The air was thick with tension, smoke, and the smell of scorched rubber. Karen Sisco’s gun had just been trained on Jack Foley when the crack of a distant sniper shot sliced the moment in half. One second she was standing tall, eyes locked on Jack’s, and the next—her body jerked violently.

Blood bloomed across her shoulder, then her thigh. She went down hard, screaming through clenched teeth, trying to raise her weapon again even as it slipped from her grasp.

Jack didn’t even look back.

He froze for a split second, his instincts screaming at him to do something—go to her, finish it, anything. But he knew this was bigger than them now. Someone else was in the game. Someone who wanted him alive… and her out of the picture.

He ran.

Down the embankment behind the motel, shoes kicking up dirt, heart hammering, every nerve raw. He didn’t know who the shooter was, but he had an idea: someone from the inside. Not the feds, not her team. The kind of person who owed favors or wanted one in return. Jack had made more enemies than friends over the years, and some of them liked to play savior when it suited their schemes.

Karen bled out against the pavement, jaw tight, stubborn. Her eyes were blurry, but she could still see his silhouette vanish into the trees. She was still alive.Barely.She gritted out a curse, fingers crawling toward her radio.She was pissed.Not because she got shot.Because Jack Foley left her. And for a minute—just one—she’d believed he wouldn’t.

Two days later:

Jack’s face is plastered across screens. He’s made it to the Everglades, hiding out in some backwoods fishing shack with a burner phone and half a plan. He knows she’s alive. Knows she’s probably already got half of Florida crawling with marshals. But what rattles him most is the thought he doesn’t know who pulled the trigger. Someone took a shot at Karen and deliberately missed anything fatal. That meant precision. That meant money.

That meant Jack was worth more alive than dead.

Which made him dangerous.

To everyone.