I close my heavy eyes and let three lethal men who actively chose the massive complication hold me completely.
I sleep.
I wake violently to Rafe’s voice.
It is highly controlled. It is the specific, chilling tone of a highly trained hitman reporting an immediate, lethal threat.
“Movement on the eastern approach.”
I sit bolt upright.
Nick is already fully dressed in his black tactical gear. He is standing at the front window, staring into the dark tree line. Jude is standing completely still at the front door. Both of them transitioned from holding me in bed to holding lethal tacticalpositions without making a single sound. They are three highly trained killers, and I slept blissfully through the entire shift.
Rafe holds up his encrypted mobile phone. The digital perimeter sensors are flashing bright red. Multiple, fast-moving contacts. They are moving aggressively through the dense pine trees directly from the east.
Nick speaks sharply into the comms unit on the kitchen counter. A burst of static. Then Daniel’s voice cuts through, frantic and urgent.
The digital Rome lead entirely collapsed. Dominic knows I am absolutely not in Italy. He knows I copied the highly encrypted files. He knows exactly who has been hiding me.
Dominic’s elite hit squad is on the mountain.
I do not freeze in terror. I calculate the variables instantly. Tyra is currently at the bakery with Tiffany. Tyra is completely safe from the initial assault. The silver USB drive is sitting right on the kitchen counter. The quiet extraction window is entirely gone, but the nuclear weapon is absolutely not.
Nick turns his head slowly. He looks directly at me. His eyes are completely devoid of any softness. The lover is gone. The ruthless Commander has returned.
“Move.”
22
NICK
“Move.”
The word leaves my mouth and the cabin stops being a home. It becomes a kill box. Angles. Sight lines. Choke points. The same walls that held a woman and three men through the most important night of my life are now cover positions and firing lanes and I am already mapping the sequence before my boots hit the floor.
Rafe is at the weapons cache. Thirty seconds. Rifle. Sidearm. Blade. He moves like the armory is an extension of his body because it is.
Jude has the tactical med kit on his back and Lucia’s go-bag in his hand and he is at the rear exit running the locks before I finish the sentence that follows.
“Lucia. Rear door. Comms unit. Rafe’s sensor feed on your phone. You are our eyes.”
She does not argue. She does not freeze. She grabs the comms unit and the silver USB drive from the counter. She doesn’t just shove it into her waistband; she zips it into the internal tacticalpocket of her jacket, feeling the weight of the data press against her ribs. It’s the only leverage they have left, and she treats it like the nuclear trigger it is. She takes the handgun from the drawer beside the stove and she moves to the rear exit and takes position with the weapon in her right hand and the radio in her left and her dark eyes scanning the tree line through the cracked door.
Costa women do not panic. They calculate. I have never been more grateful for that than right now.
Rafe’s perimeter sensors gave us thirty seconds of warning. Thirty seconds between the alert and the first shadow crossing the eastern tree line. In tactical terms, thirty seconds is a lifetime. It is enough to arm, position, and establish firing lanes. It is the difference between an ambush and a prepared defense.
I take the front window. Rifle shouldered. Scope up. The mountain is dark. Pine shadows layered on pine shadows. Snow on the ground reflecting enough ambient light to give me contrast. The cold air hits the back of my throat and tastes like iron and pine resin. My breath comes out in a thin cloud that I angle away from the scope because vapor on glass is a dead man’s mistake.
Movement in the tree line. Two hundred meters. Multiple contacts. Moving in a staggered formation that tells me these are not amateurs. Military training. Cartel money buys competent killers. They are using the pine trunks for cover and advancing in a leapfrog pattern, one man moving while two hold position.
Good tactics. Wrong cabin.
“Three on the eastern approach,” Lucia’s voice on comms. Calm. Reading Rafe’s sensor data like she has been doing this her whole life. “Two more circling south. They are trying to flank.”
“Rafe. South.”
One word. He is gone. The cabin’s south-facing window opens without sound and six foot four of silent lethality drops into the snow and dissolves into the tree line like the mountain swallowed him.