“Take Him, Not Me” “Take him, not me!”

The smell of gunpowder and ozone filled the mahogany study as glass shattered and wood splinters rained down from the upper walls.

Under the desk, Oliver was shaking so violently Luke could feel the boy’s heart hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird. Maddie was crying silently, her teeth clamped down on her lower lip so hard blood trickled down her chin, her hands wrapped around her brother’s waist.

“Luke...” Maddie whimpered, her voice buried under the deafening blasts of gunfire outside. “I’m scared!”

Luke looked into her eyes. He saw the exact same terror he had seen two years ago in his own son’s eyes before the car went over the bridge. Back then, he had been helpless. Back then, the ice had taken everything he loved in a fraction of a second.

Not today.

“Maddie, look at me,” Luke ordered, his voice steady as iron, cutting right through the panic. “Look at me right now.”

She met his eyes, her brown pupils wide with terror.

“I am not letting anyone hurt you,” Luke said, his voice brimming with a quiet, absolute fury. “Do you hear me? Nobody touches you or Ollie while I’m breathing.”

He reached into his pocket, pulled out the heavy brass key to his truck, and pressed it into Maddie’s hand.

“Jim’s house has an underground storm cellar accessed through the pantry,” Luke whispered hurriedly. “Agent Lin is going to take you and Ollie down there right now. You hold onto Ollie, and you don't let go until I come open that door. Got it?”

Maddie nodded fiercely, wiping the blood from her lip. “Got it.”

Agent Lin crawled across the floor, her sidearm raised. “Now! Go! Go!”

Luke helped maneuver Maddie and Oliver across the carpet toward the hallway pantry, keeping his tall body between them and the shattered window line. As soon as the heavy steel cellar door clicked shut behind the children and Agent Lin, Luke turned back to Jim Harrison.

Jim was crouching by the fireplace, reloading his .45 pistol. “The marshals are holding the front line, but Vance’s crew brought three vehicles. They’re trying to flank the south barn!”

Luke picked up a heavy tactical shotgun left on the table by one of the injured marshals. He checked the magazine tube—six red shells loaded.

“I’m taking the south barn,” Luke said, his eyes pitch black with resolve.

“Luke, wait for tactical backup!” Jim shouted. “The SWAT team from Amarillo is five minutes out!”

“They don't have five minutes,” Luke snapped, racking a shell into the chamber with a loud, mechanical clack.

He slipped out the back utility door, stepping into the bright Texas sunlight. The wind carried the acrid stench of burned powder and hot lead.

Fifty yards away near the wooden fence line, Wayne Miller was advancing behind the cover of an armored pickup truck, firing an AR-15 rifle toward the front porch while two hired thugs moved toward the pantry window.

Luke moved like a shadow along the stone wall of the barn. Two years of working alone on a fifty-acre cattle ranch had made him silent, fast, and impossibly tough.

He stepped out from the shadow of the barn door, twenty feet behind the two armed thugs.

“Hey,” Luke said.

The two men spun around, their rifles raising—but Luke was already moving.

BOOM!

The heavy 12-gauge slug struck the first man’s shoulder, knocking him off his feet and sending his weapon spinning into the dirt. Before the second man could clear his trigger, Luke stepped forward, driving the stock of the heavy shotgun straight into the man’s jaw with brutal, bone-crushing force. The man collapsed like a sack of stones.

Wayne heard the blasts and spun around from behind his truck, his rifle swinging toward Luke.

“YOU!” Wayne screamed, his face contorted in psychotic rage. “YOU RUINED EVERYTHING!”

Wayne pulled the trigger, but Luke dropped low into a tactical roll behind a stack of hay bales as bullets tore through the pine wood above his head.

Luke popped up from the side of the bales, his eyes locked onto Wayne through the dust.

“Drop the weapon, Wayne!” Luke shouted, his shotgun leveled straight at the man’s chest.

Wayne laughed maniacally, his finger tightening on the trigger—

CRACK!

A single, high-calibre rifle shot echoed from the tree line half a mile away.

Wayne’s rifle shattered in his hands. He let out a blood-curdling scream, dropping to his knees as his shattered weapon hit the dirt.

A fleet of state trooper cruisers and armored SWAT vehicles tore through the perimeter gates, sirens wailing like air-raid horns, surrounding the property in seconds. Dozens of heavily armed officers spilled out, their weapons trained on the remaining attackers.

“FPS SWAT! HANDS IN THE AIR! DOWN ON THE GROUND NOW!”

Wayne flopped onto his stomach in the gravel, sobbing and cursing, as two SWAT officers pinned him to the earth and snapped steel handcuffs onto his wrists.

Beside the armored vehicle, Brenda Vance was yanked from the passenger seat of her sedan, her expensive trench coat covered in dirt as federal agents pressed her face against the hood of the car.