Page 77 of The Ashes of Summer

The door opens.

He comes in first, dark civilian clothes instead of uniform. Hayes behind him, then Groves and Vance. No badges. No department markings.

Good. Because tonight we aren't cops. Tonight there are two outcomes and no others: I bring Summer home, or Rivers Ridge burns to the fucking ground with all of us inside it.

Carter's gaze moves over the room in one clean sweep. Tamara beside the bed. Adelaide at the window, holding herself together with nothing but skin and stubbornness. Constance pacing like something trapped. Kurt half-dead against the pillows with guilt written across every bruise on his face.

Then he looks at my hand. The blood dried over my knuckles. The split skin. The wall behind me that looks like it lost a fight.

He doesn't ask. He doesn't need to.

"That him?" Hayes asks, nodding at Kurt.

"Yeah."

Kurt doesn't look up. He's gone pale again—the kind of pale that says the drugs and the blood loss are catching up with him, sweat at his hairline, every breath dragging over something broken.

Too bad. Summer doesn't get to rest. Neither does he.

Carter's eyes come back to mine. "Cars are loaded. Weapons, ammo, night vision." He doesn't quite smile. "Enough shit out there to win a fucking war."

"Good."

It comes out flat, because it still doesn't feel like enough. Nothing in the back of those trucks changes the ninety minutes of road.

I spread Kurt's map across the rolling tray table and the men close in around it. The room changes the second they step inside—less panic, more purpose. That's what trained men do when violence stops being a question. They stop wasting breath and start counting exits.

White paper. Black ink. A nightmare drawn in trembling lines while I stood over him with a phone burning in my fist.

Rivers Ridge sprawls across the page like something alive. Main house in the center. East wing, west wing. Service roads cutting through dense tree cover. Outer cameras. Guard posts. Delivery route. North ridge access. Maintenance tunnels running under part of the house.

Bigger than Vale's. Worse than Vale's. A place built by a man who always knew someone might come looking one day.

Kurt lifts a shaking hand and taps the eastern edge. "Service access." His voice is barely holding.

Groves leans in, eyes narrowing. "That's a lot of ground."

"Twelve guards minimum," Kurt says.

"Armed?" Vance asks.

Kurt gives him a look through swollen eyes. "Always."

Carter traces the east side with two fingers. "Tree line gives cover?"

"Some," Kurt says. "Enough if you move slowly."

Slowly. The word gets under my skin and stays there. Every instinct I've got wants fast—fast means her in my arms sooner, fast means my hands closing around Jackson Moore's throat, fast means the sound his neck makes when it gives. But fast gets her moved. Fast gives him time to hear us coming, and I've already watched what this man does when he has time.

I force it down and keep my voice level. "We don't go in loud. No sirens. No lights once we're close. We don't approach from the main road, and we don't give Jackson a single fucking reason to know we're there."

Hayes nods slowly. "No aerial sweep?"

"No." It comes out harder than I mean it to, because the image arrives with it—a bird crossing those woods in the dark, rotor noise rolling down the mountain ahead of us, Jackson stepping to a window with his head tipped to the sound.

Then running. With her.

No fucking way. Not twice. Not while I'm breathing.