Diggs turned off the pavement and onto a gravel road, his tension growing as thick as the branches slapping his rear view mirrors. The brilliant blue sky had faded into streaks of dusty pink and orange, lighting up the sky into an endless stream of fire. Dust swirled around his tires, and he was thankful he’d opted to bring the off-roading Jeep instead of the sleek Dodge Viper. It’d taken him a full minute to decide too—speed versus rugged sturdiness. In the end, he’d chosen the Jeep, because it had a flat compartment in the back where he could put the dog. The Viper had no backseat.

A couple of deer darted across the road a few hundred feet in front of him and Diggs cursed, lifting his phone to study the GPS tracker once more. What the hell was Audra doing out here? He thought she’d go to the nearest motel, or even town, and there were plenty of roads she could’ve taken to lead her back to the city. Instead, it looked more and more like she was headed toward the old battlefield reserve area. Was she some kind of off-road survivalist? Diggs shook his head, laughing at himself. Audra had definitely shown her fierceness in the mansion, but she’d been driving a smart car, and he could tell simply by the way she moved, she’d been raised in town.

The beacon on Trigger’s GPS hadn’t moved for the past 20 minutes, so they must’ve found a spot to stay. Or they’d been stopped.

The road came to an end, teeing off to another path, this one dotted with potholes and broken glass. The likelihood that Audra had chosen to come this way shrunk rapidly and his dread grew. Just to be cautious, Diggs rolled his window down and killed the engine, listening for signs of distress.

A chorus of insects rose with loud cadence, frogs croaked, and animals moved through the trees surrounding him. Even though it was early autumn, and the night air wasn’t that hot, sweat trickled down his back and soaked into his T-shirt. Something wasn’t right.

Diggs closed his eyes so he could focus all of his attention on listening, stretching his senses out as far as he could. Birds chirped and sang, the local woods inhabited by densely packed wildlife. This area was off-limits to local hunters and residents, allowing the animals a refuge in which to grow and thrive. He sat there for another moment, but he didn’t detect any type of human activity, so he cranked up the Jeep and eased in the direction of the beacon that his phone indicated, keeping his windows down and his ears alert.

She shouldn’t be in any environment like this, not with an injured dog and on the run. She should be holed up safely in a hotel room, or sitting at police headquarters for protection. Out here, she would be completely exposed, and he knew Audra was too smart to do something as stupid as this, especially if she was on the run, even if it was from him.

He was less than a mile from their location. Diggs slowed the Jeep and put it in park. The night sounds still hammered all around him, drowning out everything else. Diggs killed the Jeep and got out. And like a tidal wave, the insects buzzing slowly faded, the animals around him stopped moving, and the night air fell silent.

Fat jagged clouds stretched across the sky, obliterating the moonlight and leaving him blanketed in darkness. It was the environment he preferred. He liked to be alone. Being raised in a full house, with six other brothers and parents, had always been loud and noisy. He often escaped into the woods behind his house for solitude. He felt like that’s where he belonged. Being in the special forces, he’d had plenty of time to be alone, and he felt like he’d finally found his home.

So, he knew instantly that even though he was completely alone in the woods, there should’ve been noise, sound, and movement. These woods were teeming with life. The animals and other creatures would only fall silent if they sensed a threat.

And Diggs was not a threat.

He checked his GPS, switched the imagery over to satellite, and zoomed as low as he could to still cover the ground around him. There was a single house about a mile down from here, after the road turned and made a T. It was on the edge of a bowl-shaped lake that looked to be surrounded by marsh and swamp. The perfect place to take someone who needed to disappear.

Cursing, Diggs sent a quick message to his team to let them know his location and that he was moving into a possible threatening situation where he may need back up, and dropped his phone into his back pocket. If Audra had been taken out here, he didn’t have time to wait on backup, he needed to move now.

As quickly as he could, Diggs jumped in the Jeep and pulled it off the road, hiding it in a small grove of trees. Thankful for his enhanced strength, he ripped limbs free and used the surrounding foliage to camouflage the Jeep. He might need it for a hasty exit and he didn’t want anyone finding the vehicle besides his team.

He’d already gotten out his rifle and handgun, along with a couple of clips of extra ammunition. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and took off at a brisk run down the road, alert and ready for any signs of ambush. After nearly three-quarters of a mile, he hadn’t slowed down or broken pace, and followed the road as he’d memorized it on the GPS straight to where the trees cleared and the house came into view.

Diggs quickly ducked behind the nearest oak and peered around the corner, his chest growing tight when he saw Audra’s car parked in the front and a pickup truck he didn’t recognize beside it. Diggs pulled the scope he’d packed from his pocket and lifted it to his eye, not needing night vision to see through the darkness. There was a light in the front window on the left side of the house, and although he couldn’t see anyone, he could see the shadow of a person splashed on the wall.

A shadow that lifted its arm and lowered it in a swing that looked like a punch being thrown.

Son of a bitch. Hard cold rage formed in a knot in the pit of his stomach. Diggs ripped his pistol out and ran in a low crouch along an old rusty livestock fence with grass grown halfway up the posts. As he neared the house, he spotted the muddy lake that looked more like a bog in the back. Two more newer model cars were parked back there, not forgotten broken-down pieces of shit abandoned along with the house.

When he was 100 feet away he heard the sharp crack of a slap blasting out from the inside of the house. Diggs took off at a full sprint until the fence stopped and he was forced to crouch and assess the situation. Audra was in trouble, and it wouldn’t do either of them any good for him to race in, guns blazing. He was smarter and better trained than that. Acting rashly got people killed.

Another crack and Diggs’ body jerked in response. He knew without a doubt that it was Audra. Someone was after her and they’d caught her. He didn’t know why, but he didn’t really give a fuck right now. All he knew in that moment was whoever had dared to lay a hand on her was a dead man.

The yard, although overgrown and uncared for, was completely open on the side of the property. If he ran across the stretch, he’d be completely exposed and vulnerable if anyone was looking out. There’d be a lookout hidden somewhere that he couldn’t easily spot, and they’d be using the cover of darkness to camouflage their locations. Just like Diggs. But unlike Diggs they couldn’t see in the dark or hear the sound of a man breathing across the yard.

Diggs focused on that sound right now, homing in on a location between the pickup and the house. He was in the huge oak tree above the pickup, breathing regular and steady indicating he hadn’t sensed Diggs’ presence yet. And if Diggs had anything to say about it, he never would. Knowing the barbed wire would slash his arms, Diggs dropped to his belly and rolled beneath the lowest part of the barbed wire fence. He crouched beside it, coming up on his elbows and knees in the thick pasture that wrapped around to the lake behind the house. It killed him to move slowly, knowing that every second he was out here, Audra’s life was in danger, but he couldn’t move in, not knowing how many men were inside.

A snake slithered across the ground to his right, hissing and angry that Diggs had disturbed his burrow. Diggs just kept on moving, knowing the snake would find a new home. Once the grass in the pasture was tall enough to easily camouflage him, he moved at a fast crawl. He was on the other side of the house, blocked from view from the lookout. He climbed to the other fence, stopped before he slid beneath it to make sure no one was in the backyard and moved on. There was a long stretch of overgrown yard between the dark water and the house, and the old oak trees hung heavy with moss like huge dark ghouls swaying in the wind over the water.

Most people thought there weren’t alligators in this area of the United States, but they didn’t think that bogs and bayous dotted the landscape of the East Coast either. Diggs knew for a fact that gators lived and bred in these areas, especially the wilderness reserve where they were protected as endangered species.

Which would make it the perfect dumping place for a body—the perfect solution to destroy evidence of a murder.

In a crouched run, Diggs sprinted across to the corner of the house, pulled out his knife, and held it in his hand, ready to throw. He automatically avoided the dry fallen limbs in the unkempt yard, moving in silence as he made his way across the back. Sound carried clear as glass through the night air and across the water. The guard was crouched on a branch, his fingers drumming in what he probably thought was silence, but to Diggs, it carried like gunshots across the night. His gaze was locked on the window, more focused on what was going on inside the house than actually doing his duty. And that distraction would be his death.

Diggs let out a slow breath. If he had any doubt these guys were amateurs, it was long gone now. This was a professional crew, set up with experienced precision, and a chosen spot for where they’d easily be able to dispose of all the evidence.

Audra was on a hit list. She was in danger, and he had to act now. He could hear men shouting inside the house, feel the waves of violence and smell the fear pouring from its doors and windows. They would kill her. He knew it. The fact that he had no idea who or where these men were wouldn’t stop him. He had to take out the guard and get inside.

Diggs dropped to an even lower crouch and crept across the ground, using the shadows to swallow and camouflage his movements, tracking the man as he moved. Diggs reached the trunk of the tree undetected, and was pulling back his knife, when the front door burst open and a small man stepped out, wiping his hands on a towel smattered with blood.

Audra.

For a moment, Diggs forgot where he was. He forgot his duty. Forgot his training.

“I’m ready for a turn,” the guard said.

Diggs forced his mind from the tumultuous violence building inside of him and gripped the handle of the knife so tight that blood pulsed in his fingers. Even from down here Diggs could see the eagerness on the guard’s face. He wanted to be inside, dishing out the pain, not sitting out here in the wings watching for someone he thought would never come.

The man at the door let out a grunt, his clothing that of a civilian, but his eyes never stopped scanning the yard, alert and aware. “Shut up.”

Diggs tensed, rolling behind the tree completely, so that even his shoulders were hidden. The man at the front door had turned in his direction, as if sensing his presence.

Completely unaware of the threat lurking below his feet, the guard said, “But I want to play. Bradshaw didn’t say we couldn’t play.”

There was no answer from the front porch.

Diggs kept his back plastered against the trunk, focusing on the sound of the man’s steps on the front porch, ready to take them both out if he approached. Obviously, the other man was more alert and professional than the one in the tree. The one in the tree just wanted to hurt people. The man at the door was doing his job.

The silence stretched out a few moments longer. Then there was a creak of the floorboard and the soft snick of the door indicating the other man went back inside. He was the kind that didn’t waste his time on words. And that kind was more dangerous than the idiot on the branch above.

There was a sound of a strike, light flared, and smoke filled his nostrils as the guard in the tree lit a cigarette. “Fucking assholes,” he muttered under his breath, but Diggs heard it like a shout.

Diggs took in a breath and let it out slowly, forcing his grip to loosen on the blade. Men like this joined these types of teams for the joy of killing.

They didn’t need to be left to live.

No matter how much Diggs wanted to see the surprising realization on the man’s face as he killed him, Audra was more important than the satisfaction he would get from vengeance. Like a ghost, he spun from behind the tree. Standing up directly beneath the guard, he let his blade fly. It whistled through the air, and, flying end over end, embedded in the guard’s neck just beneath his chin. He braced himself, caught the body as it fell to keep it from hitting the ground with a loud thunk, and then carried him around to the front of the truck and shoved him beneath the vehicle out of sight. He yanked his blade from the man’s throat, wiped the blood on the man’s shirt, and re-sheathed it at his hip before returning to the tree to put out the freshly lit cigarette.

Then he drew his pistol, holding it high as he ran across the yard, and ducked beneath the single front window on the right side of the house. Carefully, Diggs straightened his legs until he could peer over the bottom edge of the window. What he saw knocked the breath from his lungs.

There were six men inside, three of them clustered around something on the floor. Two of them were standing near an unconscious Audra who’d been tied to a chair, her hands bound behind her back and her head slumped forward, blood dripping from her nose and mouth.

One of the men stood with his arms crossed, staring at her without any expression on his face, a bloodied hand held tucked into his front pocket as he waited for her to wake up.

A steel-plated fury formed around Diggs’s veins. This team wasn’t only a hit squad. They wanted something, something they thought Audra had.

Diggs heard the scuff of a boot, followed immediately by a dog’s whimper. One of the men on the left shifted, and he could now see Trigger lying, still bound to the carrier, on the floor. The same guy kicked Trigger again, and Diggs gnashed his teeth together, knowing how much pain the dog was in with his cracked ribs.

If Diggs had even been considering letting the men live earlier, he stopped right then and there. They were all dead; he wouldn’t let anyone in this room live. But he couldn’t just run in. Taking on six at once was too risky. All it would take was one bullet while he was distracted with another. He needed to draw them out, and he now knew how to do it.

He leapt onto the front porch, tested the knob, felt that it was unlocked, and opened the door. He lifted his gun and fired off a round. Before the bullet finished sinking into the man’s skull, Diggs was off and moving, letting the door shut behind him to cover his tracks.

He leapt onto the railing and up onto the roof, deciding to use height as a weapon. He waited for the first man to come to the door, knowing they would think he’d taken off running into the yard. He sprawled out flat above their heads, unmoving, blending in with the darkness. Even the moonless night seemed to be on his side, the clouds still thick overhead and blocking out any extra natural light that would aid the enemy.

The door burst open and two men fanned out, searching for him in a standard tactical pattern, just like Diggs himself would do on a normal mission. They wanted to flank him, and because he’d anticipated this, they did exactly what he wanted.

Diggs smiled in the darkness. Calm. Centered. Ready to attack.

When the man that went left was directly beneath him, Diggs dropped to the ground, grasped the man’s head and twisted with all his strength. Before the other guard spun around, his friend was already falling to the ground, his rifle dropping uselessly beside him. The other guard fired a wild burst of bullets that bunked into the sides of the house and in the dirt at the ground where Diggs had just been standing.

Diggs had already taken off running, melding into the shadows of the night. He lifted his gun and fired a single shot, and kept moving. The other guard slumped uselessly to the ground, dead.

Diggs heard the sound of men’s whispering inside, knew the other three were making a plan and that he had limited time to make his move before he risked Audra being used as a weapon against him.

Diggs took off running around the side and back of the house. He passed the door and two dark windows he’d seen earlier. They’d have a man posted at each entrance for sure, and with the front door being left open, he’d be a walking target. He’d have to use the element of surprise first and take over the situation before they could hurt Audra anymore.

He crouched near the back door. One of the men inside the house shouted, “Come out or we’ll kill the girl!”

Diggs’ lips pressed into a hard line, as he readied his pistol. They were trying to goad him into giving away his location or making a stupid move, but Diggs was beyond that. He was beyond anything but dealing death right now. The image of Audra slumped over and bloody in that chair flashed across his mind and his resolve firmed. He’d trained enough to use his enhanced senses, and although he hadn’t gotten to practice them in battle as long as he would like to be completely comfortable, he had no choice but to rely on them right now.

Diggs went completely still, listening for any shift of the floorboards or break in the fabric against the wall to indicate where the man inside would be located. For the longest stretch of seconds, there was nothing, and then a floorboard creaked and a man coughed. Diggs slowly lowered his pistol, unhooked his rifle from over his shoulder, and took a step away from the wall. This old house was nothing but chipped siding and rotted-out walls—perfect for what he planned.

Diggs took aim at exactly where the sound had come from on the other side of the wall and fired his rifle. The force of the blast from his .308 penetrated the rotted-out siding and nonexistent insulation, sliced through sheetrock on the inside, and thumped satisfactorily into the man’s head.

Diggs slung the rifle over his shoulder and took off running, knowing the gunshot would draw their attention to the back of the house. His targets were narrowed down to two, and two was something he could do in his sleep. As he neared the front door he heard one of the men say in a harsh, panicky voice, “Holy shit, he took out Steve, straight through the wall.”

“Stay calm, we’ve got the girl; she’s obviously what he wants,” the other man said in a hushed voice, and although he tried to sound at ease, there was definitely tension there.

Good. He wanted them frayed and panicked; they’d be easier to take out that way.

Diggs picked up a rock and tossed it across the front yard, straight at the pickup truck where it clanged into the metal with a loud crack. One of the men fired off a barrage of bullets that whizzed through the open front door and jumped into the front walls and broke the glass of the window.

Diggs waited until he heard that last satisfying click, indicating he’d emptied his magazine. He had his gun in his hand, leapt onto the front porch, lifted his pistol, and fired a satisfying triangle. One. Two. Three. Chest. Chest. Head. He’d been the one who’d been kicking Trigger, and Diggs wanted to make sure that fucker was dead.

Then he turned his attention to the last man in the room. He was the one with the towel, now crouched behind the still unconscious Audra, his face pale and sweaty. His hand was shaking, even as he held a knife to her throat. “Drop the gun, asshole, or I finish her right now.”

Diggs relaxed into a stance, holding his gun steady and straight out in front of him as he took aim at the man’s left eye. “I don’t think so.”

The man gulped and pressed the blade tighter against the pale unmarred skin of her throat. “I’ve given you one warning. I’ll – “

Diggs squeezed the trigger, hugging it like his favorite toy. Completely confident. The bullet launched from his barrel, whizzed across the room, and embedded in the man’s left eye.

The knife fell from his nerveless fingers and clattered on the ground. He dropped on the floor behind Audra, his one open eye loosely fixed on the cracked and crumbled ceiling overhead.

Diggs didn’t spare the man another thought. He knew they would have signaled an alert to whoever they worked for that they were under attack, so he only had so much time to get them out of there before more men came.

He raced to Audra, using his knife to slice free the bonds binding her wrists together, catching her before she slumped onto the ground. He cradled her for a moment in his arms, feeling the warmth in her body and savoring the thump of her heart signaling she was still alive. Injured, tortured, but alive.

He pressed a kiss to her forehead and felt a twitch in his chest that he’d never felt before now. But he didn’t have time to analyze it; they had to get out.

“Audra, wake up.” He shook her as gently as he could in his arms.

Her head lolled on his shoulder and the fresh blood from her mouth stuck to his shirt. A black ferocious swirl of violence unleashed inside him seeing her hurt like this, and he wanted to bring the asshole on the floor back to life so he could kill him all over again.

“Audra, come on, baby, open those big green eyes for me,” he said against her hair, praying she’d regain consciousness.

After a moment she groaned, the sweetest sound he’d ever heard.

“That’s it, baby, open your eyes. Look at me.” Diggs tilted her head back so he could see her face. Her lashes, long and thick, fluttered against her pale cheeks. Then her eyes creaked open, and she stared up at him in what he knew was a haze of pain. “That’s it, I’ve got you now. You’re safe.”

“Diggs?” Her voice came out hoarse. Then she glanced around the room, taking in the dead bodies. Her eyes widened, a horrified expression covering her face.

Diggs put his hand up and blocked her view. He didn’t have time to explain. “Listen, we have to get out of here. There will be more coming. Can you walk?”

He knew that if he allowed her to dwell on the death around her, she’d probably go into shock. He’d seen it happen on enough trained men to know that an inexperienced civilian couldn’t handle that type of horror in one huge blow. He needed to distract her and get her moving. He’d let her breakdown later when he had her safe in his arms at his house and could protect her.

“What—” she began, but he cut her off.

“Audra, can you walk?” he repeated more forcefully, hoping the authority in his voice would drag her out of that almost glazed look that was starting to cover her features. “I can’t carry you and the dog.”