Chapter 5 - Traitor in the Shadows
Silas didn't move an inch. He slowly raised his hands.
The truck door was yanked open, letting in the icy wind and rain. Standing there with a silenced pistol was Miller—the local cowboy who had been sitting on Silas’s corral fence earlier that morning, laughing at Lily.
"Miller?" Silas spat, his eyes wide with betrayal. "You son of a bitch. You've worked on my ranch for five years!"
"And you paid me forty grand a year to shovel horse manure, Silas!" Miller sneered, pressing the warm barrel of the suppressor against Silas’s temple. "Julian Thorne offered me two million dollars just to place a GPS tracker on your truck three hours ago. Do the math."
Lily didn't panic. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small silver whistle that her father had given her years ago.
"Don't move, little girl!" Miller snapped, aiming his gun at Lily. "Drop the whistle or I put a hole in your boss!"
"He's not my boss," Lily said quietly. "He's just the man who put a price on Ares' head."
She blew into the whistle. No sound came out—it was an ultrasonic whistle tuned to a frequency human ears couldn't process.
From the pitch-black woods behind Miller, a shadow moved faster than a striking viper.
Ares struck like a thunderbolt. The stallion’s massive head slammed into Miller’s back, throwing the traitorous cowboy twenty feet through the air into a jagged rock face. Miller’s gun flew into the mud and went off with a quiet pfft.
Miller groaned, gasping for air as his ribs cracked, unable to stand.
Silas didn't hesitate. He dived out of the truck, scooped up Miller’s dropped pistol, and racked the slide. He pointed it directly at his former friend.
"Who else knows we're here?" Silas growled.
Miller coughed up blood, laughing weakly. "It doesn't matter, Silas... look at the sky..."
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Silas looked up through the rain. Far off in the distance, three black attack helicopters were descending over the ridge, their searchlights cutting through the storm clouds like burning spears.
Julian Thorne hadn't just brought lawyers this time. He had brought a private military force.
