The peace of the music couldn’t dislodge his anger, though. Not today. And the anger was the thing that could break him. Intuitively, he knew who the real evildoers were in all of this. He knew that the focus for his anger should be Christine Baker and Fabian What’s-his-name-the people who started it all-but he found himself reserving his ugliest thoughts for his own father. He was the conduit through which all of this awfulness had flowed. But for him, Thomas would still be blissfully stressed over academics. But for his involvement in this weapons bullshit, things would be normal. If those guys had just managed to kill his dad at the time of the ransom transfer-

He hated himself.

Movement.

He didn’t know if he’d heard it or seen it, but something happened in the tall grass over to his right. The music went away, and he was one hundred percent tuned into reality. Could it have been a snake? A cougar, maybe? They’d found evidence of a big cat up here, and-

The man launched himself with the speed of a lightning bolt, rising out of the grass-out of the ground itself, it seemed-and hitting Thomas hard in the middle, knocking him backward and driving the wind out of his lungs. He tried to yell, but before words could form, a gloved hand attached itself to his mouth, killing the words and threatening to extend the favor to the rest of him.

He arched his back and tried to defend himself when his attacker said, “Thomas, stop.”

The familiarity startled him. He stopped squirming as he tried to place it. No, it couldn’t be.

“It’s Scorpion,” the voice said. Right away, Thomas’s gaze shifted to the man’s eyes-the feature he remembered most from that night. Holy shit, it really was.

A new panic bloomed.

“I’m here to help,” Scorpion said, as if reading his thoughts. “I’m not here to hurt anyone. Well, not you, anyway. Not your family.”

Thomas stopped moving.

“I’m going to take my hand away now, okay?”

He nodded.

True to his promise, the hand lifted. Scorpion smiled. “So, how’ve you been?” he asked, his tone filled with irony.

Thomas’s head whirled. “What the hell,” he said. It was the best he could do.

“Turns out we’ve got more work to do,” Scorpion said. “I had-”

“GUN!” The voice boomed from nowhere-from everywhere. Scorpion prostrated himself on the ground and covered Thomas with his body.

In a horrible flash of realization, Thomas knew exactly what was happening. “No!” he yelled.

But his voice was drowned out by the gunshot.

Chapter Thirty-three

A rifle discharged from the area of the cabin, launching a bullet that skimmed the grass within inches of Jonathan’s back. A millide to the wounded man. He let his M4 fall against its sling and he ripped open a large pocket on his combat vest. He pulled out two large white paper packets and put them on the step.

“Leave him alone!” Julie commanded.

Boxers ignored her.

“He’s going to dress the wound,” Jonathan explained. He recognized the packets as HemCon, a chemical-coated gauze that Jonathan believed was responsible for saving more lives in modern combat than any other technical advancement. You stuff the HemCon into a wound, and the bleeding stops. Just like that.

When Boxers unsheathed his K-Bar knife, Thomas jumped as if to intervene, but then he seemed to remember the last time he saw one of those blades. “They’re okay,” he reassured his mom. “They know what they’re doing.”

Julie shot a withering look to Jonathan. “Who are you?” she demanded.

“Call me Scorpion,” Jonathan said. “My friend is Big Guy.”

“Those aren’t names,” she growled.

Jonathan shrugged. What could he say?

Boxers slipped the blade of his K-Bar into the bloused leg of Stephenson’s trousers and sliced upward, ankle to crotch. The fabric fell away, exposing a perfectly round puncture in the flesh on the inner side of the man’s left leg.

“You could have killed him!” Julie accused.

“Woulda, coulda, shoulda,” Boxers growled. “But didn’t. He’ll be fine.” With the wound exposed, he poked around the rest of the leg and gave a satisfied nod. “Damn, I’m good,” he said. “Bone’s fine. No arterial bleeding.” He winked at Jonathan. “Bullet went just where I put it.”

Thomas’s jaw dropped. “Nobody’s that good a shot.”

Jonathan smirked.

Julie slapped the back of Thomas’s head. “Don’t admire them,” she snapped. “They tried to kill us.”

Boxers laughed.

Julie’s eyes grew hotter.

“All respect, ma’am,” Jonathan said. “When we try to kill, people die. You’re not dead.”

Boxers ripped open a HemCon package. “I ain’t gonna bullshit you,” he said to Stephenson. “This is gonna hurt like hell.” He didn’t wait for a response, moving with skill and purpose to stuff the gauze into the hole made by the bullet.

Stephenson howled in agony. He squirmed and kicked, but there was no refusing Boxers, who held his patient down with his hips and his left arm while he used his right pinkie to cram the HemCon into the wound.

“Stop!” Julie commanded. “You’re hurting him!” She took a step to intervene, but again Thomas was able to stop her.

“Let them do their thing, Mom,” he urged. “They’re the good guys. Really.”

“They’re hurting him!”

“We’re helping him, ma’am,” Jonathan said. “It’ll be over in a few seconds.”

“There,” Boxers said, sitting upright. “We’re done. Only took one pack. Still with us, Steve?”

“It hurts,” Stephenson said.

“Of course it hurts,” Boxers said. “You’ve been shot, for God’s sake. It’s supposed to hurt.” Mister Bedside Manner. “Now try not to move. I need to s other hand. “You can. You should. And take Thomas with you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Thomas objected.

Stephenson faced his son. “This isn’t your fight, Tommy.”

“The hell it’s not.”

Julie’s voice took on a pitiful, pleading tone. “We’ve had enough of this nightmare, Steve. I can’t take anymore.”

Stephenson eyed Jonathan. “We can off-load the truck and the two of them can drive away together.”

Jonathan shrugged.

“I can’t go without you,” Julie whined.

“You have to.”

“I can’t.”

Jonathan interjected, “Where will you go?”

Julie shot him a glare. “This is none of your concern,” she snapped.

“Yet the question remains. Where will you go? You’re a murderer, remember? Sooner or later, you’re going to be recognized. Then what? With your bank accounts frozen, you won’t be able to hire a lawyer. That is, if you even get the chance. You have exactly zero friends and fewer resources past the threshold of that door.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but seemed to have lost the words. “Steve?”

He shrugged. “Think of the evil these people represent. I have to stay.”

Julie’s face showed raw betrayal. “Do you hear yourself? You’re buying into this insanity. You’re going to get yourself killed. I’m going to be a widow. For what?”

“For everything,” Stephenson said.

“We’ll go to the police,” Julie begged. Her voice rose, and her words came faster. “We’ll tell the whole story. Every detail. They’ll have to believe us.”

Jonathan stepped in. “They won’t. They can’t. They’ve got to keep you quiet. There’s plenty of evidence against you for the Caldwell murders, and what they don’t have already, they can manufacture. I’m telling you, Mr. Hughes-”

“Steve.”

“You have no option.”

“What about the video?” Stephenson reasoned. “Won’t that exonerate us?”

Jonathan shrugged. “If I were the prosecutor, I might just use it as evidence of your desperation to get Thomas back. I’d argue that a desperate man wouldn’t hesitate to kill the Caldwells and their nanny as a means to learn the whereabouts of your son.”

“You see?” Julie said, her voice full of hope. “At worst, they’d see a case of justifiable homicide.”