Page 137 of Wild Sanctuary

She snorts, pulling her fair hair back into a messy knot at the nape of her neck. “I’ve been waiting six years for you two to stop being idiots. No chance in hell I’m sitting in a truck while someone tries to take it away from you.”

“June.”

“Daisy.”

It’s one word, but it says everything, so I don’t even try arguing with her, because every second I spend on it is a second I’m not closing the distance to Daisy.

I reach behind the seat and pull the rifle out of the rack.

The box of shells is under the driver’s seat, so I grab it, load the magazine, and chamber a round. Then I reach back under, coming out with my dad’s old Colt, and check the cylinder, nodding sharply when I find six in the wheel.

I hold it out to June, grip first, and she takes it without a word, smoothly tucking it into the back of her waistband under her shirt. Her hands are steady, her face is set.

The sound of an engine pulls my attention, and Colt’s truck rolls up quietly along the fence line, engine cut before he’s fully stopped. Colt swings out of the cab, and Rhett steps out of the passenger side as Miguel and Toby drop out of the bed with rifles already in their hands.

Rhett is across the grass to me before Colt makes it halfway. “Talk.”

“Marcus in the house. Stan with him, or on the way, driving an older model black F-150, rusted out. Dave was at the equipment barn this mornin’. Daisy inside, my bet’s on the kitchen. Pasture side’s our cleanest approach.”

He nods once before his eyes move across the five of us, the space between us, and the line of the house through the trees, and I can see him running a map internally.

“Colt and I take the back. Mud room door. Wyatt, take the east side. Porch.”

“Copy that.”

“Miguel, Toby. Wide west. Cover the drive. Either tries to run for it, stop them. Non-lethal if you can.”

“Understood.”

Rhett’s eyes land on June. “And if you’re gonna insist on comin’, you’re with me.”

June opens her mouth, closes it just as fast, then nods.

“We go quiet.” Rhett’s gaze shifts to each of us individually. “If shots fire before we’re there, we go loud and we go fast. Safeties off now, and stay on your line. Do not get ahead of your line, you hear me?”

A low murmur of assent filters through the group.

“And breathe,” he adds, looking at me when he says it.

Then we move.

The six of us cross the south pasture at a steady, low walk, angling for the cottonwood break that separates the main house from the hay barn. Colt and Rhett pull ahead on the left flank with June between them while Miguel and Toby peel right toward the drive.

I take the east side alone, my eyes returning repeatedly to the porch door, which is the fastest route to the kitchen.

The only sound I can hear is my own breathing and the pounding of my heartbeat.

I’m around a hundred and fifty yards from the house when the first gunshot rings out, a single crack, from somewhere behind the house near the equipment barn.

Every one of us freezes for the length of one heartbeat.

Then another gunshot, followed by Daisy’s scream. Every thought in my head disappears except one.

Get to her.

I break into a dead run. I hear Rhett behind me, and Colt behind him, and someone shouts something that I couldn’t give less of a fuck about because Daisy is screaming and she’s still alive, and as long as she’s still alive, I can get to her.

My boots eat the grass, and the cottonwoods blur past, and I cover a hundred yards in the time it takes to draw breath.