Chapter 28

Keavy~

I 'd never been a fanciful woman before, but as I'd thought about Declan possibly being in love with Kasen Sartori, all the songs that the Uber driver had played in the car had rung differently in my ears. I'd also never felt this confused in my life before, and I didn't appreciate the feeling.

At any rate, once I'd had the Uber driver drop me off five miles down the road, making him believe that he'd been dropping me off at a bed and breakfast, I had walked the rest of the way to the cabin, a total of eleven miles after you factored in the six miles into the woods from the back. Luckily for me, while the bed and breakfast had been closed down years ago, the property owners still cared enough to keep the building looking presentable in case they ever decided to sell. Plus, by the time that we'd gotten here, it'd been close to four in the morning, so the Uber driver hadn't cared about where he'd left me. He'd taken his thousand dollars and hadn't looked back, and good for him.

Once I'd gotten to the cabin, I'd taken a shower, then had crashed without bothering to eat anything. The exhaustion had finally caught up with me, and the adrenaline crash had been a rough one. I'd woken up with one hell of a headache, and I still felt a bit out of sorts. While there wasn't anything sentimental back at my apartment, I wasn't sure what my next move should be. Obviously, I couldn't go back to Miller's or my building, but I also couldn't just fall off the face of the earth. While Noah might have covered things for me at work, sooner or later, someone would be asking about me, and then there was no telling what kind of clusterfuck that could bring about. Not to mention, the news about Cooper Donaldson was probably everywhere by now, so I knew that the cops would be looking for me soon.

So, two showers and over twelve hours of sleep later, I was watching the sun set from the kitchen table, and I had no idea what to do next. While I could leave Maryland altogether, the idea of leaving the cabin felt like a kick in the chest. Even two hours from the city, it'd always felt like a safety net for me, and Cian was still here in every memory that I had of this place. If I left, then it'd feel like I was leaving Cian behind. There was also the fact that he was buried underneath the huge oak that led into the thicket of trees to the left of the property. This was still our home as long as I could still visit him here, and if I could find a way out of this mess without having to leave the cabin behind, then that's what I wanted to do.

Needing to eat, I was about to get up to make something simple when the security app on my phone went off. My back immediately straightened, wondering who would be close enough to the cabin to trip the cameras. It wasn't unheard of for a hunter or hiker to lose their way in this direction, but unless they were lost, no one should be hiking or hunting this late into the evening. At least, not with such a long trek back to their campsites or vehicles.

My first thought was that Declan had found me, but that was impossible. There was no way that he could find this place in such a short amount of time. He and Noah had discussed how they hadn't been able to find anything on my background check, so unless Declan had gone out and hired a hacking wiz, there was no way that he could know that I was here.

Pulling up the feed on my phone, I saw two figures creeping around the back, and I immediately knew that it wasn't Declan or Noah. These guys didn't seem as tall or as filled out, but that didn't mean anything. For all I knew, Declan could have sent two of his underlings to come get me, though that's not what this felt like to me. Cian had always been big on trusting your instincts, and my instincts were telling me that these two were randomly looking for trouble or looking to rob someone.

Sliding off the chair, I quickly crawled my way back towards the bedroom, leaving the cellar alone in favor of the nine-millimeter that I had in the nightstand drawer. It wasn't the only gun that I had in the bedroom, but it was the fastest and easiest for me to shoot. While I had a few knives under the bed, bullets were faster than the circus talent that it took to throw knives, though my aim was pretty good with whatever I had in my hands.

Looking at the feed on my phone, I only saw the two men, but that didn't mean anything. It was possible that these two had been sent to check the cabin for any occupants, more people waiting in the woods. Homelessness was a real issue in the country these days, so coming upon an abandoned cabin would be like hitting the lottery for someone that was down on their luck.

My only saving grace right now was that I hadn't had to turn on any inside lights yet. Though the curtains were drawn and some of the windows were boarded up, there'd still been enough sunlight streaming through the kitchen that I'd hadn't had to turn on the lights just yet. The cabin looked empty, and I was going to use that to my advantage. While I didn't want to kill someone that might be innocently lost, I was also not going to take any chances.

When I heard the front door opening, I cursed myself for not locking it earlier after I'd gone to check the perimeter after waking up this evening. While it was reasonable to blame my lack of attentiveness on the past three days, that was still no excuse.

Deciding that I needed to deal with this in the same way that I'd dealt with Declan's men, I crept over to the closet, grabbed the loaded revolver that was in there, then let out a deep breath before heading back towards the kitchen. The cellar door was underneath the area rug in the living room, so I didn't want them anywhere near there. Keeping the cellar a secret was imperative, but the cabin was too small to be able to guarantee that they wouldn't find it, especially if they tore the place apart.

With both guns aimed high, I stepped underneath the archway that separated the kitchen and living room. They were both too busy looking through the drawers to notice me at first, but the sound of my voice quickly changed that.

"I think you boys are lost," I said.

Startled, they both turned around, and while they didn't look like vagrants, they definitely looked like two guys that you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley. They were both the same height at around six-foot, but one guy had light blonde hair while the other guy's hair was dark brown. They both had brown eyes, and objectively speaking, they weren't bad to look at.

"Well, what do we have here?" the blonde drawled out.

"Looks like we hit the jackpot," the other said. "And to think, we were just supposed to just scour the area and take what we could find."

"Well, as you can see, this cabin isn't as abandoned as it might look from the outside," I said. "So, kindly leave before things get…uncomfortable."

Ignoring me, the blonde told the brunette, "You know, Klive just wanted valuables that we could sell, but what better thing to sell than pussy?"

"I'm only going to say this once, gentlemen," I said, my voice firm. "Leave before I have to kill you."

"Kill us?" the brunette laughed. "Did you hear that? She's threatening to kill us."

"Well, I do have two guns in my hands," I pointed out.

"But do you know how to use them?" the blonde taunted.

"If you don't leave, you're going to find out," I shot back.

"Well, since we've got guns of our own, I'm not sure how well that's going to work out for you, sweetheart," the brunette said, and I should have just shot them when I'd first seen them. I shouldn't have cared about them being possible lost hikers.

Without a second thought to how this might end or working at another attempt to end this peacefully, I pulled the trigger on both guns, hitting both men simultaneously. However, because the blonde had seen it coming, he moved just in time for me to miss a shot to his head, and that had also given him enough time to pull out his own gun, then aim it my way.

Pain ripped through my chest as he hit his target, the revolver falling from my left hand, but that didn't stop me from unloading an entire clip into the guy, my aim perfect this time. With him dead, I stumbled my way over to the other guy, then grabbed his gun from his waistband, using his own firearm to make sure that he was dead.

As soon as I was satisfied with the bullet holes in each body, I walked into the living room, making it only a few steps before leaning up against the wall, then sliding down, blood oozing from my wound, the lack of eating making me a bit woozy.

Now, while I didn't think that the shot was life-threatening, I didn't have a car, and I didn't want to call an ambulance. I'd have to explain what happened here, and the last thing that I needed was for the police to discover the cellar. Plus, with the whole Cooper Donaldson thing going on, they also didn't need to know that I knew how to shoot to kill.

I glanced over at the kitchen, wondering how I was going to get rid of the two bodies with a bullet stuck in my shoulder, but I also couldn't help but wonder who in the hell Klive was. With these two dead, I couldn't question them, so I had no idea if this was just a random act of burglary, if my cabin was targeted specifically, or if I just had bad fucking luck when it came to men.

Closing my eyes, I let out a shuttered breath, trying to push past the pain, wondering if these two had some friends waiting for them nearby. I had so many unanswered questions, and the only way to get any answers was going to be to find this Klive person and demand them.

Of course, that was only if I didn't bleed out first.