Page 60 of Christmas Harbor Secrets
“Noted,” Blake murmured, and there was a dark admiration in it that made Rone want to hit him.
A whisper of cloth against wood from the doorway they hadn’t used—the one that led to the stairs. Then a tiny chime, so faint it might have been an insect.
Rone didn’t think. He ripped off his NV, grabbed Isobel around the waist, rolled, and the thing on the floor between the boards hissed white and angry—flash, not bang—filling the room with magnesium day.
He closed his eyes on reflex, and the world went light even through lids. Heat licked. Isobel’s breath hit his throat, hot and fast. Blake cursed, somewhere to their left. The kid to the south swore like he’d swallowed a spark.
Rone’s vision came back in chunks. The first thing he saw when the world stopped melting was a line of red dots sliding across the back wall, then dancing, searching.
Lasers.
Not one.
Three.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The world snappedopen around Isobel, shards of noise and light colliding with the black. Rone dragged her from the building, and they tumbled; Isobel’s cheek hit dirt, breath trapped under Rone’s weight as another suppressed shot cracked through the air. Splinters showered her hair. She didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath until he rolled, dragging her behind the mangroves. His arm locked around her shoulders, solid and unyielding, his heartbeat slamming against her back.
For a moment, all she could hear was that—his heart, the rasp of his breathing, the faint mechanical click of distant rifles resetting.
A dog’s growl tore through the night. Not close but deeper in the trees. Echo. Alive.
She blinked grit from her lashes, the clearing dissolving into flickers of moonlight and shadow. Blake’s men shifted positions, forming a half circle toward the ranger station. The glow of a laser sight swept low across the sand before vanishing again.
Isobel’s body was trembling, but not from fear. The kind of trembling that comes from holding still when every instinctscreamed to move. To run. To reach for her father, or for the dog, or for anything that might anchor her to something.
Shade’s voice came again, disembodied, almost playful through the radio’s static. “Didn’t your daddy teach you better than to come here without knocking?”
Her throat closed. The sound of that voice was too calm, too measured—someone who already believed he’d won.
Rone’s hand closed around hers, grounding her. “Stay low,” he whispered.
She nodded, swallowing hard. Her mouth tasted like salt and fear.
From the tree line to the west came a slow crunch of boots on dry leaves. More than one pair. The rhythm was deliberate. Not hunting—they were herding.
“Blake,” she hissed, “they’re circling?—”
“I see them.” His silhouette lifted a hand signal, crisp and clean. His men adjusted their angles, one dropping to a knee, the other sighting through the NVG scope.
A faint metallic click answered from the ranger station porch—the distinct, unmistakable sound of a safety flipping off.
Everything in her stilled. Even the crickets stopped.
Rone tensed beside her. She felt it ripple through him—a controlled violence coiling beneath his calm. He was measuring distance, sound, timing. It was the same precision he’d had when he’d saved her life the first time. Only this time, the odds were worse.
“On my mark,” Blake murmured into his mic, voice low enough she barely caught it. “We move south through the cut. No sound. No light.”
A shot split the night. Not from the porch this time—from the north woods. A scream followed, short and sharp, ending in a wet thud.
The air filled with the hiss of radios coming alive. Muffled orders, movement.
“They’re flanking,” Rone breathed. “Laurel’s tightening the net.”
She caught the flicker of red dots dancing across the brush ahead—three, maybe four—before Rone pulled her up and whispered, “Move.”
They plunged into the mangroves, crouched low, branches whipping against their shoulders. The smell of decay was thick enough to taste. Somewhere behind them, automatic fire chewed through the night, bullets clipping branches with the precision of fate.
