. While the corporate fixers were blinded by their own high-intensity spotlights, Nate and Deacon were ghosts moving through a forest they’d spent months mapping.

Ethan kept one hand firmly on my shoulder, his large body positioned completely between me and the doorway, while his other hand held a framing hammer. I could feel the rapid, synchronized thud of both our hearts echoing in the small space.

Outside, the fixers were advancing up the ridge, their tactical boots crunching over the wet shale. They moved with confidence, clearly thinking this was going to be an easy win, completely unaware that Deacon was currently kneeling in the downpour at the narrowest choke point of the logging trail, cutting the green fuse cord and crimping the blasting caps into the industrial dynamite.

“Brace, Ava. Cover your ears,” Ethan whispered, suddenly throwing his entire weight over mine, pinning me beneath the protective warmth of his chest.

The world went white.

The dynamite detonated at the narrowest bottleneck on the lower ridge trail. The shockwave tore through the valley, a deafening, concussive boom that shattered every remaining pane of glass within a three-mile radius. The ground rolled beneath us, lifting the floorboards an inch before they slammed back down.

Outside, a massive wall of fire and flying shale obliterated the fixers’ forward SUVs, blocking the only access road with a towering barrier of burning metal and fallen old-growth timber. The secondary collapse of the hillside triggered by the blast sealed the trail.

The gunfire stopped. The tactical spotlights died. The sudden silence that followed was broken only by the steady, deafening hiss of the torrential rain.

When Ethan finally lifted his weight off me, my ears were ringing, my breath coming in shallow, ragged gasps. “Stay here,” he commanded softly, kissing the crown of my head with a fierce, lingering pressure before slipping back out into the smoky hallway.

Ten minutes later, the candles were relit. The air inside the ruined cabin smelled of sulfur, sludge, and scorched pine.

I walked out into the living room, my legs shaking so badly I had to lean against the exposed log trusses for support. The threat was entirely neutralized. Four corporate fixers, bruised, bleeding, and stripped of their tactical gear, were being marched out the front door.

Deacon was in his element, his face smeared with soot and rain as he hauled two of the men by their tactical vests toward the heavy steel construction trailer parked in the driveway. Nate walked right beside him, his expression cold and unyielding under the dim amber glow of his flashlight, holding a heavy roll of nylon cargo straps and thick silver duct tape.

I watched from the safety of the ruined porch as they shoved the men inside the trailer. Nate worked with practiced, casual efficiency, tying the tactical knots, while Deacon ripped a strip of tape with his teeth, gagging the lead fixer before the man could utter a single threat about their employers.

Ethan stepped up beside me on the porch, wrapping a warm, dry canvas blanket around my shivering shoulders and pulling me back against his chest. Nate and Deacon closed the heavy steel doors of the trailer, throwing the padlock into place with a sharp, definitive click, and walked back up the steps toward us.

They were covered in mud, blood, and sweat, their clothes ruined and their faces lined with exhaustion. But as they surrounded me on the porch, their eyes held nothing but fierce, undisputed devotion. It was just a matter of time before the authorities arrived.

I leaned back into Ethan’s chest and held out a hand each for Nate and Deacon. We held each other this way in silence as the woods around us settled and the rain finally began to clear.

No one said anything, and they didn’t have to. We’d survived. Together.

37

Ava

After everything had died down, time stopped feeling linear. I watched with a sort of quiet satisfaction as the sun reflected off the fading red and blue strobe lights as the local sheriff’s department and federal marshals finished processing the scene. It felt surreal. The heavily armed corporate fixers—men who had looked so terrifying just hours ago—marched down the muddy driveway in zip-ties, their slick tactical gear stripped away as they were stuffed into the backs of transport vans.

The last fixer was being hoisted into the back of one when a short, aggressively neat man in a beige trench coat stepped directly into the mud. He looked around nervously, then introduced himself. “I’m Special Agent Miller from the federal task force. I have a few questions for you people.”

The four of us exchanged amused glances. Agent Miller was a man who looked as if he’d been genetically engineered in a windowless office building. He spent a full minute meticulously wiping his loafers on a patch of wet ferns before squinting through a pair of wire-rimmed glasses at the architectural disaster zone before him.

“So,” Miller began, his voice a nasal clip that clashed beautifully with the rhythmic dripping from the surrounding pine trees. He looked at the giant crater on the logging trail, then at the smoking remains of an SUV, and finally down at his folder. “The local sheriff’s log says a ‘localized landslide’ occurred exactly when these men tried to breach your perimeter.” His eyes flitted to each of us with a wry curiosity. “Care to elaborate on how a mudslide launches a three-hundred-pound vehicle transmission a hundred feet into the upper canopy of a Douglas fir?”

Deacon leaned his shoulder against a structural log post. He didn’t even look up, his face still smeared with soot. “Mountain’s unstable, Mr. Miller. Saturated shale. When the ground shifts out here in the winter, things move fast.”

“It’s Special Agent.” Agent Miller stared at him, his glasses sliding slightly down his nose. He turned his gaze to Ethan, who worked really hard on keeping a straight face. “And the wind. I suppose that was a microburst?”

“Hey, you said it, not me,” Ethan said with a small shrug. “The drafts in this valley are brutal. Get enough velocity behind a storm, and structural loads do crazy things.”

Miller closed his eyes, taking a deep, suffering breath as if praying to the gods of federal bureaucracy for patience. He turned his focus to Nate near what was left of the porch, his massive arms crossed over his chest. “And the gentleman currently in the transport van with a concussion and a perfect, three-inch indentation of a hand-hewn cedar log truss on his forehead?”

“Must’ve tripped.” Nate didn’t even blink. His jaw tightened as he chewed on a toothpick. God knew where he’d pulled it from. “It’s a common workplace hazard. We haven’t laid the finish-grade flooring yet.”

Miller stared at the three of them for an agonizingly long time. He looked at the armed corporate mercenaries groaning in the vans, then at our ruined kitchen, and finally at me, wrapped in my blanket. He let out a dry, defeated sigh and checked a single box on his form.

"Right," Miller muttered, adjusting his glasses. “Lawful self-defense against unregistered foreign actors. I’ll file it under ‘extreme environmental hazards.’ Just... try not to trigger any more tectonic events before the grand jury convenes on Tuesday.”