The cemetery suddenly fell eerily silent as the birds stopped singing. Gentry moved up behind me, sliding a protective arm around my waist, instinctively turning toward the west and the direction of the explosion that had caused the ground to shake.

“What the hell?” the priest shocked everyone by uttering.

Then phones began to buzz and sing, both Jack and Brent getting calls at the same instant. Even Gentry’s pocket vibrated as he received a text message.

We warned you.

“What is that?”

He shook his head, as confused as I was.

“Shit!” Jack muttered as he listened to whoever was on the other end of the phone call he’d taken. When he dropped his arm to his side, still clutching the phone in his hand, his eyes fell on me. “I’m sorry, Ami.”

“What’s going on?”

“It’s Mad Dog. They’ve detonated some explosives at the construction site.” Jack’s gaze shifted to Brent who was watching him with a guarded expression. “They’ve finally decided to declare war.”

Silence fell once more as his words sunk in.

“The building?” Aiden asked.

“Still intact. But they blew the shit out of the new construction. And the gas was just hooked up yesterday, so that didn’t help.”

Gentry’s jaw tightened. The new building was his baby.

Brent tossed a set of keys to Gentry. “Take Noah and the ladies to Jack’s house. The rest of us will go deal with this.”

Gentry caught the keys easily. “What if they’re waiting to ambush you?”

“I’m hoping they are,” Jack said, anger dripping from his words.

“No,” Raelyn said, pushing at his chest. “You forget I know how these people operate. You can’t just walk into this thinking you’ve got the advantage because they can surprise you. They don’t play by the rules.”

“I know.” Jack wrapped his hands around her wrists and tugged her close to him. “But this has got to end one way or another. Now is as good a day as any.”

She shook her head, but whatever argument she had remained unspoken as Jack pulled her away from the group and stole a kiss.

Similar fears were written on other faces. Remy and Carson and Dane were standing close to their men, but not arguing as Raelyn had done. It reminded me of what Remy had said to me at the airport: It was like being married to a cop. We never knew what might happen when they went off to work.

“What if they’re at Jack’s, waiting for us outside the gate?”

Gentry smoothed his hand over my cheek, wiping away the last of my tears. “We’ll go through the back way. They haven’t discovered that yet, as far as I can tell.”

“And then?”

“We’ll leave a team at the house with you and we’ll deal with this. Like Jack said, this had been going on too long. It’s time for it to end.”

They seemed too confident for my taste. When someone was overconfident, they almost always lost whatever it was they were fighting to win. The funeral was forgotten, the priest and funeral director standing off to one side like a potato casserole pushed aside to make room for a rump roast. Gentry took my hand and led the way to the narrow lane where the limos were parked, slipping the driver of our car a tip before sending him on his way. Brent had driven an SUV from Stone Security’s car pool because he disliked the idea of riding in a limo. Maybe it reminded him too much of his family’s funeral. Or maybe it was just a control issue. Either way, it was convenient for the rest of us.

Gentry jerked the doors open and stepped back, gesturing for everyone to climb inside. I watched Noah climb in, the tubing from his insulin pump peeking out from the pocket of his suit pants.

“Oh, hell,” I muttered, turning to find Chloe. She was at the back of the pack, clearly feeling a little like an outsider as the family bound together to face this latest crisis.

“I forgot…Noah’s infusion set needs to be changed out. Would you mind hitching a ride in one of the limos and going to the house to get his supplies?”

“Of course not.”

She seemed relieved to have a goal, something to do.

“I should have done it this morning, but he was bouncing off the walls and it seemed impossible to get him to sit still that long. And he had a good few hours of insulin left.”

“It’s not a problem.” Chloe took my hand and squeezed it. “I’ll meet you at Jack’s—Jack’s right?—in less than an hour.”

I nodded. “Thank you.”

She smiled as she turned and wandered over to where Jack, Brent, Bo, and Aiden were discussing their next move.

“Everything okay?” Gentry asked as he came up alongside me.

“Fine. I just asked Chloe to pick up some supplies for Noah.”

“Is he alright?”

“He’s fine. We just need to change his infusion set.”

Gentry made a face because he was watching the last time we did it. He didn’t like the pop of the insertion device that drove the cannula under Noah’s skin. I think it hurt him more than it ever hurt Noah, which I found incredibly amusing. Gentry was this big, strong man who could face down an angry biker without blinking, but he was afraid of a needle. How ironic was that?

He took my hand and helped me into the passenger seat of the SUV, checking to make sure everyone was in the vehicle before he leaned in for a little kiss.

“I’m going to check in with Jack one more time, then we’ll go.”

“Okay.”

“At least you have a good excuse not to attend the reception.”

I groaned. My father’s best friend had taken it upon himself to host a reception at his hotel for my father. He’d think I purposely chose not to go out of some sort of lack of respect. I’d never hear the end of it.

But that couldn’t be helped at the moment.

I watched Gentry stroll over to his brothers like this was just a normal day, like we often hung out in the cemetery. They talked for a few minutes and I thought I saw Jack pass Gentry a gun, but I couldn’t be sure. Would Jack really have brought a gun to my father’s funeral? But, again, this was Jack Stone we were talking about. I don’t think the guy went to the toilet without some sort of firearm within close reach.

Carson leaned forward and touched my arm. “You okay?”

I nodded. “As okay as I can be, I suppose.”

“At least this mess gives you something else to focus on.”

I couldn’t help but smile. “I guess so.”

She rubbed my arm, then sat back. I listened to Noah talk to Remy. He was fascinated with her growing belly. It seemed like she’d suddenly expanded her waistline in the few weeks since she’d finally made her announcement, the baby deciding that since everyone knew, it was okay to make itself known. And, I had to admit, pregnancy looked good on Remy.

“When will it come out?”

“Well, the doctor says the end of January. But Stone babies are known to come early.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. Brent was born two months early. And Jack came three weeks before his due date.”

“What about my dad?”

“He came two weeks before he was supposed to. My dad didn’t even have his room painted yet.”

“Did you know that, Mom?”

I nodded, my eyes still on Gentry and his brothers. “I’ve heard that story a time or two.”

“Did I come early?”

I twisted around to look at him, aware of the curiosity in Remy’s eyes as she regarded me. “You did, actually. You were born nearly a month before the doctor said you would be.”

“Cool! Maybe Aunt Remy’s baby will come next month.”

Remy touched her belly. “Well, we don’t want him or her to come that soon. We want the baby to be fully baked.”

“Baked? Babies don’t cook!”

“Sure, they do. Why do you think they spend that much time in their mommy's tummies?”

Noah laughed at the idea. “’Cause they bake? That’s silly!”

Gentry climbed behind the wheel then, tension clear in every line of his body.

“Everything okay?”

He glanced at me. “Yeah. This just…it might be more complicated than it first appeared.”

I wanted to ask what he meant, but he made a gesture toward the back of the vehicle and I realized that he might not want to expand on his thoughts with everyone so close. I supposed it might be best to wait until we got to the house.

We pulled out of the cemetery and swung left, heading toward some backroads that would take us along the lesser-used county roads that would lead to the back side of Jack’s property. We used to take that route when we were teens, using it to sneak into the guesthouse when we were supposed to be at school-approved activities. The roads weren’t exactly a secret, but they weren’t part of the main vein of roads cutting through Germantown. Gentry was clearly hoping that would mean that Mad Dog wouldn’t look for us there.

“Why is Jack sending us to the house?” Remy leaned forward and rested her hands on the back of Gentry’s seat, leaning close so that only he and I could hear her. “Why not take us to the safe house in the office?”

“Because security is reporting that Mad Dog’s people are still on the office grounds. They’re clearly waiting for one of us to go check out the explosion.”

“But what if that was just a distraction?”

“Jack’s willing to take the risk.”

Remy sat back, but then popped back up against his seat. “I don’t like it.”

“I’ll be sure to note that for the record, Rems.”

She sat back again, forcing a smile as Noah asked her if she was okay. I glanced back at them, my eyes dropping to Noah’s pump where it was protruding just a little from his pocket. I hoped that Chloe was quick with the supplies. When I decided not to change his infusion set this morning, it was with the assumption that the funeral would only keep us from home for a few hours. But the service at the church had run longer than I anticipated, and now this detour was adding extra time to the precious few hours his current level of insulin had left. If Chloe wasn’t at the house when we got there, Noah’s blood sugar would slowly begin to go up until it hit a critical high and that was not something I was prepared to deal with today.

Carter leaned forward. “It’ll take several hours for things to go bad. Don’t worry so much.”

“Easier said than done.”

She just smiled, but it was reassuring to have a doctor’s encouragement.

I settled back in my seat, watching the road unfold ahead of us. Gentry reached over and touched my leg, offering a weak smile. “I’m sorry this had to happen today.”

I shrugged. “Today’s as good a day as any,” I said, repeating Jack’s words at the cemetery.

Gentry looked at me, such love in his eyes. Then someone screamed and chaos broke out.

There was a line of motorcycles in the road, blocking the asphalt in a place where the shoulder dropped off into a deep ditch that was currently filled with muddy water thanks to a recent thunderstorm. Gentry slammed on the brakes, left with no choice but to stop. We were both thrown forward, the seatbelt slamming into our bodies as they struggled to hold us against the seat. I cried out, twisting even as the forward motion was still working on my body, searching for Noah. He was wearing a seatbelt—thank God!—therefore he remained in his seat, but he hit his head on the window from the motion of the car, smacking it hard enough to leave him dazed.

It was all happening in slow motion. Remy, beside Noah, pressed her hands to her belly the moment the SUV stopped, pulling the seat belt down from the swelling in her lower abdomen. Raelyn, in the very back, wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. She slammed her forehead against the back of the bench seat in front of her, blood trickling into her eyes from a small cut on her forehead. Dane, too, was dazed from a similar impact, but she was awake and conscious.

Carson released her seatbelt and immediately turned to Remy, asking her hurried questions as her attention moved from her belly to my son beside her. He didn’t appear to be aware of what was going on around him. He was just staring forward, not moving, not speaking.

“Noah?” I reached for him, my own seatbelt keeping him out of range. I quickly yanked at it, releasing it, before diving across the SUV to grab his arm. “Noah? Are you okay?”

He nodded, his hand coming up to point. I turned just in time to see Gentry dive, knocking me into the console as a portion of the windshield exploded.

“Get out!”

Gentry pushed me toward the passenger side door, leaning across me to open it. But when he did, another hole exploded in the center of the windshield.

Carson jerked open the back door and pulled Remy, then Noah to the ground. I managed to get out, grabbing Noah’s arm and tugging him to the back of the SUV, hoping the bulk of the vehicle would provide some sort of protection. They’d chosen the perfect place to ambush us.  There were no trees, no buildings, nothing we could hide behind for more than a hundred yards. We were completely exposed.

Gentry followed us to the back of the SUV, a gun in his hands. Another explosion shook the vehicle, someone firing at it from the front. It wouldn’t take but a moment for them to realize where we’d gone and to follow. Gentry moved to the driver’s side of the SUV and peeked around the corner. Almost immediately a puff of dust rose from the asphalt at his feet, another shot fired. At least it missed.

“How many are there?” Raelyn asked.

“Enough,” Gentry assured her.

I expected her to argue with him, to insist on knowing the answer she’d been searching for. But she didn’t. She grew very quiet, the color draining from her face.

“This isn’t happening,” Dane whispered somewhere to my left. “Not again. I can’t do this again!”

But it was. And not a moment later, two men dressed in leather with masks over their faces came around the passenger side of the SUV with guns drawn.

“Put it down!”

Gentry turned and raised his gun, but one of the men had moved up beside me and had the barrel of the gun close enough to Noah’s head that Gentry could see it, but far enough back that Noah wasn’t aware of it.

Gentry immediately dropped the gun.