A Pack of Two
The SUV was a tomb of synthetic leather and cold metal, its engine a low growl that vibrated through Killian’s spine. He drove with one hand, the other braced against the dashboard, his knuckles bone-white as he wove through the sparse traffic of Interstate 15. The headlights cut a sharp, white line into the desert dark, but his eyes—still flickering between human and something else—tracked the rearview mirror with the precision of a man who had spent a decade expecting to be hunted.
Cassidy sat in the passenger seat, her body rigid, her hands wrapped around Noah’s small shoulders. The boy was buckled into the back, his face pale, his pupils two dark coins in a sea of white. He hadn’t spoken since the garage. Since the gunfire. Since Killian had lifted him into the back seat like a man handling spun glass, then slammed the door and flattened a pursuing mercenary with the butt of Cole’s rifle.
Cole was in the rearmost row, a bolt-action tactical rifle balanced across his knees. The man’s breathing was controlled, metronomic, his eyes scanning the night through the tinted glass. Three magazines of silver-tipped rounds sat in a pouch on his thigh. He had not said a word in twelve minutes.
The safehouse coordinates glowed on the GPS. Seventeen miles out. Three districts past the industrial sector, into the old rail yards where the city forgot to update its streetlights.
Noah’s voice broke the silence.
“Are you my daddy?”
The words hit the cabin like a stone dropped into still water. Cassidy’s breath caught. She turned, her mouth opening, but nothing came out. The question hung in the air, raw and unpolished, the kind of question only an eight-year-old could ask without calculation.
Killian’s hands tightened on the wheel. The SUV drifted a half-inch before he corrected it. His jaw worked, but he didn’t speak.
Cassidy looked at him. Her eyes were wet, but her voice was steel. “Killian. He deserves an answer.”
A red dot flickered across the windshield.
“Contact,” Cole said, flat and immediate.
Killian’s skull rotated, his gaze snapping to the left. A black helicopter hovered low over the desert scrub, its searchlight a blade cutting through the dark. The red dot returned, tracking across the hood, and then the first round punched through the rear window.
The glass exploded inward in a shower of safety fragments. Cole was already moving, his shoulder pressed into the doorframe, the rifle up and spitting fire. The report was a concussive slap inside the cabin, and Noah screamed—not a loud, dramatic sound, but a thin, animal whimper that cut straight through Killian’s chest.
“Get down!” Killian roared, shoving Cassidy’s head below the dash. He yanked the wheel hard right, the SUV tilting onto two wheels for a gut-wrenching second before the tires bit into the asphalt and they surged forward. Another round sparked off the reinforced side panel. The helicopter’s rotors thrummed louder, closer.
Cole fired twice. The first round sparked off the skid. The second punched through the pilot’s glass. The helicopter wobbled, its searchlight spinning wildly, and then it banked hard into the dark, trailing a plume of smoke.
“They’ll call another bird in three minutes,” Cole said, ejecting a spent magazine with a metallic clatter. “We don’t have three minutes.”
Killian’s eyes flicked to the GPS. Eleven miles. The safehouse sat in a repurposed rail depot, a concrete fortress with steel shutters and a satellite dish disguised as a water tower. It had a garage, a Faraday cage, and a single landline routed through three proxies. If they made it there, they could hold for seventy-two hours before extraction.
If.
“There’s a secondary road two miles ahead,” Cassidy said, her voice strained but clear. She was reading the map on the SUV’s console, her finger tracing a thin gray line. “Dirt access. Runs parallel to the tracks, ends at the depot’s back gate.”
Killian looked at her. “You memorized the map?”
“I memorized your entire file, Killian. I had to know what I was running from.” She met his gaze, and for a flicker of a second, the years fell away. She was still the woman who had threaded her fingers through his on a rooftop under a hunter’s moon. The woman who had left without a note, because leaving was the only way to keep him alive.
He looked away first.
The turn came up fast. Killian cut the wheel, and the SUV launched off the asphalt onto a gravel track that rattled the chassis like a snare drum. Dust billowed behind them, a thick brown curtain that blotted out the headlights of any pursuer. The helicopter’s distant rotors faded, then returned, a low thrum that pressed against the roof of the skull.
Noah was crying now. Silent tears, his face pressed into Cassidy’s arm.
“He’s scared,” Cassidy said.
“We’re all scared,” Killian replied, but his voice cracked on the last syllable. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Noah’s eyes met his. The boy’s pupils were rimmed with gold.
The safehouse materialized out of the dark like a monolith. A concrete cube, two stories, with barred windows and a garage door that looked like it could stop a truck. Killian mashed the remote clipped to the visor, and the door began to roll up with a grinding whine.
Too slow.
The helicopter crested the ridge behind them, its searchlight flooding the interior of the SUV with white, merciless light.
“Go, go, go!” Cole shouted, shouldering the door open. He planted a foot on the running board, rifle braced against the roof, and fired a controlled burst at the approaching bird. Rounds sparked off the cowling. The light wavered.
Killian punched the gas. The SUV screamed forward, tires spitting gravel, and they plunged into the garage just as the door clattered shut behind them. The interior lights flickered on, cold and fluorescent, as the engine died and silence rushed in to fill the void.
For a long moment, no one moved.
Then Noah’s small voice, barely a whisper: “The bad men are still out there. Right?”
Killian unbuckled his seatbelt. He turned, his massive frame twisting in the driver’s seat, and looked at his son. The boy had his mother’s chin, his mother’s nose, but the eyes were all Killian. The same gold rim. The same stubborn set of the brow.
“Yes,” Killian said, his voice low. “But they can’t get in here.”
Noah blinked. “Will you stay?”
Cassidy’s breath caught. She watched Killian’s throat work, watched him wrestle with the shape of the answer.
“Yeah,” he said, the word rough, scraped raw. “I’ll stay.”
The satellite radio crackled to life.
The voice that came through was cultured, precise, the kind of voice that ordered executions between sips of scotch. Beckett Sterling. The heir. The man who had sent the helicopter, the mercenaries, the silver-tipped rounds.
“Mr. Winslow. We have the location of your pack’s primary bank vault. Surrender the boy’s genetic markers tonight, or I void all your accounts by dawn. Tick-tock.”