Something inside me went still.

I moved before I thought.

Headstone to headstone. Wet grass under my shoes. Breath steady. Sight picture clean. One man down near the gravel lane. Another behind a maple trunk, shoulder exposed. Kyle took the third before he could flank the tent.

“Dom!” Eliza screamed.

I looked back.

The tent rope had snagged my mother’s coat. She was trying to pull free while Eliza crouched beside her, shaking so badly she could barely help.

A man in black moved toward them from the blind side of the tent.

I didn’t have a clear shot.

I ran.

The ground slipped beneath me. A bullet hit a vase near my knee, spraying glass and water across my pants. I kept moving.

The man saw me too late.

I hit him with my shoulder and drove him into the folding chairs. His gun clattered away under the seat of a woman who had fainted. He swung at my face. I caught his wrist, twisted, and dropped him hard enough that his head struck the metal chair frame.

He stopped moving.

I cut the tent rope with the small blade I kept clipped inside my sleeve and pulled my mother free.

“Stay down,” I said.

She grabbed my wrist. “Dominic, who are these men?”

“I don’t know.”

That was the truth, and it tasted worse than a lie.

Kyle’s voice came from behind me.

“Two running toward the gate. Gray suit is moving.”

I turned.

The man in gray had reached the last SUV. One of his men held the rear door open. Sirens wailed somewhere in the distance, faint but growing.

I should have stayed with my family.

I should have let the police handle it.

But my father was in a coffin behind me because someone thought they could burn the truth and bury the witness.

The gray-suited man paused when he saw me coming. He did not reach for his weapon right away. That bothered me. Men who were afraid moved fast. Men who had power waited to see if fear would work for them.

He adjusted his cuff.

“Dominic Kaine,” he said.

Hearing my name in his mouth felt like stepping on glass.

“You know me?”

He smiled again. “Your father talked too much.”

I raised my weapon. “Who sent you?”

“Still asking the wrong questions.”

“Then correct me.”

His eyes flicked toward the road, toward the approaching sirens. “You should have stayed overseas. This town was never safe for men in your family.”

Then his hand moved.

I was faster.

He dropped beside the SUV, his polished shoes scraping gravel. The driver panicked and sped away with the rear door still open, leaving the gray-suited man staring up at the rain.