Chapter 1 - The Name Aldrich Wasn’t Supposed to Know
Ren Callaway had just tied off the final stitch when Caesar lifted his head.
The change in the mastiff was so subtle that Orion almost missed it.
One second, the enormous dog was lying beside the front door with his chin between his paws.
The next, his entire body went rigid.
His ears tilted toward the forest.
His nostrils flared.
Then a low rumble rolled through his chest.
Ren froze.
“What is it?”
Caesar stood.
Orion pushed himself upright despite the pain burning through his side.
“How far can he hear?”
“Farther than I can.”
Ren moved toward the lamp.
Orion caught her wrist.
“Don’t.”
Her eyes dropped to his hand.
Orion released her immediately.
“They’ll be looking for light.”
The irritation on Ren’s face disappeared.
“You said someone was chasing you.”
“I said armed pursuers.”
“That was before I let you bleed all over my kitchen. I’d like a little more information now.”
Orion looked toward his unconscious father.
Aldrich’s breathing was stronger than it had been two hours earlier, but he remained dangerously weak.
“There were twelve men when this began.”
“How many now?”
“Enough.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
Ren stared at him.
“Who are you?”
Orion didn’t answer.
Outside, Caesar’s growl deepened.
Ren crossed to the nearest window and carefully pulled the curtain back less than an inch.
Nothing.
Only black pine trunks.
Fog.
Rain-dark earth.
Then she saw it.
A narrow white beam moving between the trees.
A flashlight.
Another appeared thirty yards farther east.
Then another.
Ren slowly closed the curtain.
“How many people know about this cabin?”
“No one.”
“That’s impossible.”
“It was the point.”
She turned toward Orion.
“Then they didn’t come for me.”
“No.”
Something in the way he said the word made coldness crawl across her skin.
“They came for you.”
“Yes.”
“And now they know I’m here.”
Orion’s jaw tightened.
“Yes.”
Ren looked at the man on her table.
Then at the surgical instruments covered in blood.
Then at Caesar.
Three years.
Three years of silence.
Three years of hiding so completely that grocery shopping required a forty-mile drive and the nearest neighbor probably believed the cabin had been abandoned.
And one desperate decision had brought violence straight to her door.
Aldrich suddenly moved.
His fingers twitched against the table.
Ren hurried to him.
“Sir?”
The older man’s eyelids fluttered.
His lips moved.
No sound came.
Ren leaned closer.
“You’re safe. Don’t try to sit up.”
Aldrich’s eyes opened.
They were gray like Orion’s, but age had softened their edges.
For several seconds, he seemed unable to understand where he was.
Then his gaze found Ren.
His expression changed.
Recognition.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
Aldrich’s fingers closed weakly around her wrist.
“Callaway.”
Ren stopped breathing.
Orion stepped closer.
“Dad?”
Aldrich ignored him.
His gaze remained fixed on Ren.
“Ren… Callaway.”
She pulled back.
“How do you know my name?”
Aldrich tried to answer.
Pain overtook him.
His eyes squeezed shut.
Ren pressed a hand against his shoulder.
“Don’t move.”
Aldrich forced out two more words.
“Meadow… alive.”
The room disappeared.
At least that was how it felt.
The walls.
The lamp.
The rain.
Orion.
Everything seemed to fall away until only those two words remained.
Meadow alive.
Ren’s hand began to tremble.
“What did you say?”
Aldrich’s eyes had already closed.
“No.”
Ren grabbed his shoulder.
“Open your eyes.”
Orion caught her arm.
“He’s barely conscious.”
“Your father just said my daughter’s name.”
Orion went completely still.
Ren turned on him.
“My daughter disappeared three years ago.”
She was no longer whispering.
“She was five years old. She vanished from Saint Matthew Medical Center while I was finishing an emergency surgery after a highway pileup. Someone walked her out of the pediatric waiting area during a fire alarm.”
Orion stared at her.
Ren’s voice broke.
“They found her coat in a parking garage two blocks away.”
Outside, a branch snapped.
Caesar barked once.
It was enormous.
Deep enough to vibrate through the wooden floor.
Orion moved instantly.
“We have to go.”
Ren shoved him away.
“No.”
“Ren—”
“You don’t get to walk into my house carrying a man who knows my missing daughter’s name and then tell me we have to go.”
Another light flashed through the trees.
Closer.
Orion’s expression hardened.
“If we’re alive in twenty minutes, I’ll answer every question I can.”
Ren looked toward Aldrich.
“You’re not moving him.”
“We don’t have a choice.”
“He could bleed internally.”
“They’ll kill him if they find us.”
A voice carried faintly through the forest.
“Check the cabin!”
Ren’s blood turned cold.
Orion reached beneath his jacket.
For the first time, Ren noticed the handgun secured against his back.
She stepped away.
“You brought a gun into my house?”
“I brought a dying father into your house.”
“And the gun?”
“The gun is why I managed to get him here.”
“Ren.”
Aldrich’s voice.
Barely audible.
She spun back.
The older man was awake again.
His fingers moved weakly toward the inside pocket of his ruined jacket.
“Pocket.”
Ren hesitated.
Orion reached for it.
Aldrich caught his son’s sleeve.
“No. Her.”
Ren slid her hand into the pocket.
Her fingers touched metal.
Something small.
She pulled it free.
The object landed in her palm.
For a second, her mind refused to understand what she was seeing.
A tiny silver identification bracelet.
Child-sized.
Dented near the clasp.
One small blue bead missing.
Ren made a sound Orion would remember for the rest of his life.
Not a scream.
Not a sob.
Something deeper.
Something torn directly from a place where grief had lived too long.
She turned the bracelet over.
Three words were engraved beneath it.
MEADOW E. CALLAWAY.
Ren stumbled backward.
Caesar abandoned the door and rushed to her side.
The mastiff pressed his massive shoulder against her legs before she could fall.
“No.”
Her fingers closed around the bracelet.
“No, no, no.”
Orion looked from the bracelet to his father.
“Where did you get that?”
Aldrich’s breathing hitched.
“Cross.”
Orion’s face drained of color.
Ren noticed.
“Who is Cross?”
He said nothing.
“Who is Cross?”
Orion finally looked at her.
“Damian Cross.”
“And?”
Orion’s voice became dangerously quiet.
“My father’s head of security.”
Ren stared.
Orion continued.
“The man who has protected our family for twenty-seven years.”
Aldrich’s eyes opened once more.
“Not… protected.”
A sudden beam of light swept across the cabin window.
Caesar whirled.
Someone outside shouted.
“Movement!”
Orion grabbed the lamp and extinguished it.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Ren’s heartbeat thundered.
Footsteps approached through wet leaves.
At least four people.
Maybe more.
Orion leaned close enough that she could hear him without raising his voice.
“Is there another way out?”
Ren didn’t answer.
“Ren.”
She clutched Meadow’s bracelet so tightly the edges cut into her palm.
Then she looked at Caesar.
One command escaped her lips.
“Cellar.”
The dog immediately crossed the room.
Ren hurried toward the old stone fireplace.
Orion watched in confusion as she dropped to her knees and pulled loose a plank that appeared to be part of the floor.
A metal handle sat beneath it.
She lifted.
A hidden hatch opened.
Cold air rose from below.
“You have an underground cellar?”
“My grandfather built this place during the Cold War.”
Orion almost smiled.
Almost.
“Of course he did.”
They worked together to move Aldrich.
Ren descended first.
Orion lowered his father carefully through the opening while Caesar stood guard above them.
When all three were inside, Ren whistled softly.
Caesar backed toward the hatch.
Then stopped.
He stared toward the front door.
His growl changed.
Orion heard the porch boards creak.
Someone had reached the cabin.
“Caesar,” Ren whispered.
The mastiff looked down at her.
“Now.”
Caesar dropped through the opening with surprising grace for an animal his size.
Ren closed the hatch.
Seconds later, the front door exploded inward.
Boots crossed the floor directly above them.
Ren pressed one hand against Caesar’s muzzle to keep him quiet.
Orion held his father against his chest.
A man spoke overhead.
“Blood.”
Another answered.
“Three people were here.”
Ren looked at Orion.
Three?
They knew about her already.
A third voice came from near the kitchen.
“Cross said the woman might be with them.”
Ren’s eyes widened.
Orion’s face became stone.
The man continued.
“If she is, we take her alive.”
Ren felt the bracelet inside her fist.
A fourth man laughed quietly.
“And the dog?”
A pause.
“Kill it.”
Caesar’s muscles tensed beneath Ren’s hand.
Above them, the men began tearing apart the cabin.
And in the darkness beneath the floor, Ren finally understood something worse than the armed strangers standing ten feet above her.
Damian Cross had not discovered her tonight.
May you like
He had known exactly who she was before Orion ever reached her door.
And somewhere in the past Ren had spent three years trying to escape, a man she had never met knew what had happened to her daughter.
