“Deal,” I answer. I tuck a stray curl behind her ear and stand to go. “Stay inside. Lock the doors. No peeking.”
“Promise,” she says, but I can see the way she watches my face as I walk out. I know she understands more than she lets on.
We wait until dusk, that slant of light when the world looks like it might hide anything you move through it. The beater van is rust-streaked and loud—perfect for blending into the docks—and I’d had it tuned and insulated for exactly this kind of night. We slip into our roles like second skins. Ronan’s face goes into that focused mode where humor falls away, and something colder takes over. Rowan runs through the timeline one more time, cadence clipped, movements efficient. Emerson checks our comm frequencies and distance windows, the numbers crisp as a surgeon’s incision.
They hover around me like shadows that refuse to let go, each of them protective in their own way. Ronan watches every move I make, his sharp eyes tracking my hands like he’s waiting for an excuse to step in and take over, torn between pride and the need to shield me from danger. Rowan stands close enough that I can feel the tension rolling off him, his jaw tight, his silence heavy with the words he’ll never say aloud. He hates it—hates that I’m stepping into the same fire as they are—but he knows better than to try and stand in my way. Emerson is the calm between them, his presence steady and commanding, a quiet authority that makes everyone fall in line without question. Together, they’re a wall around me, a storm I somehow stand in the center of, safe and burning all at once.
We move through the house in a quiet, practiced rhythm, locking it down like it’s second nature. Every door and window gets checked twice, the sound of bolts sliding home breaking the stillness of the early evening. Rowan handles the back entrances, testing each latch until he’s satisfied nothing’s getting in or out. Ronan checks the motion sensors, resetting the alarm system, and arming theperimeter cameras. He even adds a few new deterrents—small, improvised traps that would make anyone think twice about stepping foot inside.
I focus on Kimber’s space, double-checking that anything she might need is close at hand. A second phone, fully charged and programmed with our numbers, sits on her nightstand. Her window locks get extra reinforcement, and I test her panic button twice to be sure it connects straight to our alert feed. When I step back and glance around, the house feels a little too still, but secure.
The war room is last. It’s the one place Kimber can never wander into, not because we don’t trust her, but because she deserves the peace we can’t give her if she knows what’s stored there. I power down the monitors, switch the feeds to external view only, and lock both the steel door and the hidden latch. No passwords left visible, no photos she might stumble across. The less she knows, the better.
By the time we finish, dusk has deepened outside, shadows stretching across the walls. Emerson gives the final system check, confirming the house lockdown and perimeter motion grid, his calm voice steady in the low light. Ronan slips the EMP jammer into the van. Rowan seals the case of flash charges and stows them beside the rest of the gear, everything placed exactly where it belongs.
When we finally step outside, the house sits silent behind us—secure, fortified, and holding the one person we have left to protect.
Once we reach the drop point, we peel out of the van and form up. The moon hangs thin and sharp above us, the air heavywith river damp and machine oil. I lay out the plan carefully, step by step—because this hinges on timing and coordination more than raw force.
Ronan is assigned the north approach to the loading dock, where he’ll place the first charges along the primary support beams. I’ll handle the interior, setting the secondary charges along the central loadout corridors—enough to give way beneath their own weight and cripple the operation at its core. Rowan and Emerson are tasked with the records vault and executive offices. If there’s data, backups, or anything meant to preserve what they’ve built, their job is to wipe it clean.
Nothing in this place is meant to survive the night. There will be no recovery, no loose ends—and no one worth sparing.
“Timing,” Rowan says as he clicks on the radio. “Three minutes between cuts. One chance at the manual override. If the cameras loop, we stay invisible. If they don’t, we shift to Plan B.”
His gaze moves over each of us, deliberate, like he’s measuring more than bodies. This isn’t just about getting out alive—it’s about closing the door on what’s been hunting us.
The plan is clean. Precise. Get in, strike hard, and disappear.
Ronan tosses me a spare mic and a look that’s part warning and part worship. “If anyone moves wrong, we pull. No heroics.” His voice is soft but iron underneath.
I nod. “We pull out if we’re compromised. We hit hard if it isn’t.” My words are flint; they make the circle snap tight.
Emerson checks the timers once more, his breathing even. “We trigger on my mark,” he says. “Everyone clears to extraction point Alpha within sixty seconds.”
His eyes lock on mine, and the understanding passes between all of us at once—this works only if every step lands exactly where it’s meant to.
We move in like ghosts; the dock stretches before us like a maw. The plan is carved into our bones. I keep my head down, watch the shadows, and keep one pulse tuned to the feed in my pocket, where Dahlia’s bug blinks like a heartbeat. Everything hums in my ears: the wind, the soft creak of ropes, the distant thud of an engine. Somewhere in the quiet of that motion I feel the old fear flare and then die, replaced by something sharper—purpose.
The warehouse breathes around me—cold metal and oil, a dust smell that tastes like rust. I move through it the way I move through code and crowds: quiet, precise, every step measured, so it leaves nothing behind. Shadows are my ally; I keep to the racks, my shoulders brushing crates, so my silhouette never shows against the floodlights. My boot heels kiss the concrete and lift, soft as a whisper, and even my breath feels too loud until I convince it to steady.
The first charge goes exactly where it should. My fingers work without thinking, sticky pads slapping to hot steel, the timer set and tucked where it’s protected. I barely touch the comm, voice a whisper because a shout would be an invitation. “First one is set,” I say. Ronan’s answer is a soft click, then Rowan, then Emerson. Thecadence of their confirmations is the only thing that eases the jittering at the back of my skull.
I slip deeper between the pallets, scanning fast—angles, support beams, camera arcs. Night gives you only silhouettes and the suggestion of movement, which makes it easier to mistake stillness for safety. That’s why the second beam stops me cold. It shouldn’t be there. A hunched shadow of wiring and a cheap casing—someone beat us to the job, and they did it badly enough that any trained eye would see the difference.
My pulse doubles. My fingers go to the comm so fast I almost miss the static. “Guys, I’ve got—” The signal coughs, cuts. For a second I catch Ronan’s voice, ragged and panicked, “Berk—get—” then nothing but the hiss of broken channels. My mouth tastes like metal, and my hands go cold.
I don’t make a sound, letting the worry settle; panic makes noise, and noise will kill us. I press my back flat against a crate and let my eyes re-tune to the dark. The warehouse hums faintly—an HVAC in the distance, a forklift idling like a sleeping animal—and I use that to mask the small sounds of my movement. I trace the edge of a shadow to the left, drop onto a knee, and duck my head so only the crown of it shows. I can feel the old training—balance, the way you distribute weight so you can move or run without making a sound—as I slide along the bottom of the racks like a cat.
My phone vibrates against my leg, frantic and foreign to the quiet. I pull it out with the same no-fuss motion I used to remove a wire from a circuit board and check the screen. An unknown number. Video calls piling up. Between them, missed attempts fromthe guys. The screen pulses in a rhythm that almost mimics a heartbeat. The rational part of my brain wants to burn the whole place down and run, but another part—the part that likes to know the mechanics before it acts—twists, sharp and impatient.
I answer.
The image jolts to life, unfocused and chaotic. At first all I can make out are colors—gray, black, the flash of movement against a concrete wall. My first thought is Dahlia, maybe checking in with a poor signal, her usual grin breaking through the static to tease me for worrying. But then the feed steadies, and every trace of air leaves my lungs.
It isn’t her calling.
I angle the phone down just enough that the glow doesn’t touch my face, my heart hammering against my ribs. The screen flickers again, pulling the scene into clearer view, and the shape that fills it makes my blood run cold.