Bringing Hartley was a damn mistake, but I knew I couldn’t avoid it.

The girl wasn’t a pushover. I had expected her to be a trembling mess after Culver’s little surprise visit, but she seemed to take it much better than I could have guessed.

Culver was a killer. There was no doubt about that. I knew killers. Hell, I was a damn killer. Culver was a particular breed, a cold-blooded killer, more likely to shoot you in the back of the head in the dead of night without you ever even knowing he was there. That little stunt with the visit, that was just him letting us know that he could break into the apartment and kill us at any time.

Except he underestimated me. When I kicked in the door, my gun ready, I had surprised him. He drew pretty fast, but his face betrayed his shock. He didn’t expect me to know he was there, probably figured I was just some dumbass military boy. Fortunately, we were both professionals, and neither of us got spooked and fired. Most other men might have pulled the trigger in that moment, but not Culver, and that said a lot about the man.

But I had a few tricks up my sleeve, the sort of tricks Culver wasn’t expecting. I wasn’t just some dumb military boy in over his head. I knew what I was about, and Culver and everyone else was going to have to figure that out the hard way.

I had planned on holding off on this operation for another day, but the Mafia was clearly getting a little antsy. I didn’t want them to do anything stupid, and so I decided to move forward despite possibly not being ready.

I parked the car in the woods, about a mile away from the Caldwell compound. I was wearing my dark combat clothing with a combat vest, and Hartley was wearing her darkest functional clothing. She looked nervous, and I couldn’t blame her.

“You’re not getting too close,” I said as we got out of the car. I turned on a flashlight and held a little map down flat on the hood of the car. She got out and looked over my shoulder.

“This is the compound, here. We’re parked over here. The plan is for us to sneak out there, keeping quiet. You’ll stay here, on the edge of the forest, waiting. I’ll do a quick recon through the compound, see what I can see. When I’m done, we head back.”

“I want to come with you,” she said.

I smiled, because I knew she was going to say that. “I know, but you can’t. There are too many cameras, and you don’t have the training to avoid them.”

“I don’t like the idea of just sitting there. What’s the point? I might as well wait in the woods.”

“Here’s the point. If I get into trouble in there, which is possible, I’ll need a distraction. While I’m inside, you’ll sneak to here and here. You’ll set up some fireworks, run the fuses down along the ground to here, and you’ll wait. If something goes wrong and you see something isn’t right, you set off those fireworks, and then you run.”

“That’s it? Just sitting there with fireworks?”

“Trust me, Hartley, those things are going to make a pretty loud fucking sound. Anyone in the compound will be more worried.”

She frowned but nodded. “Okay. I can do that.”

“But listen to me. As soon as you light them, you run. You can’t stay. They will catch you if you hesitate even a second.”

“Okay,” she said, nodding. “Okay. I promise.”

“Good. Hopefully we won’t have to use them, but it’s good to always have a backup plan.”

“Sound advice,” she said, and I couldn’t help but grin at her.

The girl was brave, damn brave. Most civilians wouldn’t be able to do something like this, but I trusted her. Despite my best judgment, I trusted her to pull this off if she needed to, and to run once the fuses were lit. She wanted to get caught by the Caldwells about as much as I wanted her to get caught.

I popped the trunk and we got out our gear. I checked my gun and twisted a silencer onto the barrel. I didn’t like the weight that added, but I’d rather the stealth if this came down to gunplay. I gave Hartley the fireworks and showed her how to lay the fuse, which wasn’t really complicated.

Once that was finished, we headed out through the woods on our long walk.

It was really only about a ten- or fifteen-minute hike, but I could feel the tension in Hartley. She’d never done anything like this, and I couldn’t blame her for being nervous. We were going into enemy territory with only a single weapon and some fireworks. She probably thought this was insane.

But the truth was, I couldn’t imagine a situation where the fireworks would be necessary. Even if I got caught and the whole compound woke up, they wouldn’t be able to take me. I was trained in evasion tactics, trained to be able to escape from almost any situation. The Caldwells were gangsters and violent thugs, but they weren’t professionals like I was. A highly motivated and dangerous civilian was still just a civilian.

We didn’t talk much as we approached the compound. I didn’t feel like pressing her, and I wanted her to be in the right state of mind when we got there. I took us through the woods, using the moon as a guide, until we reached the ridge overlooking the back of the buildings. We crouched down next to an outcropping of bushes and looked down at the compound.

It was basically dead, with only a few outside lights on. It was around three in the morning, and everyone should have been asleep.

“Ready?” I asked her.

“I guess so.”

I gave her a serious look and then nodded. “Put the first charge about fifty feet that way, and the other fifty feet that way. Remember, only use it if you have to, and run like hell afterward.”

“Got it.” She took my arm as I went to walk away. “Good luck, Travis.”

I grinned at her. “Don’t worry. I don’t need luck.”

I turned away from her and melted into the darkness, heading down the ridge and toward the buildings.

This was the real reason we’d gone on that ATV tour. Fun as it was, I had needed a chance to scope out the surroundings. I had a pretty good idea of where the cameras were and where the motion-sensing lights were, which meant I could sneak around undetected. Still, I pulled a black cotton mask down over my face just in case. If a camera caught me now, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

I reached the first little buildings and crept around its side. I poked my head inside and saw nothing but touring equipment. I quickly moved away from that, reaching the main building and pressing my body up against the side.

My heart was beating slow, slow, slow. I took a deep breath, keeping my body under control. I crept along the side before shimmying down low, keeping in the blind spot of a camera.

I came up around the other side and found a window. It was locked, which was fine. I didn’t need to get into the main building.

My real targets were the barns on the opposite side of the compound. They were big enough to hold what I needed to find, and they were secluded enough on the property to be defensible. They made sense from a logical standpoint.

I kept moving, staying low, crouching down under cameras and sticking to the blind spots. I had to go the long way to avoid tripping any of the motion lights, but it was worth it to stay in the darkness. I didn’t see or hear a single person, which wasn’t too surprising.

I finally reached the first little barn. It smelled like hay and animals as I pressed my face to the window. Inside it was musty and dark, and the only thing I saw was more farming equipment.

On to the next building. I slipped through the darkness, moving like a ghost. Up ahead was the largest of the barns, and a single light was burning above the front entrance.

I skirted around the side toward the back of the barn. I didn’t see any animal tracks back there, or really smell anything animal-like. In fact, it seemed pretty clean for a barn, which was a good sign.

As I came around the back, I stopped short in my tracks. There were two men sitting at a table outside, smoking cigarettes. They were playing cards and had serious rifles at their sides. The barn doors were shut.

Fucking pay dirt. Nobody kept guards around a building unless there was something worth guarding, and I suspected they weren’t watching over horses. I crept closer, keeping low. The men weren’t too far away, but I had to go through them if I wanted to get inside that barn.

No use in delaying it. I moved fast, emerging from the shadows. The man facing me saw me but didn’t have time to react as I clubbed his friend in the back of the skull with the butt of my gun. The man I hit toppled to the ground, making only a strangled grunt.

I held the gun level at the other man, causing him to freeze. His hands were on his rifle, but he hadn’t raised it up.

“Don’t,” I said softly. “Don’t do it.”

He stared at me, his face hard. He wasn’t a professional, but he sure as fuck was brave.

“Think about it,” I said softly. “You raise that gun. Think you got time to squeeze off a round before I put a bullet in your head?”

“Maybe,” he said.

“Look at me. I know what I’m doing. Do you?”

He stared hard at me, and he made his choice. He raised his gun, squeezing the trigger.

I put a bullet in his skull. His weapon fired off but missed by a mile. He toppled back to the ground, dead on impact.

Fucking shit though. That gunshot had been loud. I knew I didn’t have much time before someone came to check on these boys. The other guy was out like a light, and so I rooted through his person until I found a set of keys.

I moved fast to the barn door. It was locked with a nice padlock. I tried three keys before I found one that would open it. I let the padlock fall to the ground and cracked open the door.

Instead of horses and tractors, the barn was full of crates. The crates were stacked high and deep. On the right there were rows of tables, and unless my eyes were deceiving me, those tables were covered in weed. It looked like they were weighing and packing the drugs, ready to be sold.

I took a step into the barn, but all hell broke loose before I could get to a crate.

As soon as my foot touched the floor, two world-shaking explosions went off in the direction of the forest. “Fuck,” I said out loud, and turned away from the barn.

Hartley had set off her charges. She must have heard the gunshot and seen people waking up. She had panicked and probably figured setting them off was the right thing to do.

I wanted to get in there and check a few crates, make sure this was the right place, but I didn’t have time now. If they weren’t sure what was going on before, now the Caldwells probably thought they were under a full-scale attack.

I got the fuck out of there. I darted out of the barn and headed toward the tree line just as men with flashlights began to spill out of the main building. I moved fast, hitting the tree line before they made it to check on the barn.

I could hear ATVs starting up, which wasn’t good. I made my way back toward the car, winding through the woods, but I had to check and make sure Hartley really ran. I kept low, moving fast, and made it back to the original spot on the ridge.

Two large, blackened hunks of wood and dirt marked the spots where she had lit the charges, but she was nowhere in sight. That was good, though I probably should have told her that these things weren’t really fireworks but more like homemade bombs.

I couldn’t’ help but smile to myself as I made my way back toward the car, picking through the trees. I could hear the ATVs tearing around the forest, and so I had to be careful. I kept low, pressing against a tree when one lucky rider got pretty close to me. But fortunately, he drove past, and I continued on through the woods.

We were lucky that the Caldwell compound was so close to the forest. If they were smart, they would have cut the trees back a bit further to create a kind of no-man’s-land between the forest and the compound, just for visibility. That didn’t matter, though, as I picked my way through the trees.

The real problem now was how the Caldwells were going to react to this. Before, if it were just one dead guard and an open door, they’d figure out that it was just someone scouting them out. They’d double their security, but they probably wouldn’t move the goods.

But after the explosions, they might get spooked. They might think the mafia was actually attacking them. If that happened, and they actually tried to move the shipment, then all of this was for nothing.

I kept moving back toward the car, and the sound of the ATVs faded into the distance. Finally, I burst out of the forest and found Hartley pacing back and forth in front of the passenger’s side door.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when I appeared.

“It’s okay,” I said. “It’s me.” I pulled the mask from my face.

“Travis.” She ran to me and stopped herself a foot or so away. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“I’m so sorry. I just, I panicked when I heard the gunshot. I was worried.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “You did the right thing. You did great, Hartley.”

She bit her lip. “Did you see something?”

“They have it,” I said. “It’s on their property.” I walked around her and unlocked the door. “Come on. We’ll talk as we drive.”

We got into the car and I started the engine. I pulled out onto the highway, heading back toward town.

We’d gotten away with it, more or less. The Caldwells were going to be paranoid after this, but at least I was able to confirm that the shipment was real.

Still, it only brought up more problems. They might move everything, which was the worst-case scenario. Also, there was a lot of stuff to transport, and I didn’t think we could do this on our own.

Hartley looked at me nervously. “What’s wrong? You look angry.”

“What? No. I’m not angry. Just trying to reason this out.”

“Tell me what you saw.”

“Big barn full of weed and crates. I didn’t see what was in the crates, but my guess is guns and ammunition.”

“That’s good. So they have it.”

“Right. But they might move it now. Also, it’s just too much stuff for us to move on our own.”

She frowned. “What are we going to do?”

“Right now we’re going back to your place. We’ll sleep and then we’ll work this out.”

She nodded and looked out the window. Poor girl was probably fucking terrified, but I couldn’t do anything about that. She’d come to grips with it and move on. She was strong.

But I had to make a plan. Otherwise, we were going to be screwed. The mafia meant business, and so did I.

My head buzzed with possibilities as we drove.