15
The C-130’s engines had a rhythm that worked its way into her bones, a steady metallic hum that blurred time into a single, endless vibration.
Bailee wished she could shut herself down the same way, and keep everything locked inside a box, throw away the key, and stop thinking about everything that waited ahead.
First, there was the mission. They’d been in the air nearly twelve hours, one refuel in Panama, and she’d stopped trying to count how long ago California had fallen away beneath them. The team had been spun up the instant Fly and Than filed their Annapolis applications, Bear’s pride still warming his eyes.
Now, pride had no place here. One of their own was missing.
Mara Duran, field operative, former classmate, sometimes friend, had gone dark in the Cordillera Verde region, along with Ethan Voss, an FBI Evidence Response tech. Both were presumed taken, likely linked to the growing network of human-trafficking operations tied to the disappearances of Indigenous women and girls.
The red cabin lights threw the cargo bay into a dim, surreal world. Hammocks hung between tie-down points, a tangle of nylon and fatigue. Most of the team had crashed hours ago, bodies swaying gently in the aircraft’s subtle roll. Someone snored. Someone else muttered in his sleep. The sound barely rose above the low thunder of the engines.
Bailee’s gut tightened. They were staging in Rio first, but across the border in Bolivia was where her cousin Taryn’s trail had gone cold. Not being able to find her felt like another failure of her family, of her people. Bringing even one girl home would mean something profound.
But the heaviest weight wasn’t the mission. It was the hotel.
Hotel Orquídea Atlântica. The Atlantic Orchid. The same place Zorro and Bear had been wounded.
Bailee sat near the tail in the strap-hanger seats, webbing stretched across the fuselage, the metal deck cold beneath her boots. This was where support personnel rode, the ones who weren’t part of the brotherhood. She didn’t mind. She was used to being the outlier.
The air smelled of hydraulic fluid, jet fuel, and recycled oxygen, sharp, dry, faintly metallic. The bay stayed at a steady chill that gnawed through layers of fabric but never froze you out. Still, it left her fingers numb around the clasp of her harness.
Her man sat beside her, as close as protocol allowed, Flint at his boots, the Malinois dozing, black fur gleaming under the red lights. Bear hadn’t moved much since takeoff, just that quiet, watchful stillness he carried everywhere, the kind that made her feel both safe and seen.
He should have been in a hammock, asleep like the others. She’d told him that twice, three times maybe, but he’d just given her that look, the one that said he’d already decided otherwise.
“You don’t have to sit back here with me,” she’d said.
“I sit where I want to sit,” was all he’d answered.
That was that.
He hadn’t said another word. He didn’t have to. His presence filled the space, steady as the bulkhead behind him. Every time the plane shuddered through turbulence, she found herself watching him instead of the warning lights, anchoring herself to the calm written in his posture.
Somewhere up front, Zorro laughed softly in his sleep. D-Day mumbled something about barbecue. The team was relaxed, unbothered. For them, Rio was just another waypoint, another op in the book.
For her, it was where she’d started to unravel for Bear, and if only one thing came out of this mission, she hoped it would be clarity. Why this city still carried blood, fear, and madness…and want.
The first time she’d flown into Rio, the world had come apart in smoke and gunfire. Every time the engines dipped or the hull flexed, she could still hear that night, the gunfire, the screams, Bear’s voice calling her name through the chaos. It lived in her muscles, a memory her body refused to unlearn.
She drew a slow breath and exhaled through her nose. It’s different this time. You’re different this time. The lie didn’t hold. She closed her eyes and drifted.
At the first bump and jolt, Bailee came awake, cradled against the warmth of Bear, his arm around her, nightmares fragmenting into harmless tangles of thought.
Bear’s voice cut through the hum, low and rough. “Altitude drop. We’ll hit descent soon.”
She nodded, not trusting her voice. Through the bulkhead, she felt the subtle shift as the aircraft nosed downward, trading thin, cold air for the humid thickness rising from the Atlantic.
Within the hour, the heat would find them, the kind that clung to skin and refused to let go, the kind that smelled of salt, rain, and ghosts.
She looked toward nothing, imagining the sprawl of Rio’s coast below, the glitter of favelas, the white arc of Ipanema Beach. She’d come here for answers she wasn’t sure she wanted. Sitting beside Bear in that dim red light, she didn’t know if his nearness steadied her or made it worse.
When the landing gear thumped down and the plane began its slow arc toward Galeão, he caught her glance and held it.
“You good?” he asked.
She wanted to say yes. She wanted to believe it.
