“How can I ask them to face the enemy while I stay hidden?” Dave shot back.
“You’ll have to, eventually,” Stone said, voice low and hard.
“But not tonight,” Dave answered, gaze fixed on the beach—the men swarming the bluffs, the churn of surf, his home standing against the dark.
Forget Port Hueneme.
The war had come to his doorstep.
Gunfire raked the cliffs, muzzle flashes strobing through the fog. With Stone at his side, Dave dropped behind the stone retaining wall, scanning the fog-shrouded beach below.
He wasn’t sitting this one out.
Not tonight.
Not while his man and his team were out here in the trenches.
Just a handful of Genesis and YA held the estate, backed by bodyguards and a few Secret Service to fill the gaps. It wasn’t enough.
The others were still inbound—Pegasus from Ventura.
Too far to help.
Figures swarmed through the mist below, climbing the cliffs in disciplined formation. Too many for Franklin’s kind of rabble. Too sharp, too clean.
Boston ducked low as tracer fire cracked overhead. “What the hell—who are these guys?”
Sparrow hunched beside the wall near Dave and Stone, tablet clutched tight. “Not randoms. They’re organized. Look at the spacing—they know what they’re doing.”
Stone’s eye stayed locked to his scope. “Could be Franklin. Could be Titus. Doesn’t matter—we put them down the same.”
Law slammed a fresh mag into his rifle. “Good. Makes them easier to drop.”
“Hold,” Dave snapped before Boston could squeeze off a shot. “No one fires unless I call it. We don’t tip our hand until we know what we’re facing.”
“You’re impossible,” Stone’s voice cut low. “You built an army so you wouldn’t have to be in the line anymore.”
“And still ended up in it,” Dave said.
Stone exhaled hard through his nose. “You’re gonna make me gray before the gunfire does.”
Dave’s mouth twitched, eyes catching the faint glint of silver in Stone’s hair where the floodlights cut through the fog. “Too late for that,” he murmured.
Stone didn’t look at him, but the corner of his mouth curved, just barely, before the next burst of gunfire drowned the moment.
A round smacked stone inches from his face, spraying grit. Dave blinked hard, wiped blood from a shallow graze along his cheek.
“Shit!” Stone growled, yanking him close, shoving him behind his own body—shielding him with a ferocity that was pure instinct. Protective, unrelenting, badass. And in that split-second, Dave could not have loved him more.
Law cursed, dropped to a knee, and scanned the fog through his scope. “This is bullshit—we’re blind up here.”
“They came for us.” Stone exhaled slowly, tracking through the murk.
The fog ripped open in a burst of gunfire, muzzle flashes strobing along the rocks.
A figure emerged from the fog, coming down from the estate side—long ink-black hair plastered to his face, his frame all willowy grace that looked like a strong wind could knock himflat. Even in the chaos, he was fucking gorgeous, onyx eyes wide and burning, too soft for a battlefield like this.
“What the fuck?” Stone froze mid-crouch, weapon off target, eyes on the willowy stranger.
