Echo frowned, but Dodge added a “Please,” so she nodded. Still, “What’s going on?”

Colt glanced at him. “Maybe you should stay too. I’ll go in.”

“You’re hurt, bro. If there’s trouble—”

“I’m not that hurt.” But he had been the one to lay on the ice, gasping like a beached salmon.

“I’m sure everything’s fine,” Dodge said.

Colt gave him a look.

“Fine. You girls, get in the hangar. If we’re not back in five minutes, then . . . call Deke Starr, I guess.”

Colt nodded. “Does Dad keep any weapons in the garage?”

“They’re all locked up in his study.”

“Seriously, Dodge,” Echo said, “what do you think is happening in there? They’re probably having breakfast—”

“They’re not having breakfast!” Dodge snapped, and she recoiled. He took a breath, turned, glanced at Colt. “Let’s hope we’re all just overreacting, right?”

Colt nodded and opened his door.

A shot pinged off the wing behind him.

He hit the dirt, rolled, and slid behind the tundra wheel. Which would probably slow down but never stop a bullet.

The next shot scrubbed the ground near him.

“Get the girls inside the hangar!”

Behind him, Dodge had scrambled out of the plane. “Take this!”

A .357 Taurus landed next to him. Dodge’s bear gun.

Colt scooped it up. “Run!” He sent off a couple shots toward the house, near the side door where the shots had been fired.

A word tunneled through him, and he bit it back, but wow, he hated when he was right.

When he knew, deep inside, that something was going down.

And he couldn’t do anything to stop it.

“What do you see?” Dodge shouted from the door of the hangar. Clearly the ladies had made it inside.

“I can’t see anything!”

And then a barrage of shots peppered the plane, tearing holes through the fabric, the wing.

It popped the tire, and the plane jerked, falling.

Colt rolled away just as the plane collapsed onto its side.

Now Dodge let out a word. Colt stayed down as the shots continued to bite through the plane, the dirt beside him.

Then, suddenly, return fire from the hangar. A staccato of bullets that shattered the office window, chipped wood off the siding, and hopefully sent their shooter to the dirt.

What?

“Colt, get in here!”

More shots, and Colt looked up.

A man, not Dodge, stood at the door. He wore a brown canvas jacket, a baseball cap on backwards, and fired what looked like an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle.

From what? His father’s apparently secret weapons cache?

Dodge stood behind him, gesturing hard.

Colt found his feet and launched himself at the door.

The man reached out, grabbed him, and practically flung him into the shadowed interior of the Quonset hut.

Then he backed up and slammed the door behind him.