I lunged forward, grabbing him by the back of his shirt, and dragged him behind the thick, solid oak counter of the kitchen.
"Listen to me, Leo," I whispered fiercely, gripping his shoulders to force him to look at me. "Do you remember the game we practiced? The hiding game in my bedroom closet?"
He nodded, tears streaming down his face. "The... the quiet box."
"Exactly," I said. Under the floorboards in my bedroom closet, I had built a reinforced panic space lined with Kevlar padding and soundproofing. It was a paranoid remnant of my past, but tonight, it was going to save his life. "I want you to crawl into my room. Keep your belly on the floor. Get in the box, pull the lid shut, and do not make a sound until I tell you it's safe. Do you understand?"
"Are they going to hurt you, Dad?" he sobbed quietly.
"No," I said, my voice hardening into steel. "I'm going to hurt them. Go."
Leo crawled away into the darkness of the hallway. I waited until I heard the faint, muffled click of the hidden floorboard snapping into place.
I was alone. I was unbound.
I moved silently to the kitchen utility panel. I opened the metal door and pulled the main electrical breaker.
The house plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness. The television cut out. The only sound was the wind howling through the broken front window.
I moved purely by memory, slipping into the hall and opening the small lockbox hidden behind a framed picture. I didn't keep firearms in the house—Clara had hated them, and I didn't want the risk with Leo around. But I didn't need a gun to win a fight in the dark. I pulled out a heavy, steel pipe wrench and wrapped a coil of thick industrial zip-ties around my wrist.
I crouched in the shadow of the hallway, listening.
Footsteps. Booted, coordinated, and heavy. Glass crunched on the living room floor. Three distinct sets of footsteps moving in a tactical wedge formation. They were using night-vision optics; I could hear the faint, high-pitched whine of the battery packs.
But night vision narrows your peripheral view. It creates tunnel vision. And this was my house.
The first intruder stepped cautiously into the kitchen, his weapon raised, the green glow of his optics faintly visible in the dark.
I didn't attack from the front. I reached up, grabbed the heavy cast-iron skillet resting on the stove, and hurled it violently across the room toward the far wall. The pan smashed against the drywall with a loud bang.
All three men instinctively snapped their weapons toward the noise.
I moved.
I exploded from the hallway shadow, dropping my weight and sweeping my heavy boot directly through the side of the first intruder's knee. The joint snapped with a sickening pop. As the man buckled, letting out a sharp gasp, I grabbed the collar of his tactical vest and drove the steel pipe wrench upward in a devastating arc, catching him flush under the jaw. The impact lifted him off his feet, and he dropped to the floor, instantly unconscious.
The second man pivoted, swinging his rifle toward me, but I was already inside his guard. I slapped the barrel of his weapon upward, stepped in close, and slammed the base of my palm into the center of his chest, cracking his sternum. As he doubled over, gagging for air, I wrapped my massive arm around his neck, sinking in a blood choke.
He thrashed for exactly four seconds before his eyes rolled back and his body went limp. I lowered him silently to the floor.
The third man—the leader—realized he was losing his squad in the dark. He backpedaled into the living room, swinging a heavy tactical flashlight around, abandoning stealth for visibility. The harsh white beam cut through the darkness, illuminating the empty room.
"Where are you, Ghost?" the leader called out, his voice echoing in the ruined room.
I froze in the shadows. Ghost. That was my old callsign in the PMC. Nobody in this town knew that name.
I stepped into the beam of his flashlight, letting him see me. He immediately raised his weapon to fire.
I hurled the heavy steel pipe wrench with terrifying velocity. It spun end-over-end through the air, crashing directly into his flashlight and the hand holding the weapon. The rifle clattered to the floor, his fingers broken. Before he could draw his sidearm, I cleared the distance like a freight train, driving my shoulder directly into his midsection and tackling him through the drywall into the hallway.
I pinned him to the floor, driving my knee into his chest, effectively trapping him under my two-hundred-and-forty-pound frame. I grabbed him by the throat, squeezing just enough to let him know his life was entirely in my hands.
"Who sent you?" I growled, my face inches from his.
"Vance," the mercenary gasped, struggling for air. "Marcus Vance. But it wasn't just the phone, Ghost."
"Explain," I tightened my grip slightly.
"Vance ran a background check on you when you took the maintenance job," the man wheezed, his eyes wide with fear. "He knows who you really are. He knows your past."