“Don’t move—if you’re with them, I’ll shoot first and freeze later,” the woman rasped, blood darkening the snow.
Mason Kerr stopped at the edge of the crash site, the SUV twisted against a fir like it had been thrown.
An injured German Shepherd braced in front of her, teeth bared, eyes refusing to blink.
Mason raised empty hands and fought for calm while the wind tried to steal it.
“I’m not with anyone,” he said, tracking fresh bootprints laid over older skid marks.
The blast damage on the SUV looked controlled, not accidental.
The woman tried to sit up, failed, and forced her name through clenched teeth.
“Lena Torres,” she said, then nodded at the dog, “Briggs—K-9, not a pet.”
Shrapnel glittered at her collarbone, and Mason’s stomach tightened.
He tore his scarf, wrapped Briggs’s flank, and slid his coat under Lena to block the snow.
With a broken branch and rope, he rigged a crude drag sled and pulled them toward his cabin.
Briggs limped alongside, never taking his eyes off Mason.
The cabin door slammed shut on the whiteout, and Mason threw the deadbolt like it mattered.
He fed the stove, cleaned Lena’s burns with boiled water, and splinted her knee with a board.
Lena dug a USB drive from her jacket, hanging from a chain like a last promise.
“They tried to erase me,” she whispered, “and they’ll come to erase what’s on this.”
Mason’s phone caught one weak bar, just enough to message an old DEA contact: Agent Mark Delaney.
The reply flashed back: STAY DARK. TRUST NO ONE. FEDERAL LEAK CONFIRMED.
Mason swept the cabin for anything planted, found nothing, and hated how that proved nothing.
Lena’s eyes fixed on the window as she murmured, “There’s a tracker—I don’t know if it’s on me or Briggs.”
Outside, an engine crawled uphill through the storm like it owned the mountain.
Headlights smeared across the frosted glass, circling once, then stopping with surgical patience.
A loudspeaker crackled, smooth and amused: “Ms. Torres, hand over the drive and the dog, and you walk away.”
Mason killed the lamp, felt Briggs rise beside him, and heard boots crunch onto the porch.
Then the loudspeaker added, soft as a confession: “Tell Mason Kerr we know what he did overseas—unless he wants her to scream first.”
Lena stared at Mason as if she’d just met him for the second time.
Who had their names, their files, and enough men to turn a cabin into a grave?
Dawn never fully arrived, only a thinner shade of gray that made the snowfield glow.
Mason kept the stove low and the curtains pinned, forcing the cabin to look abandoned.
Lena lay on the cot with a clenched jaw, counting pain like time.
Briggs watched the door, head high, ears twitching at sounds Mason couldn’t hear yet.
Mason found a thin wire stapled beneath the porch rail and a coin-sized magnet stuck to the step.
“Tracker,” he muttered, and Lena’s eyes closed like she’d expected it.
He carried the device to the woodpile, smashed it with an axe head, and buried the pieces under ash.
Lena pushed herself upright and hooked her laptop to a portable battery from her kit.
“If the leak is federal,” she said, “then the drive is the only clean truth I have.”
The USB was passworded, layered with encryption that wasn’t hobbyist-level.
Lena’s fingers flew anyway, the work of someone who’d learned to solve problems while being hunted.
Mason watched her breathing, waiting for the moment she’d pay for the adrenaline.
A file directory finally opened, and the cabin seemed to shrink around the words on the screen.
Shipment schedules, route codes, radio call signs, and photos of pallets stamped as “medical supplies.”
Lena zoomed in on one image and whispered, “Those are fentanyl precursor drums—someone’s laundering them through federal paperwork.”
Another folder held burner numbers and meeting points tied to a name that wasn’t a name at all: PALE SERPENTS.
A third folder was worse, because it held credentials—badges, ID scans, and internal memos only agents should touch.
Lena swallowed hard and said, “They didn’t just buy a cop, Mason—they bought a pipeline.”
Mason felt his chest tighten, the old itch to solve everything with force.
He fought it, because force without clarity was how you die in the mountains.
“Delaney needs this,” he said, “but we can’t trust the first person who shows up.”
Lena nodded, then opened a map file and highlighted one corridor in yellow: ECHO CANYON.
“It’s a choke point,” she said, “and they run a convoy through there every month under storm cover.”
Mason studied the contour lines and saw the trap in the terrain, then saw the opportunity.
A thud hit the roof, heavy and deliberate, not wind-thrown.
Briggs stood, silent, and Mason knew the assault team had arrived before their fear did.
The next sound was a soft scrape at the window, like a blade testing wood.
Mason pulled Lena behind the kitchen wall and handed her his spare radio.
“Stay on Delaney’s frequency only,” he said, “and if I go down, you run with Briggs.”
Lena didn’t argue, but her eyes did, fierce and stubborn.
The front door jolted under a ram, and the deadbolt groaned.
Mason had set a line of fishing wire to a shelf of cast-iron pans, and when the door bucked again, the shelf toppled.
Metal crashed like thunder, a cheap alarm that bought three priceless seconds.
A voice called from outside, calm and professional.
“DEA search and rescue,” it announced, too polished, too wrong.
Lena flinched, and Mason answered through the door, “State your badge number, and say my name if you know it.”
Silence, then a different voice, colder, female, amplified by a headset.
“You’re Mason Kerr,” it said, “and you’re in possession of government property and a federal agent.”
Mason’s jaw hardened, because only someone with access to files said it like that.
The door blew inward on the third strike, splintering into the chair Mason had wedged behind it.
Two men flowed in low with rifles and goggles, moving like they’d trained for rooms, not cabins.
Briggs lunged at the nearer one, not for the throat, but for the forearm, tearing the muzzle line away from Mason.
Mason drove his shoulder into the second man and slammed him into the stove, pinning him with a knee.
The first attacker screamed as Briggs clamped and twisted, and Lena used the distraction to swing a poker into the man’s wrist.
The rifle clattered, and Mason kicked it under the table before anyone could recover it.
More boots rushed the porch, but Mason had nailed the outer steps slick with water that froze into a glass sheet.
A third attacker slipped, slammed hard, and his weapon skittered into the snow outside.
Mason grabbed the downed man by the collar, hauled him in, and yanked off his mask.
The kid couldn’t have been more than nineteen, cheeks raw from cold and fear.
A tattoo of a coiled serpent peeked above his collar, and his eyes darted like a trapped animal.
“Name,” Mason demanded, and the kid choked out, “Rio—please, I don’t want to die for them.”
Lena pressed a hand to Rio’s bleeding eyebrow and said, “Then don’t.”
She held the laptop screen in front of him, showing PALE SERPENTS files and badge scans.
Rio’s face crumpled, and he whispered, “Marla Keene runs it from afar, but Dane Rourke leads the hits.”
Outside, radios crackled, and someone cursed about the ice trap.
Mason bound Rio’s wrists with zip ties and shoved him behind the locked pantry door.
Lena keyed Delaney’s frequency, voice steady now, and said, “Mark, they’re here, and your leak is real.”
Delaney’s reply came through static, urgent and clipped.
“Hold if you can,” he said, “I’m bringing a small team I trust—no uniforms until we verify.”
Lena met Mason’s eyes, and the plan took shape without romance, only necessity.
They couldn’t wait for another breach, and they couldn’t outrun a convoy without leverage.
Mason pointed to the canyon mark on the map, and Lena nodded like she’d already chosen it.
If Echo Canyon was their choke point, could it become the Pale Serpents’ last mistake?
Delaney arrived at dusk in an unmarked truck, tires chained, lights off until the last turn.
He came with three people, all plainclothes, all carrying old duffels that held newer problems.
Mason watched their hands first, then their eyes, and only then let them inside.
Mark Delaney looked older than Mason remembered, but his voice still carried command without theater.
He checked Lena’s injuries, checked Briggs’s flank, and checked the shattered tracker pieces Mason had saved.
When he saw the badge scans on the laptop, his mouth flattened into something like grief.
“We have a mole,” Delaney said, “and if the wrong field office hears this first, you’ll both disappear.”
Lena slid the USB across the table like it weighed more than a life.
Delaney pocketed it, then nodded toward the map, because he already knew where the fight was going.
Rio stayed locked in the pantry, fed and silent, listening to every footstep like it might be his verdict.
Lena questioned him carefully, not with cruelty, but with precision that left no room for heroic lies.
He gave up route timing, convoy signals, and the fact that explosives rode with the shipment as insurance.
Delaney chose his team the way you choose rope for a cliff—by trust, not by brand.
They would not call for uniforms, and they would not ping the main DEA systems until Marla Keene was in cuffs.
Mason offered the cabin as base, then surprised himself by saying, “I’m going with you.”
Lena’s eyes narrowed, reading the truth under his words.
“You came up here to be quiet,” she said, “and now you’re walking back into noise.”
Mason shrugged once and answered, “Peace that’s built on hiding isn’t peace.”
They moved before dawn, one vehicle and one snowmobile, following Rio’s directions through timber and wind-carved drifts.
Echo Canyon opened like a wound between cliffs, narrow enough to trap a convoy and wide enough to bury a mistake.
Delaney set the team on high ground, rifles aimed only to disable, because arrests mattered more than revenge.
Lena stayed lower with Briggs, using rock shadows and her radio earpiece, her limp controlled by sheer focus.
Mason planted signal reflectors in the snow to fake a road closure farther ahead, forcing the convoy to slow.
The plan was simple, which meant it had a chance.
At 09:17, engines echoed through the cut like thunder trapped in stone.
Two SUVs led, then a box truck, then another SUV with a roof rack stacked under tarp.
Briggs stiffened, and Lena whispered, “That last vehicle carries the detonator man.”
Delaney’s voice came calm over comms: “Wait for the choke.”
The lead SUV hit the reflector glare, braked hard, and the convoy compressed exactly as Mason wanted.
Then a new voice cut into the channel—an unauthorized frequency, confident and familiar.
“Stand down,” the voice ordered, “this is a federal interdiction under my authority.”
Delaney froze for half a second too long, and Mason felt the danger in that hesitation.
Lena’s eyes sharpened as she whispered, “That’s not Mark’s boss—Mark doesn’t sound afraid of his boss.”
A figure on the ridge to their rear lifted a phone-sized device, thumb poised like a trigger.
The traitor had been with Delaney’s broader circle, close enough to know the canyon plan.
Mason pivoted, but he was thirty yards of snow and rock away from stopping a button press.
Briggs solved the distance problem in a single sprint.
He launched up the slope, hind leg favoring but fury intact, and hit the man’s wrist with a snap and twist.
The device flew, skittered across shale, and bounced down toward the canyon floor.
The man reached for a sidearm, panicked now, and Mason closed the gap with brutal speed.
He drove the traitor into the snow, pinned the gun hand, and snarled, “You don’t get to bury them.”
Delaney’s agent snapped cuffs on the man, face pale with betrayal he’d have to live with.
Below, the convoy drivers realized the trap, doors popping open, weapons flashing.
Delaney triggered the stop with a single command, and his team fired controlled shots into tires and engine blocks.
Rubber shredded, engines died, and the canyon filled with shouted confusion instead of gunfire.
Lena moved with Briggs as cover, closing on the box truck while Mason flanked the rear SUV.
A man in a beanie bolted toward the tarp-covered rack, fumbling with wiring and a second detonator.
Lena raised her pistol, but Briggs beat her again, slamming into the man’s legs and sending him sprawling.
Mason kicked the detonator away and crushed it under his boot heel.
He yanked the man’s hands behind his back and saw the serpent tattoo, the same coiled mark as Rio’s.
“Dane Rourke,” the man spat, laughing through pain, “Marla’s already gone.”
Delaney stepped in, calm returning like ice forming.
“No,” he said, “Marla’s right on schedule, because she can’t resist watching her own payday.”
He held up a phone with a live ping—metadata from a secure call Lena had forced Rio to make before they left the cabin.
A black helicopter appeared over the ridge fifteen minutes later, not federal, not marked, flying low to avoid radar.
It hovered like a vulture deciding where to land, and Mason felt the old heat of battle climb his spine.
Delaney raised a flare gun and fired one bright arc, a signal to the state task force staged beyond the canyon.
Hidden cruisers surged in from both ends, sealing the exit like a closing fist.
The helicopter banked, tried to climb, and a loudspeaker from the task force crackled: “LAND NOW.”
The pilot complied, and a woman stepped out, composed, wearing sunglasses in snow like she didn’t need to blink.
Marla Keene looked at the disabled convoy with mild disappointment, as if her day had been inconvenienced.
She glanced at Delaney and said, “You should’ve stayed loyal, Mark.”
Delaney answered by reading her rights, and the sound of that script felt like a door slamming on a whole machine.
When they loaded Marla into a cruiser, Lena finally let herself sag against a boulder.
Briggs pressed his head into her ribs, careful of her burns, and she kissed the top of his skull.
Mason stood nearby, shaking without shame, because the shaking meant he was still here.
Back at the cabin days later, state investigators swarmed the evidence and kept their promises.
Rio agreed to testify, not because he turned good overnight, but because he wanted to live long enough to become someone else.
Delaney offered Lena protective relocation, and she surprised everyone by saying, “Not yet—I’m finishing what I started.”
Mason watched the snow melt in thin streams off the roof and realized the mountain wasn’t silent anymore.
It held voices, footsteps, and a dog’s steady breathing that made the nights less sharp.
He didn’t call it healing, but he did call it real.
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