SIX
MAGGIE
The Glock feelslike coming home.
I chamber a round with muscle memory so deep it's automatic, check the mag even though I watched Frost load it twenty seconds ago, test the weight in my hand. Fifteen rounds plus one in the chamber. Not enough for six trained enforcers, but it's what I have.
Product. That's what I am to my brother. To the cartel. Not Maggie Brooks, combat medic, sister, person. Justinventorywith a fifty-thousand-dollar price tag. Or two-hundred and twenty, if you’re my brother.
The thought should terrify me. Maybe it will later. Right now, it just makes me angry.
Frost is at the window, night vision down, counting. "Six tangos. Two vehicles. Heavily armed. May be more. Can’t be certain. Probably no more than eight." His voice is steady, clinical. Combat mode. "They're staging at the road junction. Half a click out."
Half a kilometer. Close enough to be a problem. Far enough that we have time.
"Why are they waiting?" I move to the window beside him, staying low, weapon ready.
"Assessing the location. Planning their approach." He glances atme, and I catch something in his expression I can't quite read. "Professional. They're not rushing in like the warehouse crew."
"Because they know you're here now. They know what you can do."
"They know what we can do." The correction is subtle but deliberate. "You dropped those vehicles. They'll factor that in."
Thewehits different than it should. Like we're a team. Like we’re something other than a combat medic and a rogue operator trapped in an abandoned ranch with six killers closing in.
"How long do we have?" I ask.
"Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen." He pulls back from the window and starts checking weapons in the locker with efficient, practiced movements. "They'll send someone to scout first. Test our defenses. Once they know what they're dealing with, they'll commit."
"So we have time to prepare?"
"Some." He pulls out an AR-15, checks it, and then hands it to me along with three magazines.
I take it, check the action, sight down the barrel.
Something shifts in his expression. Respect, maybe. Or something darker. Are you scared?"
"I'm not scared." It's mostly true. The fear is there, cold and heavy in my stomach, but it's buried under something sharper. Fury. At Tyler. At the cartel. At every man who ever looked at a woman and saw dollar signs instead of a person. "I'm angry."
"Angry works." He moves to the table and starts laying out ammunition, weapons, and supplies with the precision of someone who's done this countless times. "Channel it. Use it. Don't let it make you reckless."
"I've been in firefights before. I know how to operate under pressure."
"Combat medic firefights are different than this."
"How?"
He looks at me, and there's something raw in his eyes. "Because this time you're the target. You’re shooting to kill. You’re not the one patching up the casualties. That changes things."
He's not wrong. Every firefight I've been in, I was behindthe lines. Waiting for the wounded. Trying to put people back together after violence tore them apart. I've never been the one actively trying to kill another human being.
The distinction matters more than I want to admit.
"So what's the play?" I move to the table and start loading magazines. My hands are surprisingly steady. "They come in hard, we defend?"
"We make them pay for every inch." He's moving furniture now, creating barriers, setting up fields of fire. "Windows are our advantage. We can see them coming. Pick them off before they breach."
"And if they get inside?"
