Mason's POV
The truck's engine screamed.
Mason pushed the old pedal to the floor. The white lines on the road blurred into one solid streak. Trees became dark walls flying past his windows. His mind was clear now. Empty of grief. Full of mission.
Sheriff's station. Eight miles.
Grant's terrified whisper played on a loop in his head. They're not police.
His hands were steady on the wheel. His breathing was even. This was a different kind of battlefield. Pavement instead of sand. Pine trees instead of palm trees. But the rules were the same. Move fast. Get to the objective. Protect the asset.
The asset was Grant. And whatever "real file" he had.
A red traffic light glowed up ahead. Mason didn't slow down. He checked the crossing street—empty and shot through the intersection. The truck rattled in protest.
Five miles.
He thought about Tessa's boots. He'd seen them this morning, sitting clean and dry by the back door. He hadn't thought much about it then. Now it was a giant, flashing sign in his mind. LIE.
If she was hiking in the muddy woods, her boots would be dirty. Victor Sterling's story was already falling apart. And the sheriff had proof.
Two miles.
The town's few streetlights came into view. Everything was closed. Dark. The sheriff's station was a small, brick building at the end of Main Street. Its blue light was always on. Tonight, it looked like a trap.
Mason killed his headlights a block away and rolled to a quiet stop behind a dumpster. He got out. The cold air hit him again. He ignored it.
He moved on foot. He stuck to the shadows close to the buildings. His body remembered how to do this. Silent steps. Pauses to listen. He was a ghost.
He saw the black SUV. It was parked right in front of the station's double doors. Big. Shiny. It didn't belong here.
The station's front window was lit up. He could see the empty front desk. No one sitting there. That was wrong. There was always a deputy on duty.
Mason circled around to the back. There was a metal door for deliveries. It was usually locked. He tried the handle. It turned.
Stupid, he thought. They were in such a hurry, they didn't lock their back door.
He slipped inside. He was in a short hallway. He could hear voices. Men talking. Not Grant. Their voices were hard. Confident.
"Where is it, Sheriff? You called someone. Who was it?"
Grant's voice answered, shaky but trying to sound tough. "I didn't call anyone. It was a wrong number. The file is in the evidence room. Where it's supposed to be."
A thud. A grunt of pain. Someone had hit him.
Mason's anger burned hot, but he kept it locked down. Emotion got you killed. He peeked around the corner.
The main office area. Grant was in his chair behind his desk. His lip was bleeding. Two men in dark tactical pants and black jackets stood over him. They were big. They had the look of former military who'd traded their honor for a fat paycheck. Private security. Mercenaries.
One of them, a guy with a shaved head, leaned on the desk. "We know you copied the photos. The digital log shows you accessed the file after hours. Where's the copy?"
"I deleted it," Grant said.
"You're lying."
The second man, younger with a scar by his eye, started opening desk drawers. He dumped papers on the floor.
Mason scanned the room. One door behind Grant. Probably to a private office or the evidence room. The men were between him and Grant. The front door was to his left.
He needed a distraction. Something loud.
His eyes landed on the fire alarm on the wall by the front door. A small, red box with a glass cover.
He bent down and picked up a loose pen from the floor. He weighed it in his hand. He took a breath. Then he stepped into the open.
"Hey," Mason said.
Both men spun around. Their hands went to their belts, where guns were holstered.
Mason didn't give them time to draw. He threw the pen. It wasn't at them. It was a fast, hard pitch at the red fire alarm box across the room.
CRACK.
The glass front shattered. The pen hit the button inside.
A deafening, electric bell erupted. CLANG-CLANG-CLANG! Lights on the alarm flashed bright white.
The two men flinched, surprised by the sudden noise and light. It was only a second. But a second was all Mason needed.
He closed the distance. The shaved-head man was pulling his gun. Mason grabbed his wrist and twisted, hard. The man yelled. The gun clattered to the floor. Mason drove his elbow into the man's throat. He crumpled, gagging.
The second man, Scarface, had his gun out. He aimed.
Mason didn't stop moving. He dropped low, sweeping his leg out. His boot hooked the man's ankles. Scarface fell backward, his head hitting the edge of the desk with a sick thud. He went still.
The alarm kept blaring. CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!
Grant stared, his mouth open, blood on his chin.
Mason walked over, reached up, and yanked a wire out of the alarm box. The noise stopped. The sudden silence was almost as loud.
"The file," Mason said. No hello. No 'are you okay?'
Grant blinked. He fumbled with a key from his pocket and unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk. He pulled out a thick manila folder. His hands were shaking.
"This is it. The real report. The one Sterling's lawyers were supposed to 'lose'. The responding deputy was honest. He took pictures. Lots of pictures."
Mason took the folder. He opened it. The top photo was of the woods. A beautiful, snowy ridge. Then the next photo. A close-up of the ground. Red on white snow. A lot of red.
His stomach turned to stone. He forced himself to look. To see. This was the truth. He owed Tessa this much.
It wasn't a hunting rifle wound. The pattern was all wrong. This was closer. Smaller.
"A handgun," Mason said, his voice flat.
Grant nodded, wiping his lip. "At close range. Deputy found a 9mm shell casing ten feet from the… ten feet away. It was logged, and then the order came from above to call it a 'rifle accident during a wild game drive.' To make it look like she wandered into the line of fire."
Mason looked at the next photo. It was a picture of an evidence bag. Inside was a single, elegant earring. A silver dove. Tessa's favorite. She was wearing it in the photo in his pocket.
"It was found near her," Grant said softly. "It was broken. Like it was ripped off."
Mason saw it then. Not an accident. A murder. A struggle. He closed the folder. He couldn't look anymore. Not here.
"We have to go," Mason said. "More will come."
As if on cue, a voice crackled from the radio on the fallen guard's belt. "Team Two, status report. Is the package retrieved? Over."
Mason moved fast. He grabbed both men by their jackets and dragged them into the small evidence room. He shut the door. He took their radios and their guns. He handed one gun to Grant.
"Can you use this?"
Grant looked at it like it was a snake. "I… qualify at the range once a year."
"Good enough." Mason went to the front window and peered out. The street was still empty. But it wouldn't be for long. "We go out the back. Run to my truck. It's behind the dumpster one block over."
"Where are we going?" Grant asked, his voice full of fear.
"Somewhere they won't look. Move."
They ran out the back door into the cold night. They stuck to the side of the building. Mason listened. No sirens yet. No new engines.
They were halfway down the block when headlights turned onto Main Street behind them. Not police lights. Two more pairs of lights. SUVs, moving fast toward the station.
"Run!" Mason hissed.
They sprinted. Grant was slow, clumsy. Mason had to pull him along. They dove behind the dumpster just as the SUVs skidded to a stop in front of the sheriff's office. Men poured out.
Mason's truck was right there. He shoved Grant toward the passenger side. "Get in. Get down."
He jumped in the driver's side, started the engine, and didn't turn on the lights. He rolled away from the dumpster, slow and quiet, using the dark alley behind the buildings.
He could hear shouting from the station. They'd found their men.
He turned a corner, then another. He flicked his lights on when they were three blocks away, driving like a normal person.
"Where are we going?" Grant asked again, peeking up from the floor.
"My place," Mason said. "It's the last place they'll expect you to go."
They drove in silence for a minute. Grant breathed heavily. "Thank you. They… they were going to kill me. For the file."
Mason didn't answer. His eyes kept checking the mirrors. Watching for headlights that followed. The street was dark and empty behind them.
He pulled into his own driveway ten minutes later. The house was dark. Empty. It wasn't a home anymore. It was a bunker.
"Inside," Mason said.
They went in through the kitchen door. Mason turned on a small light over the stove. He put the thick manila folder on the kitchen table. It looked evil sitting there on the clean wood.
Grant sat down, holding his ribs where he'd been hit. "What now?"
"Now we look at everything," Mason said. He opened the folder again. He spread the photos out. The snowy ridge. The red snow. The broken earring. He read the deputy's notes, written in neat handwriting.
Victim found face-down. No rifle nearby. Footprints indicate struggle near edge of ridge. Victim's boots are clean, no mud or snow buildup. Inconsistent with hiking story from Mr. Sterling.
Mason picked up the last photo in the stack. It was different. It wasn't of the ridge. It was a grainy, zoomed-in picture. It showed a man. He was standing on a balcony overlooking the ridge. The photo was taken from far away, through trees. The man was wearing a long, expensive coat. He was holding a small, dark object in his hand.
A handgun.
The man's face was blurry, but Mason knew the posture. The arrogant tilt of the head. It was Victor Sterling.
And he wasn't holding the gun like he'd just found it. He was holding it like he'd just used it.
Mason's blood went cold. This was it. The proof. A photo placing Victor at the murder scene with the murder weapon.
"This is gold," Grant whispered, seeing it. "This can put him away!"
Mason stared at the photo. It was too perfect. A billionaire like Sterling, smart enough to poison land and cover up a murder, stupid enough to stand in the open with the gun right after shooting someone?
Something was wrong.
He looked closer at the grainy image. Victor was looking to his left. He wasn't looking at the ridge where Tessa fell. He was looking at someone, or something, just out of the frame. He wasn't holding the gun in surprise or shock. He was almost… offering it.
Like he was handing it to someone.
Mason's head snapped up. He looked at Grant. The sheriff was staring at the photo with wide, hopeful eyes.
"Who took this picture?" Mason asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
"The deputy," Grant said. "He said he heard the shot, was responding, and saw Sterling from a distance. He used his long-lens camera."
"Did he see Sterling fire the gun?"
"No, he said by the time he got his camera, the shot had already happened. He just saw him with it."
Mason's mind raced. A setup. It felt like a setup. What if Victor wasn't the one who pulled the trigger? What if he was just holding the gun for the real killer? A fall guy in his own crime? That didn't make sense.
Unless the real killer was someone Victor wanted to protect even more than himself.
The room was silent. The clock on the stove ticked.
Then, a new sound.
Tap. Tap-tap.
It was soft. It came from the front of the house.
The living room window.
Mason's eyes met Grant's. Both men froze.
Tap-tap.
Someone was outside. Throwing small pebbles at the window.
Mason stood up slowly. He motioned for Grant to be quiet. He picked up the gun from the table and moved to the edge of the kitchen doorway. He peered into the dark living room.
The streetlight outside cast a faint glow. He could see the silhouette of a person standing on his front lawn. A single person. Not an army.
The person waved an arm, trying to see inside.
Then a woman's voice, low and urgent, called out.
"Mason? Mason, are you in there? It's Lisa. Tessa's sister. Please, you have to talk to me! I know what happened to her!"
Mason's breath caught. Lisa. Tessa's younger sister. She lived in the city. What was she doing here, in the middle of the night, throwing rocks at his window?
Grant crept up behind him. "Is that…?"
"Stay here," Mason said. He kept the gun down but ready. He walked to the front door and unlocked it slowly.
He opened it just a crack.
Lisa stood there on the porch, her face pale and streaked with tears. She looked like a ghost of Tessa. She hugged herself against the cold.
"Mason," she sobbed. "Thank God. I had to come. I couldn't tell you on the phone. Dad… he…"
She swallowed a cry.
"What about your father?" Mason asked, his voice hard. Senator Conrad Sterling. Tessa's dad.
Lisa looked over her shoulder, terrified, like she was being chased. She leaned close, her whisper filled with pure horror.
"Dad just called me. He said Victor didn't kill Tessa. He said… he said he was there. He saw the whole thing. Mason… he said it was an accident, but…"
She was shaking too hard to finish.
Mason pulled the door open. "But what, Lisa?"
She looked into his eyes, her own full of a terrible, painful truth.
"He said the gun went off in Victor's hand. But he didn't say Victor was aiming at an animal."
She took a ragged breath.
"He said Victor was aiming at Tessa. Because she found his secret. And Dad… Dad told him to do it."
Mason felt the world drop out from under him. The senator. Her own father. He didn't just cover it up.
He ordered it.
Mason saved Grant and got the evidence file.
shocking revelation from Tessa's sister about her father's involvement.