Three

Sabrina stepped out onto the porch and looked at her watch. It was ten minutes to one o’clock. By 1:05, their canyon would be crawling with only God knew what. Pressing the blue button on the top of her watch, she watched the thick stand of trees to her left for movement.

They’d done so many drills. When they’d first gotten here, it was once a day. They’d let the kids scatter, encouraging them to go explore their new home only to sound the alarm and time how long it took them to make it back, each time pushing them to move faster and faster. They set a perimeter—an invisible barrier deciding how far they could wander from the house. The quicker they were, the farther they could go. As soon as Alex and Christina could cover a half mile in under five minutes, the drills were cut down to once a week.

Nearly a year later, with nothing but peace and solitude in between, the drills had tapered off into an occasional happening. Never more than once a month. They’d had their obligatory drill two days ago.

Christina burst through the trees with Alex in tow. She didn’t look alarmed. She looked annoyed. That changed as soon as their eyes met across the yard. Reaching behind her, she said something to Alex and doubled her pace, pulling him along. Behind them both was Avasa, alert and focused on the pair in front of her.

The children stopped on the steps directly below, tapping the red buttons on the side of their watches to stop the vibrations they emitted. It’d taken them less than two minutes to respond.

“Inside,” Sabrina said, and they moved without asking questions. Sabrina followed them through the door to find Michael had emptied nearly the entire contents of the weapons cabinet onto the kitchen table. The plate of grilled cheese lay broken on the floor, cold sandwiches scattered across the bare wood. Avasa didn’t even look at them.

“If I’m not down in thirty minutes, close it up without me,” he said, holding her TAC-50 in one hand and a stack of ammo boxes in the other. The alarm was still sounding, the strobes still flashing. “Sabrina.” His voice whipped out and grabbed her, shook her. She didn’t answer—she just took the rifle and ammo he held out to her without looking him in the eye.

Sabrina slung the strap of the rifle over her shoulder. “Let’s go,” she said, moving across the room and through the doorway that led to the rest of the house, Christina and Alex following while Avasa stayed behind.

“You didn’t say good-bye.”

She kept moving. “What?” she said, crossing the living room toward the bedroom she shared with Michael.

“To him,” Christina said, her tone crowded with panic. “To Michael—you didn’t say good-bye.”

She skirted the bed they shared, refusing to even look at it as she moved toward the closet. She pushed the door wide and ushered them in. It was the kind of closet most women dreamed about. One hundred fifty square feet of shelves, racks, and drawers, all stuffed with clothes and shoes she’d never wear. In its center was a storage island. Feeling along the wooden lip of the waist-high countertop, Sabrina dragged her fingertips until she hit a knot in the wood. She pushed it and the flat top popped open to reveal a motorized lift. “Let’s go, we’re out of time,” she said, shooting a hurried glance at Christina. As if on cue, steel security barriers began to lower over the windows. They were connected—once the lift was activated, the barriers were deployed, leaving only a few vantage points unsecured. Soon the house would be on complete lockdown.

“Christina.”

The girl stuck her chin out, pretending the metallic screech of those barriers and what they meant didn’t scare her. “You didn’t say—”

“Because I’m not leaving him.” She swiped a hand over her face. “I won’t … do you understand?” No time—there was no time left. “I can’t. Now, please—”

The girl threw her leg over the side of the lift and boosted herself into its center before holding her hand out to Alex. “What do I do?”

Relief flooded her system. Fifty feet below was a fifteen-­hundred-square-foot bomb-proof bunker equipped with enough water and supplies to carry eight people through nearly three months of hiding. “Do exactly what I showed you. As soon as the lift stops, get into the bunker and shut the door. Set the timer for thirty minutes—if Michael or I don’t come back for you, it’ll activate on its own.” Without her or Michael to enter the deactivation code, it wouldn’t open for six weeks, no matter what. “If the lift is activated by anyone but us before the door is secured, hit the green button on the right. It’ll override the timer.”

The lift began its descent, startling the girl in front of her. “I’m scared,” she said, her dark eyes yanked wide, making her look years younger than she actually was. She clung to Alex, who stood beside her. Sabrina caught his gaze and he let her hold it, like he was showing her something. He didn’t look scared or empty. He looked determined.

“Don’t be,” she said, peering over the side of the lift to watch as they disappeared down the shaft. “Michael and I won’t let anything happen to either of you. I promise.”

–––––

As soon as the lift hit the bottom, she lowered the lid to the storage island and set the lock before laying the TAC-50 across it. Tearing open the boxes of ammo Michael had handed her, she dumped them into her cargo pockets before heading back the way she’d come. Stopping in the doorway, she found Michael standing at the back door—feet still bare, his own TAC-50 positioned against his shoulder, its barrel aimed out the room’s only unprotected window, toward the canyon’s only road.

“Goddamn it, Sabrina.” He said it without turning to look at her. His tone told her exactly how angry he was and that he was totally unsurprised she’d deviated from the plan he’d formulated months ago.

“I love you too,” she said, watching his shoulders slump slightly at her answer. She couldn’t help but smile a bit as she moved across the kitchen to stand beside him. “Any movement?”

He didn’t answer so she pulled the rifle off her back and pressed it against her own shoulder before fitting her eye against the scope. In the distance she saw a truck, its dull green hood barely clearing the narrow canyon pass. It crawled along the dirt path leading to their house.

“Whoever it is, if they’re here to kill us, they’re sure takin’ their sweet Jesus time about it,” she said, lowering the rifle to wedge the stock under her arm. She popped the magazine from the bottom of the rifle. “Could be a diversion for an aerial assault,” she said, reaching into her pocket for a handful of .50-cals and began feeding them into the magazine. “What do you think?”

“I think that if we live through this, I just might kill you,” he said quietly, eye still pressed to the scope. “I think I love you so much it scares me.” He finally looked at her, the gray of his eyes gone almost completely black with anger. “I think that if something happens to you, it’ll probably be the end of me.”

“Well, which is it?” She refit the magazine to the bottom of the rifle, clicking it in place. “Do you love me or want to kill me?”

“Both. Almost always, both.” He shot her a smirk before refitting the scope to his eye. “Take high ground. If they decide to rappel in from the cliffs, pick off as many as you can before they hit the bottom of the canyon.”

She leaned into him, kissing the hard line of his mouth. She pulled back, ready to go but he snagged onto her shirt and held her for a moment, looking her in the eye before letting her go. He opened his mouth to say something but she cut him off before he could get it out. She wasn’t ready to say good-bye to him. She wasn’t ready to hear it either.

“I want pancakes for dinner,” she said, giving him a wink before turning to head upstairs to the loft.

“Wait.”

When she looked back at him, his posture had changed, his spine less rigid. With a final glance through the scope, he dropped the TAC from his shoulder and reached for the door.

Her bravado left her, shoved aside by the kind of choking panic that could kill you if you let it. “Don’t go—”

Her words fell on deaf ears as he stepped out onto the porch. She followed, moving to stand beside him just as the faded pickup truck rounded a bend in the river, crossing over a wood and stone bridge loaded with enough C-4 to punch a hole in the ground the size of Rhode Island. Instead of detonating the explosives, Michael let the truck pass over it.

Seeing them, the driver picked up speed. “Do you know who it is?” she said just as the driver of the truck pulled up less than ten yards from where they stood.

The driver’s door popped open and a dusty boot stepped out, followed by two hands held aloft and a black cowboy hat. “I’m not armed,” the driver said loudly, clearing the truck door to stand near the hood. “You remember me, boy?”

Beside her, Michael chuffed out a bark of laughter. “Kind of hard to forget you, Senator.”

Senator. Sabrina looked hard at the man in front of her. Older, for sure, but almost unrecognizable behind the hat and sunglasses he wore. She’d only seen him on television but Michael had met him in person—the day he’d been asked to find and rescue the politician’s grandson, Leo.

Senator Maddox laughed, “Playin’ dead has a way of erasing a person’s memory. Wasn’t even sure I’d make it once I breached the pass.”

Michael made a sound in the back of his throat, readjusting the rifle cradled in his arms. “Almost didn’t,” he said, shooting a hard look at the truck parked in front of their house. “Nice ride.”

“She don’t look like much but she gets the job done.” Maddox slapped the pickup’s dull green hood and grinned. “How’d the winter treat you?”

“We’re still here,” Michael said, his eyes scanning the cliffs that towered over them. “Speaking of here … what can I do for you, Senator?”

Maddox chuckled. “I forgot how much you love small talk,” he said. “May I?” He tilted his hat toward the cab of his truck.

“Sure.” Michael’s tone was easy but between them she heard the distinct click of him flipping the safety off on the firearm he held.

The senator must’ve recognized how thin his welcome was being worn because he reached a slow hand into the cab of his truck, pulling out something bulky and black. A satellite phone. Wedged in between the phone and Maddox’s fingers was a large manila envelope. Holding both out, he reached up with his free hand, peeling off his sunglasses to reveal a pair of dark eyes, razor sharp and aimed straight at her.

“Little lady, you have a phone call.”