Mason's POV
The words hung in the cold air like poison gas.
Dad told him to do it.
Mason's hand tightened on the door. The world tilted. For a second, he couldn't breathe. Tessa's father. Her own blood. He knew the man was cold, that he cared more about his power and his friend Victor than he did about his own daughter. But to give the order to kill her?
It was a different kind of bullet to the heart.
Lisa was crying on his porch. Grant stood frozen behind him in the dark kitchen.
Mason's training screamed at him. Secure the area. Assess the threat.
He grabbed Lisa's arm and pulled her inside, shutting the door and locking it fast. He didn't turn on more lights. He pulled her into the kitchen where the single stove light glowed.
"Say that again," Mason said, his voice a low growl. "Slowly."
Lisa trembled, hugging herself. She looked at Grant, confused and scared.
"It's okay," Mason said. "He's with us. Talk."
"After the funeral tomorrow," Lisa whispered, the words tumbling out. "Dad called me. He was… different. Not sad. Angry. At Tessa. He said she was going to ruin everything. That she had stolen files from Victor's company about the poisoning. That she was going to the press."
Mason looked at the folder on the table. The photo of Victor with the gun. It was a plant. A story. The senator was crafting the narrative, making Victor the lone killer to protect something bigger.
"He said Victor panicked," Lisa continued. "That they met on the ridge to talk her down, to make her see reason. He said Tessa had a flash drive with the proof. They argued. Victor's gun went off. An accident."
"But," Mason prompted, the ice in his veins spreading.
"But I heard someone else in the background on the call," Lisa said, her eyes wide with terror. "I heard Victor's voice. He yelled, 'You said she'd listen, Conrad! You promised!' And then my father… he said, 'Just finish it. Clean up your mess.' Then the call dropped." She started sobbing. "He gave the order, Mason. He told Victor to shoot my sister."
The kitchen was silent except for Lisa's cries. Grant looked sick. Mason felt nothing. The last bit of warmth in him was gone. Replaced by a cold, hard engine of purpose.
His eyes went to the hallway. To the closet where Tessa kept her hiking gear.
"Stay here," he said. He walked out of the kitchen.
He didn't turn on the hall light. He didn't need to. He knew this house in the dark. He found the closet door and opened it. Her smell hit him first. Flowers and fresh air. It almost broke him.
He reached in and felt her coats, her sweaters. His fingers found the tough fabric of her hiking backpack. He pulled it out. It was heavy.
He carried it back to the kitchen and dumped it on the table next to the horrible photos.
"What are you doing?" Grant asked.
"Proving it," Mason said.
He opened the main compartment of the pack. The usual things were inside: a water bladder, half-full. An energy bar. A small first-aid kit. A folded map. He pulled everything out.
Then he felt along the inside lining of the pack. Tessa was smart. If she had stolen something, she wouldn't just carry it in her pocket. His fingers found a slight bump, a roughness in the fabric. A hidden seam.
He took his knife from his pocket. He slit the seam open carefully.
A small, black rectangular object fell onto the table with a plastic clack.
A flash drive.
Lisa gasped. "That's it. That's what he said she took."
Mason picked it up. It was just a normal computer drive. But it might as well have been a live grenade. This was what Tessa died for.
"We need to see what's on it," Grant said, his lawyer brain kicking in. "It's evidence."
Mason looked at his laptop on the counter. He plugged the drive in. The computer chimed. A single folder appeared on the screen. It was labeled "Project Clean Sweep."
He opened it. There were dozens of files. Spreadsheets. Scanned documents. Photos of chemical barrels dumped in a remote creek. Maps with red zones marked. And a single video file, dated the day Tessa died.
Mason clicked it.
The video was shaky, taken on a phone, hidden in her jacket. It showed the snowy ridge. Victor Sterling was there, his face red with anger. Senator Conrad Sterling stood beside him, calm and cold as stone.
Tessa's voice, strong and clear, came from behind the camera. "You can't bury this forever, Victor. People are getting sick. The water tests are positive. I'm taking this to the state."
Victor stepped forward. "You stupid girl. Don't you know who you're dealing with? Give me the drive."
"No."
Then the senator spoke. His voice was quiet, deadly. "Tessa, darling. Be reasonable. Victor will write a very large check to the right people. This will all go away. Give us the drive, and we can forget this family disagreement."
"It's not a disagreement, Dad. It's a crime. And you're helping him. I'm not giving you anything."
Victor lunged for the camera. The video shook violently. There was a struggle. A muffled cry. Then the sound of a gunshot a sharp, terrible crack.
The phone fell to the ground, facing the sky. The last thing the video showed was Senator Sterling's face looking down at the camera, his expression not of horror, but of grim satisfaction. Then a boot stepped down, and the screen went black.
The kitchen was dead silent.
Lisa made a small, wounded animal sound. The video proved everything. It wasn't an accident. It was an execution. And her father watched it happen.
Mason ejected the flash drive. He held it in his hand. This was it. This could destroy both of them. But it wasn't enough to just have it. He needed to get it to someone who couldn't be bought or scared.
"We need to get this to the State Attorney General," Grant said, echoing Mason's thought. "My old boss. He's honest. He hates Sterling."
"They'll be watching every route out of town," Mason said. "They know the file is gone. They'll know about the drive soon, if they don't already."
He thought fast. They couldn't stay here. This was the first place Victor's men would come after searching the station. They needed to move. Now.
"Pack what you need. We're leaving in two minutes," Mason said to Lisa and Grant. "We'll take my truck, but we ditch it fast. We go on foot through the national forest. There's an old ranger outpost, twenty miles in. We can hide there, make a plan."
He went to his bedroom and grabbed his old, sturdy hiking pack from the closet. He threw in the folder, the flash drive, a first-aid kit, protein bars, and ammunition for the handgun. He changed into dark, warm clothes and his own hiking boots.
When he came back out, Grant was ready, looking terrified. Lisa just stood there, staring at the black screen of the laptop.
"Lisa," Mason said, his voice softer. "We have to go. For Tessa."
She nodded slowly, wiping her face. She had no bag, just the coat she was wearing.
Mason led them to the back door. He turned off the stove light, plunging the house into darkness. He listened. No sounds outside. Just the wind.
"Stay close. Stay quiet," he whispered.
They slipped out into the night. The cold was a shock. Mason pointed toward the dense tree line at the back of his property, fifty yards away. Beyond that was wilderness for hundreds of miles.
"Go. Straight to the trees. Don't stop."
Lisa and Grant started to run, hunched over, across the open backyard.
Mason took one last look at his dark, empty house. The place where he and Tessa were supposed to grow old. It was just a building now. A shell.
He turned to follow the others.
A bright, white light suddenly exploded from the side of the house, blinding him. It was a spotlight, mounted on a vehicle.
An engine roared to life.
A black SUV came speeding around the corner of the house, its tires tearing up his lawn, heading straight for Lisa and Grant who were frozen in the spotlight like deer.
A man leaned out the passenger window. It was Scarface, the guard from the station, a nasty cut now on his forehead. He raised a rifle.
"Stop right there!" he yelled. "Drop the pack!"
Lisa screamed. Grant stumbled.
Mason didn't think. He acted.
He raised his handgun and fired two shots at the SUV's front tire. The bang-bang was terribly loud in the silent night.
The tire blew with a loud pop. The SUV swerved violently, the spotlight swinging wildly across the trees. It skidded, slamming sideways into Mason's wooden shed with a crunch of metal and splintering wood.
For a second, everything was still.
Then the driver's door flew open. Scarface and the driver, another tough-looking man, stumbled out, dazed but raising their weapons.
"Run!" Mason yelled at Lisa and Grant. "To the trees! Now!"
They sprinted for their lives.
Mason fired three more shots toward the men to keep their heads down, then turned and ran after his friends. Bullets zipped past him, thudding into the ground at his feet.
He reached the tree line and dove into the thick, dark bushes. Lisa and Grant were a few feet ahead, panting in the dark.
The two men from the SUV were at the edge of the lawn, shouting. They didn't follow into the woods. Not yet. They were calling it in.
Mason crawled over to Lisa and Grant. "Are you hit?"
"No," Grant wheezed. Lisa just shook her head, her eyes huge with fear.
They could hear voices on the lawn.
"...they're in the forest. We need the thermal drones. And the dogs. Call the boss. Tell him we have a location."
Mason's heart sank. Thermal drones. Dogs. They were treating this like a military operation. Because for Victor, it was. A hunt.
He looked at the dark, endless woods ahead. Twenty miles to safety. With two people who weren't soldiers, in the freezing cold, being hunted by men with drones and dogs.
He helped Lisa and Grant to their feet. "We have to move. Fast and far. They'll be coming soon."
They started pushing deeper into the forest, the branches clawing at their clothes. It was pitch black under the trees. Every snap of a twig sounded like a gunshot.
After an hour of brutal, silent hiking, they came to a small, frozen stream. They were all exhausted. Lisa was shaking from cold and shock.
"We need to rest for five minutes," Mason whispered. He found a hollow under a large fallen tree. They crawled into the small, sheltered space, their breath making white clouds.
Mason listened. The forest was too quiet. No owls. No animals. The prey knew the predators were out.
Then he heard it. A new sound, cutting through the silent pines.
A faint, mechanical buzzing, high above them.
He looked up through the bare branches. A small, dark shape, no bigger than a bird, was moving in a slow pattern against the starry sky. A red light blinked on its belly.
The thermal drone had found them.
The buzzing grew louder. It was descending.
Mason pulled Lisa and Grant deeper into the hollow. "Don't move," he breathed.
The drone hovered directly above their hiding spot. The red light blinked steadily, like a beating heart.
It had seen their heat signatures. It was marking their position.
The buzzing stopped. The drone just hung there in the air, watching them.
Then, from far away, carried on the wind, came the sound they all dreaded.
A long, deep, baying howl.
Then another. And another.
The dogs had been released.
Lisa revealed the Senator's involvement, and they found the flash drive.
they are trapped, with a drone above them and hunting dogs closing in.