"On Easter Sunday, My Daughter Called Me Sobbing, ""Dad, Please Come Get Me."" I Arrived To Find My Son-In-Law Laughing With His Mother, Who Shoved Me Back Onto The Porch And Said, ""She's Not Leaving Our Holiday Dinner; Go Back To Your Lonely House.""

The logging road was dark now, the hemlocks leaning together overhead like the arches of an abandoned cathedral, blocking out what little twilight remained.

Miller killed the Yukon’s headlights two miles before the clinic gate. He clicked on the night-vision display mounted to the windshield, the road turning into a ghost-green ribbon of mud and rocks.

"Two vehicles ahead," Miller said, his voice dropping into operational cadence. "Black Ford Excursions. North Carolina plates. They've breached the gate; they used bolt cutters on the chain."

"Marcus?" I asked.

"Marcus has Lily in the reinforced root cellar beneath the barn floor," Miller replied, checking his wrist-comm. "Four inches of reinforced concrete, two-inch steel hatch. They won't get through it with hand tools."

"And the boy?"

"Richard is with them," Miller said, a trace of disgust creeping into his tone. "Elena intercepted his cell ping. He couldn't stay away. He wanted to be there when they took her back. He thinks this is a movie where the hero shows up with the cavalry."

"He's about to find out what kind of movie this really is," I said.

I reached into the footwell behind my seat and pulled out my old Remington 1100 twelve-gauge. It was forty years old, the walnut stock scratched and worn down to the bare grain, but the barrel had been ported, the spring had been replaced last year, and the magazine tube was loaded with six rounds of three-inch magnum copper-plated 00 buckshot.

I racked the bolt.

The heavy, steel *clack-clack* was the most honest sound I had heard all day.

"Rules of engagement?" Miller asked, sliding a suppressed Colt M4 carbine from the tactical rack between our seats.

"They're on private property with illegal weapons," I said. "Neutralize the threat. Nobody dies if they drop their iron. But nobody walks away clean."

We left the truck in the brush seventy yards from the barn.

The rain was our friend now. It drummed against the tin roof of the pole barn, masking our footfalls, turning the red mud into a silent cushion.

Through the green glow of my night-vision goggles, I saw them: six men in black tactical gear, helmets with communication headsets, carrying short-barreled automatic weapons. Two were standing guard by the breached gate. Two were working on the lock of the clinic's front door with a pry bar.

And two—including a tall, thick-necked man with a scar running through his gray goatee—were standing by the open bay of the pole barn.

Jax.

Beside Jax stood Richard Sterling.

Richard had put on a black Barbour jacket over his torn shirt, but he looked absurd—his expensive hair plastered to his forehead by the rain, his eyes wild, holding a small silver SIG Sauer pistol like it was a dead fish.

"Hurry up, damn it!" Richard was shouting over the rain, his voice thin and hysterical. "She’s in there! I know she’s in there! Blow the door if you have to!"

"Shut your mouth, kid," Jax growled, not looking at him. "You want the whole valley to hear us? We do this clean, or I leave you here to explain this mess to the state boys."

"I'm paying you two hundred grand, Jax! You take orders from—"

Richard didn't finish the sentence.

Miller moved like a sixty-year-old shadow.

He didn't fire a shot. He stepped out from behind the corner of the woodpile, his carbon-fiber baton extending with a sharp *flick*, and struck the guard by the gate directly behind the knee.

The man collapsed without a sound. Before he hit the mud, Miller’s forearm caught him across the throat, taking his wind, and dragged him into the darkness of the brush.

One down.

The second gate guard turned, hearing the scrape of boots on gravel.

"Cooper?" he whispered into his throat-mic. "Cooper, report."

I stepped out from the laurel branch behind him.

I didn't use the shotgun. I used the butt of the stock, driving it into the base of his skull with the precise, measured force of a carpenter driving an eight-penny nail into an oak stud. He went limp instantly, his weapon dropping into the wet ferns.

Two down.

I took his sidearm—a tactical Glock with a light attached—cleared the chamber, and tossed it into the rain barrel.