My butterfly.
Her hands pressed to my chest, her voice breaking: “You’ll never catch me, Dax. You never fucking do.”
God, maybe she’s right.
Maybe I won’t catch her.
Maybe I won’t even catch myself this time.
The silence builds until it’s a scream.
One more second.
One more breath.
One more heartbeat—My lungs lock.
The whole world tilts on that shimmer under the sand. The line. The trap. I keep my hand up—fist clenched—telling the others don’t move, don’t even breathe, but my own breath is shaking out in broken pieces.
Reese’s eyes flick to mine. Wide. Too wide. He knows.
Leo shifts on the fifty, his barrel locked on rooftops that look too quiet, too clean.
Even the new kid, Harris, has gone pale under all that grit, his Adam’s apple jerking like he’s trying to swallow down death.
The desert stares back at us. Empty. Waiting. Sweat slides down my spine, slow as blood. The air tastes like copper. Likethe second before lightning strikes. Like the second before your heart decides it’s done.
Every instinct in me screams to move—forward, back, anywhere but here but training pins me still.
Boots sunk into dust. Rifle steady. Every muscle wound tight enough to snap.
One more second.
One more heartbeat.
One more thought—Her.
Cassandra’s voice, sharp and soft all at once, cutting through the desert: “At least if I die here, I’ll die fighting for something.”
My hand trembles on the trigger because fuck, maybe that’s exactly what’s about to happen.
And then—The silence caves in.
The desert holds its breath.
Nothing moves. Not the kids on rooftops. Not the dogs that usually bark like sirens at strangers. Not even the wind.
Just us.
Five men frozen in the sun.
I can hear Harris breathing too loud through his mask. Hear Reese muttering under his breath—maybe a prayer, maybe a curse, maybe both. Hear the soft tick of Leo’s scope adjusting as he scans windows that stare back hollow.
My fist is still up. My whole arm burns with the weight of it.
One signal and we’re running. One twitch and someone dies.
I force my eyes back down. The line under the sand is thinner than a vein. C4 rig. Wire strung across the path like a smile waiting to split us open and Christ, it wants to.
