Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 60360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 60360 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 302(@200wpm)___ 241(@250wpm)___ 201(@300wpm)
Caleb hesitated, but not because he wasn’t sure of his answer. He seemed genuinely surprised—shocked—by the question. “No,” he said. “No! God, Izzy, I don’t think that. You’d never do that. It’s not in you to do something like that.”
“That’s right!” she shot back. “I would never do that because I might be related to her, but I’m not her! Everything good in me I got from Pop and everything good in you came from your mom. And those two, my Pop and your mom, they’re stronger, more important, than the shit heels who should’ve loved us but didn’t.”
Caleb shook his head. “I don’t know, Izzy. I don’t know. Being around me, being with me, it’s a bad idea.”
“Try and make me leave again. See what happens.”
Before he could reply, the cell phone on the counter rang. Caleb turned and picked it up, studying the screen. “It’s Prior,” he told her.
Izzy listened to Caleb’s part of the call and watched him scribble down directions, presumably to the cabin where Jeter and Jace Paul were holed up.
Caleb disconnected the call and set the phone down. “We need to get ready,” he told her, moving past her and toward the bedroom.
Izzy stood in the kitchen, watching him walk away.
“This isn’t over, Caleb,” she called after him. “The conversation or the relationship.”
All she heard was the sound of the bedroom door closing on her.
Chapter 29
Caleb followed his own hastily scribbled directions beyond the city limits and north on 90 to the edge of the Black Hills National Forest, just a few scant miles from the Wyoming border. He followed an unpaved road just outside the Spearfish city limits, past scrub bushes and trees yellowing in the late autumn sun. He spotted Tex’s Hummer and Shooter’s large diesel truck parked off the not-so-beaten path. He nosed the car off the road next to Shooter and killed the engine. Shooter, Easy, and Tex were standing behind the Hummer, waiting for them to arrive.
Izzy had been remarkably quiet in the car, surprising since the last thing she’d said to him was that she wasn’t done talking. He was grateful for the silence since he didn’t know what to say anyway. Nothing with Izzy was ground he’d covered before. He felt set adrift without a map or a compass and he knew he couldn’t necessarily trust his instincts. Without giving her so much as a glance, he threw open the Charger’s driver side door and got out. She followed.
Shooter nodded to him. “The cabin’s up on that ridge, just over the crest.”
Caleb turned and shielded his eyes to assess the location. The trees provided a small bit of cover but not much due to the late season. He couldn’t see the cabin and that meant the cabin’s occupants couldn’t see them, either. At least they had one thing going for them. A shadow emerged from behind two trees just to his left. Hawk Red Cloud stepped out and approached the group. The large Sioux scout was neither out of breath nor apparently concerned with the situation. “We’ve got two entrances, front and back, minus the windows. There are two on each side. I make out two men, both inside. One of the rear windows is covered with a sheet, though. My guess is, if they still have the girl, that’s where she is. We’re going to have to go in silent,” he told them. “Unless they change position while we’re gearing up.”
“Why?” Shooter asked, unsnapping a large, rectangular case.
“Because one of them is in the kitchen, next to the door of that back room. We go in hot and he makes for that door, well, there might not be anyone left to save.”
Shooter nodded, accepting the man’s assessment. “Alright. We go in silent, and secure the two of them immediately.”
Tex opened the back of the Hummer and pulled a large duffel bag to the edge of the cargo hold. He unzipped it and began handing out wireless earpieces. Once attached, each man strapped on a bulletproof vest. Caleb turned while adjusting his to see that Izzy had opened the trunk of the Charger and pulled out her own vest. She pulled it on over her head and velcroed it tightly around herself.
Shooter looked at Caleb and then jerked his chin at Izzy, who was racking the slide of a Mossberg as she approached them. “Where’s she going to be?” he asked Caleb.
If Izzy felt slighted by the question, she didn’t show it. It wasn’t an insult, Caleb knew. Shooter didn’t know her, had never been in the field with her. Caleb hadn’t really, either. What Shooter was really asking for was Caleb’s opinion about her place on the team: go in with them, or wait here. Izzy had always been cool under pressure. Though they’d never been on a team together, she’d done a hell of a lot of takedowns—more than Caleb had, honestly. She knew the game well enough and she for damn sure understood what was at stake, it was the reason she’d stalked her prey all this way and stayed in the shadows of Rapid City while she searched.