Chapter 8 - The Ghost of North RiverThrough the spotting scope, Elena watched as Garrett Hale gestured sharply with two fingers. Two of his tactical operatives raised their breaching tools, smashed the wooden front door of the cottage off its hinges, and rushed inside with weapons raised.
Three minutes passed.
Then, Garrett himself stepped through the broken doorway, walking into the living room. He looked down at the kitchen table, picked up the active burner phone, and stared at the screen.
Even from a distance, Elena could see the exact moment realization hit him.
His posture stiffened. His head snapped toward the window, looking out over the empty cliffside and the grey expanse of the ocean. He pulled his service radio from his tactical vest and began screaming orders into it, his face contorting with sudden, frantic rage.
“He knows,” Lucian said calmly, adjusting the scope’s windage knob. “The trap is flipped.”
“Good,” Elena said. She picked up a second rifle from the yacht’s armory locker—a suppressed tactical carbine—and checked the magazine. “Because now they’re trapped in the gorge, and we control the high ground.”
As if on cue, the two tactical vans below tried to reverse out of the narrow dirt track, only to find their path blocked by a massive pine tree that Lucian had rigged with explosive charges earlier that morning. With a deafening boom, the tree blasted across the road, sealing the exit completely.
Panic erupted among Garrett’s men. They scrambled for cover behind the vans as smoke and debris filled the air.
Garrett stood in the open courtyard, his pistol drawn, spinning in circles as he tried to figure out where the attack was coming from.
“Garrett!”
The shout didn't come from a megaphone. It came across an encrypted radio frequency that patched directly into the tactical earpiece Garrett was wearing.
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Elena leaned into the radio mic on the yacht’s console, her voice carrying crystal clear across the valley.
“Looking for someone, Detective?”
