Ronan is already pacing, all coiled muscles and barely leashed impatience. Emerson’s jaw ticks—he’s the kind who swallows fear and spits it back as focus. They look at me the way a pack looks at its alpha: ready to move, ready to act, ready to collect what’s owed. The room smells of revenge and solder and metal—my blood under my nails from striking the keyboard too hard. My body aches to sprint, to tear this city open at the seams and shake answers loose. One truth drives every breath, every thought. I want Kimber back.
Rowan’s grin goes from thin to deadly. “What are you waiting for, baby?” he says. “Go get ready. We got some people to threaten.” The edge of his voice is sharp with a dark, ridiculous joy he gets from the hunt. It bounces off me like gasoline on a spark. I feel the heat all the way to my bones.
I stand and reach for my kit; the motions ritualized. Mags checked. Knives sliding home. The small laptop zipped into its case alongside the encrypted drives I’ll need. I pause at the monitor, just long enough to face the photo of Kimber taped to the corner of the screen. I touch the edge of her picture as if it can carry weight, draw a breath, and let the anger settle into purpose.
“Tonight, we don’t play coy,” I say, slinging the pack over my shoulder. “We make them flinch. Make them talk. We get the backup—take whatever they’ve hidden and make them beg.” The words land steady because they have to. Ronan’s handclamps my shoulder. Emerson nods, jaw locked. Rowan’s smile sharpens into a blade.
Dean, Bryce, and their cronies aren’t just targets anymore. They’re the men who tore our family apart. They’re about to learn what it means to be hunted by what they thought they’d destroyed. When we walk out that door, we move as a unit—with teeth. We move fast to cut off their exits. We move precise because this isn’t vengeance for its own sake. This is a rescue.
We cinch the last straps, check comms, and head for the van I had delivered that morning. Rowan opens my door, but before I can climb in, Emerson stops me with a firm arm across the frame—solid, immovable.
“Don’t go in without us,” he says, the warning clipped and unyielding. He carries his worry where control runs thin.
I give him a half-smile, half-promise. “I won’t.”
It’s not the full truth. If they corner us and make the wrong move, I’ll do what needs doing and give them a reason to scream.
We step out into bruised light, our engine rolling over like a predator coming awake. The city tightens around us—shadows stacked with excuses. The lead is narrow, hot, and ours.
Tonight, we remind them what happens when they touch what belongs to us.
The van eats up the dark like a throat taking a last bite. Ronan drives like he’s angry at the road itself, foot heavy, hands steady on the wheel, and his jaw tight. The dashboard is a constellation of gadgets and sticky notes, my scribbled coordinates stuck where I can see them. Outside, the city slides by in smeared streetlights and shuttered storefronts, and the occasional late-night silhouette of some nobody walking their dog. Inside, it’s small—close and breathing with us—full of gear and the low hum of focus.
I sit wedged between Rowan and Emerson, knees nearly touching Emerson’s elbow; the bulk of our packs sits behind us like a second skin. My palms are warm from my grip on the notepad, the ink smudged where I read and re-wrote the address a hundred times. Every tiny vibration of the van feels like a countdown. I can taste the metal of everything we lost when I swallow. Kimber’s face presses against the inside of my skull the way smoke presses against a window—impossible to ignore, impossible to clean off.
Ronan glances at me, and the corner of his mouth tries to make room for a grin, but it dies on his jaw. “Everything still locked down on your side?” he asks, voice low, careful.
“Yeah.” My voice is flat and steady because it has to be. If it wobbles, worry spreads like wildfire through the van; worry makes people fumble, and fumbles get people killed. I force my hands to stay calm, hiding the tremor that wants to crawl up my fingers, and instead tap the pen against the pad—slow, boring, steady—until the rhythm roots me. The sound is small and ridiculous, but it keeps the edges from fraying, keeps the rest of them focused on the plan instead of the fear in my chest.
Emerson snorts softly, the sound a mix of frustration and raw adrenaline. “You and your damn antiseptic paranoia. We’re good,” he mutters, dragging a hand down his face, exhaustion etched in every line. “Just get us there in one piece, Ronan. I want this cleaner to look me in the eye when he realizes he’s not untouchable anymore.” His tone hardens on the last word, and the van seems to absorb it, the air turning heavier, charged with shared intent.
Rowan catches my eye, and there’s a weight in it I don’t have words for—pride and grief braided together. He reaches over and palms my knee, quick and solid. “We hit them fast,” he says. “No drama. You give the order and we move.” It’s not a question. It’s a promise.
I fix my eyes on the road ahead, watching the GPS ticks pull us closer block by block. My mind runs on plans, contingencies, and quiet fail-safes—the threads that keep me from splintering. We’ve rehearsed entry and exit twice in the van; every movement burned into muscle memory. I run the briefing again out loud, crisp and deliberate, cutting through the engine’s growl because I need to hear it again to keep steady.
“Ronan, you take point. Rowan, rear. Emerson, sweep right. I go left—cut power if needed, get eyes on the cleaner’s room. If anyone spots Kimber, call out through the comms. No heroics.”
They murmur their agreement. The van carries the scent of old leather, gun oil, and the cheap coffee Emerson refuses to give up. The engine’s hum and the steady thrum of tires give my mind room to slip into familiar terrain—mapping exits, measuring angles, running the kind of math that keeps people breathing. Old habits lock into place; the same mechanics I used to burn the warehouses. Only tonight the margins are tighter. The stakes aren’t structures or money. They’re human.
For a moment my mind betrays me, and Kimber’s laugh ghosts over the van’s radio, a loop that isn’t really there. I pull it back like a leash. No fantasies. No assumptions. We operate with facts, coordinates, timing, and sightlines. That’s how we get kids back from men who think they own everything. That’s how I survive this without breaking the rest of me.
As we turn down the block, the neighborhood changes. The houses squat closer; porches huddle like conspirators. A single porch light burns on a house two doors down, haloing a woman folding laundry, unaware. The GPS pings again; the blue dot trembles and settles on a place I know in bone and instinct. An old warehouse converted into a shell office; discreet, unremarkable, perfect for a cleaner to hide in plain sight.
Ronan kills the noise in the van, leaving only the sound of the engine’s low rumble and our breathing. He keeps his eyes on the road, refusing to look at me, but he doesn’t need to. The set of his jaw, the tension in his shoulders—it all says the same thing. We’re doing this. I tap my notepad one last time before folding it into my palm like a small weapon. The van slows, coasting to a stop a block away. Through the windshield, the building looms ahead, its jagged outline a dark tooth biting into the night sky.
“Remember,” I say, because I always have to say it. “If it goes south, pull back. We don’t salvage egos. We salvage people.” The words land harder than I expect. Ronan’s jaw tightens; Rowan gives me that half-smile that means he’s already picturing breaking faces. Emerson’s hand finds my shoulder and squeezes once, a rough promise that I didn’t ask for but desperately need.
We climb out in a rhythm that seems practiced, boots quiet on gravel. The air is colder here, sharp enough to clear the haze from my head. I check the weight of the gear, the locks, the spare mags. We spread, three men and one woman, like a star, and the street swallows us into shadow.
For a heartbeat, the city feels ordinary—just another stretch of cracked pavement and empty sidewalks. Then the plan takes hold, and the surrounding stillness sharpens into focus. We move toward the warehouse because that’s what we do—we follow the lead, follow the heat, and when we find the rats hiding behind their lies, we drag them out by the roots. The hunt is tight and close, and I can feel it humming beneath my skin. I am everything they once feared I would become—calculated, cold, and dangerously alive. A ghost pulled from the grave, a past they thought they had buried for good.
The air around the warehouse feels different the closer we get—thicker somehow, like it’s holding its breath. The windowsare dark; the walls stained with old water damage, and the faint smell of oil and rot lingers in the damp air. Every sense I have is alive and clawing at me, whispering that this place isn’t as empty as it looks.
We move as one, boots silent over the gravel. Ronan takes point, his body a shadow ahead of me, every muscle coiled and ready. Rowan flanks left, scanning the perimeter, while Emerson brings up the rear, his weapon raised, eyes sharp. I pull my tools from my pocket, the small leather roll soft and familiar in my palm. The lock on the door is basic, a joke compared to the digital walls I’ve broken through before, but that’s what makes me uneasy. It’s too easy.
I kneel, slipping two picks into the lock. The faint click is all it takes. The door gives with a soft groan, just loud enough to make my pulse spike. I freeze, listening. Nothing. Just the low hum of a city pretending not to exist late at night.
“We’re in,” I whisper, glancing back. Ronan nods once, eyes sweeping past me into the dark.