We’d been sitting in the Tahoe for hours. My legs were stiff, and I could feel my feet falling to sleep. I had debated calling or texting Jenna but stopped myself. If I did, I had a feeling she would try and talk me out of what I had to do, just like she did that morning she took off. I knew she was worried. I couldn’t deal with her worry and my own stress over the situation. If I did walk away from this, I was going to grovel. I had made up my mind about that the first hour we had sat inside the SUV. I was going to apologize and do what I had to do to make it right. At some point, I had decided I wanted Jenna in my life, long after this was all said and done.

“I’ve got to get out of here,” I said to Kevin, who was reclined in the seat next to me.

“We haven’t seen any action for a while. Maybe they’ve finally settled in for the night,” he calmly replied.

I turned the key to check the time. “It’s two. We said two.”

Kevin put his seat up and looked out the window at the dark warehouse up the road. We had staked it out on foot earlier. Two men had been inside on our first inspection. Frank and his buddy Zane had shown up a few hours ago carrying bags of food. By the looks of things, they were staying put. We had waited to go in, making sure no one else would show up and take us by surprise. We were confident we could take them as long as we were the ones doing the surprising. We had to get to them before they had a chance to get a shot off.

“You ready?” he asked.

I took a deep breath. Hell no I wasn’t ready. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a choice. One shitty decision had led me to this field and I had been paying for it for too long. It ended now.

“I have to be, don’t I?”

He shrugged. “If you are not committed to this, it isn’t going to work. You can’t go in second-guessing yourself and do what you have to do. The world is going to be a better place without these guys. I know it sucks and I know it goes against your morals, it goes against mine as well, but we need to do this. You said it yourself, we get him, or he gets us. All of us. Abby, Rose and Jenna will all be killed. You know that.”

I let out a long sigh. I had been wrestling with the decision all night. I knew I would lose a piece of myself if I had to kill another man.

“You’re right. Let’s do this. Kevin, I know I already said it once, but thank you. If we get out of this alive, I owe you big.”

He nodded. “Yes, you do, and I am going to collect on it one of these days.”

We got out of the SUV, quietly closing the doors behind us. I stashed the key in the center console in case I wasn’t able to make it back. I wanted Kevin to have a chance to escape. Together, we walked through the cornfield that bordered the warehouse. There was only a sliver of a moon out which did little to illuminate the area.

The weight of the gun in my hand was comforting. I couldn’t believe I was going to have to use it in a violent manner, but ultimately, it was self-defense.

“On the count of three,” I whispered.

He nodded. He stood to the left of the door, while I stood on the right. I took a deep breath to calm my nerves, finding that mental quiet zone that allowed me to completely focus on what I had to do and not worry about anything else around me. It was a Zen-like state that I used in fights. I blocked out the pain and focused on delivering blow after blow to my opponent.

I opened the warehouse door, doing my best to make it quiet. We stood to the side, waiting to hear anything. There was no sound.

Nodding my head, I gestured to move inside. I went first, with Kevin right on my heels. The warehouse was almost completely pitch black. I reached out and tapped Kevin on the shoulder, wanting him to stop moving.

I could hear the soft sound of a man snoring near my right. I reached for the knife in a sheath on my side and pulled it. I started in the direction of the snoring, slowly moving closer. Soon enough, I could see the outline of a man lying on the ground. Without thinking twice, I used my knife to eliminate the threat.

One down, three to go.

I gave Kevin a thumbs up as I moved back toward him. We made our way deeper into the warehouse where Jenna had been strapped to the chair. I froze when I heard what sounded like whispering. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Kevin, which meant our presence had been made.

Sheathing the knife, I switched my gun to my right hand. A flashlight clicked on, I aimed directly for the light and pulled the trigger. I heard the bullet hit a second before I heard another shot. I hit the floor, my elbows slamming into the concrete along with my knees, shouting at Kevin to do the same. There was rapid gunfire and I could feel bullets flying overhead. I heard the click click click coming from my gun and knew I was empty.

“Shit,” I muttered, before realizing there was no more shooting.

Either we had all emptied our clips or everyone except me was dead.

“Kevin?” I asked, hoping I hadn’t just given away my location.

“Here.”

“Are you hit?”

There was a pause. “Not bad.”

“Fuck.”

I scooted across the floor on my stomach toward the sound of his voice. I reached out for him, the dim light from the flashlight beam shooting into the air allowing me to see his outline. I stared into the void, convinced I saw a figure moving about thirty feet in front of me.

“Frank?” I called out, knowing the man wouldn’t answer me even if he could.

“Fuck you,” I heard him grunt, the sound strained, telling me he had suffered at least one hit.

That was a good sound. I liked hearing him in pain. I reached into my pocket, moving slowly as I pulled out my spare clip and quietly locked it into place. Frank was injured, but he was alive, which meant he was coming for me.

A blinding beam from a flashlight moved over the room. I got to my elbows, waiting for the beam to land on me next to Kevin. I pulled the trigger the second it shone over me and Kevin lying on our stomachs against the concrete floor of the warehouse. I heard a thud and the flashlight dropped to the ground, rolling across the smooth concrete.

“I think you got him,” Kevin said in a harsh voice.

I had no idea if Zane and the other man were alive, waiting for us to stand and make ourselves easy targets.

I stayed on my belly, making my way toward the flashlight. With the light in one hand and my gun in the other, I shone the light around the area, hoping I wasn’t making myself a target. When no bullets slammed into my head, I got to my feet and walked toward the place where I had shot Frank. My light found him. He wasn’t going to be a problem ever again.

I moved around the area and found Zane a few feet away from Frank. The other guy was off to the side, all clearly very dead.

“It’s clear,” I announced.

“Good. I’m out of bullets,” Kevin replied.

“Can you walk?”

“Yep. Going to be a little sore I think, but I’ll live.”

“Let’s get out of here.”

With the flashlight in hand I headed in Kevin’s direction, helping him to his feet. I shone the light on his face, looking for injuries. I knew he was hurt, I just didn’t know how bad. He was a tough guy and would play it off.

“Get that out of my damn face,” he grumbled.

I could see blood streaming down the side of his face.

“I got grazed,” he mumbled.

“Are you sure? Let me check,” I said, shining the light over the area.

“Well?” he asked.

I smiled. “Yep. I think you’ve gotten worse in a fight. You’re bleeding like a stuck pig, though.”

We walked back to the SUV, neither of us talking as I used the flashlight to guide us back through the cornfield. The heavy weight of what had just happened was like a ton of bricks on my shoulders. I hated what I had done and knew it was going to haunt me for the rest of my life.

Once we got back to the SUV, I pulled out my first aid kit and did my best to clean up Kevin’s head.

“You’re going to have to hold that bandage on there. You can’t go back to the room with blood pouring from your head.”

“Pardon my bleeding,” he sniped.

I laughed. It was a nervous laugh. “Uh, do you think we need to wipe our fingerprints off anything?” I asked, suddenly realizing I could have dodged the real bullet to be hit with another one—prison.

“We didn’t touch anything. Our DNA and fingerprints aren’t in the system. Hopefully, they don’t find the rotting corpses for a long time. Nobody is going to miss Frank. Hell, I think we would be lauded as heroes to the folks back in Boston.”

I nodded my head, still unable to escape the nervous feeling. I headed back to Lincoln, ready to see my baby girl. I wanted to hold her tight and tell her everything would be okay. Tomorrow, or today rather, was going to be the first day of the rest of my life without Frank Lloyd tracking me. I could even go back to Boston if I wanted to.

I didn’t think I wanted to move back. I wanted to start fresh and Beatrice was where that would happen.

“You okay?” I asked, when Kevin was silent for a while.

“I’m good. You?”

“I can’t believe that just happened. I have a feeling I’m going to be having some serious nightmares for a good long while after that.”

“I’m sure you will. I’d be worried if you didn’t.”

When I pulled into the parking lot of the hotel, I half-expected the police to be waiting for us. It was quiet. No one was moving. I grabbed the first aid kit and headed toward our room door with Kevin following behind me. I dreaded knocking and waking up Jenna or Rose.

I tapped at first, repeating the same sequence, before knocking a little louder. It was Rose who pulled open the door. She looked from me to Kevin and smiled. “You’re alive.”

Kevin grinned. “We are, but I got a boo-boo.”

She rolled her eyes. “Get in here and don’t wake them up. She was up pretty late.”

“Abby?” I asked.

“No, Jenna.”

“Oh,” I murmured.

“You come with me, so I can clean you up.”

“Here, you’ll need this,” I said, handing her the first aid kit.

While Rose and Kevin went into the bathroom, I kicked off my shoes and crawled onto the sofa bed with Abby, pulling her little warm body against me. She was why I had just broken every moral code I had. Her and the woman lying in the bed with the covers pulled up to her ears.