My brother was seconds away from crushing my skull over our father’s house when the back door exploded open—and the people who walked in made his face turn ghost-white.

The blue and red strobes illuminated the front yard like a chaotic carnival.

Within minutes, four cruisers slid to a halt on the gravel. Jesse Miller sprang from the lead vehicle, carbine in hand, followed by Marcus Cole and three county deputies.

Damian was still on his knees in the mud, shivering uncontrollably, his designer jacket ruined, his hands caked with dirt. He looked up at Jesse with hollow, dead eyes, offering no resistance as the deputy wrenched his arms behind his back and clicked the cuffs onto his wrists for the second time in forty-eight hours.

"Where is she, Damian?" Marcus Cole demanded, stepping over to my brother, his voice cracking like a bullwhip.

"Who?" Damian stammered, blood and mud smearing across his lips.

"Saraphina!" Marcus barked. "She wasn't at the lake cabin. We executed a search warrant ten minutes ago. The place was cleared out. Passports missing, safe wide open. Where did she go?!"

Damian blinked, a sudden, horrifying realization dawning behind his bloodshot eyes. "No... no, she said she was going to the bank to get the emergency cash for Varga... she promised she’d meet me at the cabin..."

"She played you, you idiot," Marcus said coldly, pulling Damian up by his elbows. "She used Varga as a sledgehammer to force Linda out. When she realized Arthur delivered that video to the DA, she dumped you like a bag of garbage. She’s running for the private airstrip across the county line."

Damian let out a strangled, inhuman wail, collapsing against the side of the cruiser as Jesse shoved him into the backseat. He had sold his soul, beaten his sister, and disgraced his father’s name for a woman who viewed him as nothing more than a disposable patsy.

"Linda!" Marcus called, jogging over to where I was leaning heavily against Mac’s truck, my breathing shallow, my vision graying at the fringes from the exhaustion and pain. "Are you alright?"

"I’m standing," I grunted, gritting my teeth against the fire in my ribs. "Did you say the county airstrip?"

"Miller’s Field," Marcus confirmed, pulling out his radio. "It's an unregistered strip ten miles south. Small charter planes fly out to the Bahamas without flight plans. Saraphina’s father owns a hangar there."

"She’s carrying Dad’s money," I said, looking Marcus dead in the eye. "The offshore bonds. She has the bearer certificates Dad was holding in the personal safe at the cabin. If she gets in the air, that money is gone, and the evidence against Varga’s syndicate goes with her."

"We’ve got a roadblock on Route 9," Jesse yelled from the cruiser. "She won't get through!"

"She won't take Route 9," Mac interjected, his weathered face dark. "She grew up out here. She’s taking the old logging trails through the state forest. A standard cruiser will bottom out in two miles on those washed-out fire roads."

I looked at Mac's heavy-duty 4x4 pickup, outfitted with a front winch, mud tires, and high ground clearance. Then I looked at Mac.

"Mac," I said.

"Get in," he replied instantly.

"Linda, no!" Marcus shouted, reaching for the door. "You’ve got broken ribs, a concussion, and this is police business! Let us handle it!"

"She tried to murder me in my father’s living room, Marcus," I said, slamming the truck door shut. "This *is* my business."

Mac dropped the transmission into four-wheel drive, stomped the accelerator, and the heavy truck roared to life, spraying gravel as we rocketed down the driveway, bypassing the main road and plunging straight into the overgrown darkness of the Old Logging Trail.

The forest swallowed us in a canopy of towering pines and dense brush. The truck bucked violently as the heavy tires slammed into ruts and mud-filled potholes. Every jolt sent a white-hot spear of agony tearing through my ribcage, forcing me to bite my lower lip until I tasted copper to keep from screaming.

"Breathe, Linda!" Mac shouted over the roar of the engine, his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he wrestled the heavy truck through the mud. "Eyes forward!"

Two miles deep into the pine barrens, red taillights flashed through the trees ahead.

A silver Mercedes SUV was fishtailing wildly through the mud, kicking up rooster tails of brown water, racing recklessly toward the edge of the private airfield runway visible through the clearing ahead.

"There the snake is!" Mac roared.

Saraphina realized we were behind her. The Mercedes accelerated, careening violently around a bend. But greed and panic are terrible drivers. She hit a washed-out ditch at sixty miles an hour.

The front axle of the Mercedes snapped with a sickening metallic crunch. The vehicle spun three hundred and sixty degrees, slammed sideways into an ancient red oak, and came to an abrupt, violent halt, steam hissing furiously from the crushed radiator.

Mac slammed on the brakes, sliding the pickup to a stop twenty feet away.

The driver's door of the Mercedes was kicked open. Saraphina stumbled out into the mud, a heavy duffel bag clutched in one hand and a small silver revolver in the other, her face smeared with mascara and blood from the deployed airbag.