Austin hit the ground the second he heard the gunshots, his weapon in his hand before his belly hit the dirt, but he didn’t fire back.

He didn’t need to.

He’d thrown the rock at the fence on impulse as the couple was about to kiss. He should have been too far away to tell for sure, but he could tell by her posture and the way she moved it was Cassidy. The other one looked like David Kelleher—a possibility he could barely even admit to himself right now.

It was the unease he sensed in the way she held herself that had him throwing the rock. She didn’t want that man—whoever he was—so close to her.

Or so you think.

Hell, maybe he was wrong, but once his protective instincts were sounding the alarm there wasn’t any stopping them.

Hopefully you didn’t give your position away, asshole.

Things went bump in the night all the time. A rock hitting a fence could easily be mistaken for an animal of some kind. Shit, they had bears and moose and elk and all sorts of crap up here. This part of Idaho was like a goddamn zoo.

He narrowed his eyes as he watched the people return to their buildings through his night vision goggles, Cassidy and the man included.

He followed her from the other side of the fence, hiding himself far enough into the woods to avoid detection. A half mile away from where she began, she and about half the other women ducked into a long log-cabin.

First things first. He had to get inside.

He took off his googles and opened his pack, withdrawing the bolt cutters. The fence wasn’t electrified, so that would be his easiest route inside.

He crawled slowly to the perimeter of the compound, confident his camouflage clothing would conceal him, and began cutting away at the chain-link fence. He’d selected a dark area illuminated by a single sodium light more than a hundred feet away.

Carefully he cut an eighteen-inch vertical line from the ground to the height of his head, then he moved over three feet and did it again. He was capable of crawling through a smaller opening, but on the return trip he’d have Cassidy with him—hopefully walking on two feet instead of kicking and screaming or unconscious.

If she didn’t want to leave, he would knock her out with the drugs in his pack and carry her out of here. He was prepared for any eventuality with smoke bombs and noise grenades that should provide enough cover for him to make it out of here if need be, but he was sure as hell partial to sneaking out quietly with no one in pursuit.

A moving light caught his eye and he pulled his binoculars to his face. A woman was walking outside the dormitory carrying a lantern and a towel. When she reached an outdoor shower and hung the light on a high post, he was finally able to see her face.

Cassidy.

She stepped into the wooden stall and began to strip, draping her clothing off a bar on the other side of the wall. From Austin’s vantage point on a small hill, he could just see the tops of her breasts before she started the water.

There she was. After so much time, her body was just as perfect as he remembered, and he silently hoped she wasn’t sharing it with anyone, much less David Kelleher.

She was one hell of a reporter. With her father’s notoriety it had been easy to check up on her after one too many beers over the years. When she started working for the Post, he started reading the paper—no matter he lived in Atlanta instead of D.C.

He couldn’t help but wonder what lengths she’d go to for a story. Her father said she was here to find Julianne but surely the temptation must be great to research The Community as well. He mentally ticked off another reason she wouldn’t want to come with him.

How would she react when she saw him?

Fuck that train of thought.

“Time to get this show on the road,” he said to himself, noiselessly slipping through the hole in the fence on his way to collect his ex-girlfriend.