The rest of the team piled in. Flynn. Decker. Leo. Alistair. Gage. Rafe scrambled in last, a remote detonator still in his hand.
“Just in case,” he said, holding it up.
“Don’t even think about it,” Ethan growled as he hauled himself aboard. “We’ve already caused too much damage.”
Rafe simply shrugged and slammed the door shut behind him. “We’re loaded. Get us out of here, Mav.”
“Hold on to your butts,” Nolan called cheerfully from the cockpit, and the helicopter lurched skyward.
My stomach dropped into my toes, and I let out a strangled, startled laugh that was dangerously close to a sob. “Is he quoting Jurassic Park?”
“Don’t get him started,” Trent said.
Sophia clung to me with both hands, her face buried against my chest, little fingers digging into my arms. I held her close, my heart pounding so hard I was sure she could feel it through my tactical vest.
Gage sat across from us, leaning against the vibrating wall of the helicopter, his face half-hidden in shadow. Something made me look up, and I caught him staring at Sophia with an expression that made my heart stutter. Not just concern or relief, but raw pain mingled with a kind of awestruck wonder, like he was seeing a ghost or a miracle. His eyes traced her features with such intensity that I instinctively pulled her closer.
His gaze snapped to mine. He realized I’d caught him looking, and his expression shuttered. He looked away, but not before I saw something close to grief flicker across his face.
The helicopter banked sharply, making my stomach lurch back up into my throat as we gained altitude, leaving the chaos of the highway behind. The disabled convoy. The guards sprawled on the pavement. The flames from Rafe’s charges. The flashing lights of police vehicles arriving at the scene.
“Finnish authorities are not happy,” Kate reported over the radio. “Multiple units responding. Reports of American mercenaries conducting an armed assault on a public highway.”
“Fuck,” Ethan said. Just that.
“Gets better.” Ozzy’s voice now. “US State Department just got a priority call from Finnish Foreign Ministry. They’re demanding explanations. They’re using words like ‘act of war’ and ‘international incident.’”
Through the helicopter window, I watched another police vehicle arrive. Then another. Then what looked like military vehicles. Uniformed soldiers spilling out. Securing the scene.
We’d done it. We’d gotten Sophia back.
But at what cost?
“Mommy,” Sophia whispered against my chest. “Are the bad people coming after us?”
I glanced at Trent. His jaw muscles knotted and his gaze was locked on the world slipping by beyond the plexiglass window—patches of dark forest giving way to rolling fields. When his eyes finally met mine, I saw the math in them: we’d just crossed a line we couldn’t uncross.
“No, sweet pea,” I whispered, pressing Sophia’s little body against my tactical vest even as distant sirens wove into the helicopter’s drone. The misty afternoon light flashed against the spinning rotors as we banked hard toward the coast—toward Estonia, toward anywhere that wasn’t Finnish airspace. “No one is taking you from me again.”
Sophia buried her face in my chest, her fingers curled around the fabric of my shirt. A soft whimper trembled through her.
Alistair ducked past the bulkhead, his satchel of medical tools clinking. “Let me check her over.”
I clenched my arms tighter around Sophia, but Trent’s hand settled firmly on my shoulder, forcing me to loosen my grip. “Let him work, Evelyn. We have to know if she’s hurt.”
I eased my arms an inch. Alistair knelt on the wet metal floor, boots squeaking on a slick patch of spilled water. He brushed Sophia’s bangs aside, his fingertips cool against her skin as hefound her pulse. He checked her pupils with a flashlight’s beam, then ran his fingers along her skull, pausing at faint bruises.
“No broken bones,” he murmured, his crisp accent softening each word. “Some bruising on her arms, a few pinpoint marks—looks like injections. But nothing life-threatening.” He met my eyes. “Physically, she’s okay.”
That ‘physically’ hung between us like a warning. We both knew the real scars ran deeper.
Ethan shifted on the opposite bench, his boot scuffing against the deck plates. “How long until we’re clear?” he asked, staring at the rivets in the floor.
“Twenty minutes to coastline,” Nolan’s voice crackled from the cockpit, low and measured. “Then open water—once we hit international airspace, they can’t touch us.”
“They can try,” Decker muttered, reloading his sidearm. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone took potshots over open water.”
“Comforting,” Flynn replied, running a hand over the butt of his pistol as if to reassure himself.
