Chapter 60

Ash pickedhis way between thick, mature trees and thin, wispy saplings. As he drew parallel to the front of the guesthouse, he searched for a place to exit without having to lose a layer of skin to the jungle of raspberry bushes at the forest’s edge.

His luck proved to be frog shit. A thick perimeter of briars stood between him and a clear view of the house.

“This is going to suck,” he said beneath his breath. He’d be pulling thorn tips out of his thighs for the next two weeks.

Filling his lungs with air, he plowed through the spindly plants, stepping on the ones he could and enduring the stab-slice of the ones he couldn’t. The sound of fabric ripping marked his progress. He held his breath as he pushed through the last of them and that’s when a long, hooked barb caught the tender flesh of his inner thigh and clung tight.

He stopped, barely holding back the curse that erupted into his throat. Reaching down, he disengaged the thorn, leaving a stinging—no doubt bloody—wound behind.

Clear of nature’s torture chamber, he took a knee behind an Adirondack chair, one of six encircling a stone firepit. From this vantage point, he could see both the mansion and guesthouse. An armed guard stood sentinel near the smaller building’s front entrance, while another peeled away to walk a surveillance round.

Ash noted the time, then scanned the entire backside of the main house for more guards, but detected none. Interesting.

The security detail wasn’t here to protect Sybil, but to secure whoever was inside the guesthouse. The ache deep in his bones told him all he needed to know. Kayla had hit the target.

Jillian Krowne was inside.

Now he had to figure out how to free the elder Krowne while ensuring the younger one didn’t jump into the fray and get herself killed.

He wished Zeke was here. His brother would’ve figured out the best path forward in two blinks of an eye. No matter how well Ash had planned out their projects, some unforeseen variable on-site would always blast his plan to smithereens. Zeke’s quick thinking and ability to pivot on a dime had saved their bacons more than once.

A keen sense of loss barreled through his chest. He absorbed the impact, took the punishment, then refocused on the problem at hand. Zeke wasn’t here, so Ash would have to depend on his own instincts tonight.

The surveilling guard returned, and Ash clocked the time it had taken him to make the full circuit. Another timer ticked in his mind, letting him know he needed to get back to Kayla. He didn’t trust the headstrong lobbyist to stay put for long.

Gritting his teeth, he backed toward the tree line and steeled himself for the swath of pain. Before his boot could ease into the briars, something hard dug into the back of his head.

“Toss your weapon,” a no-nonsense male voice said. “Nice and slow.”

Sonofabitch.

Certain the dense, thorny perimeter would alert him to anyone sneaking up behind him, he’d kept his senses focused forward. There must have been an opening farther down, because there was no way anyone could have traversed those raspberry bushes without him hearing, no matter how preoccupied he’d been.

The gun barrel jabbed at his head. “Toss your weapon, down on your knees, hands over head.”

Alerted to an intruder, one of the guesthouse guards stormed toward them.

Great. Double the fun.

In a lightning move, Ash dropped low and kicked out. The guard behind him stumbled against the impact and crashed into the brambles. Thorny claws sank into his clothes, into his flesh in a thousand different places, holding him immobile but for his hands. The ones holding his assault rifle.

Ash dove to the side as bullets sprayed in an arc toward him. He scrambled for cover behind a giant oak tree and raised his pistol to the second guard. Rather than aiming for center mass, he took his time and targeted a knee-cap. He pulled the trigger and the guard went down, screaming in pain.

The first guard tore his way out of the raspberry bushes and rolled behind the stone firepit. Chunks of wood splintered off Ash’s oak tree. He paused, then slammed three bullets into the stacked stones near the shooter’s head.

A muffled curse echoed across the lawn, indicating a shard of stone had hit its mark. The guard was injured but not down.

Ash shoved away from the tree, running as hard and zigzag as he could toward Kayla’s location. As much as it burned his gut, he’d grab Kayla, retreat to safety, and come back with more guns and shields.

But when he arrived at the boulder where he’d left Kayla, she was gone.