I fired.
The shotgun roared twice. The man jerked backward, blood spraying across the wallpaper, and tumbled down the stairs.
"One down, front stairs," I called over the radio.
"Clear left!" Caleb shouted, sweeping into the dining room.
"Clear right!" Jacob echoed from the sitting room.
We moved deeper into the house, methodical and brutal.
A man burst from a side hallway, submachine gun in hand. Lucas took him with two quick shots, center mass. The man dropped like his strings had been cut.
"Two down, east hallway," Lucas announced.
Gunfire erupted from the back of the house—the Charleston Danes engaging targets.
"Three down, kitchen!" Silas's voice over the comms.
"Four down, back entrance!" Marcus added.
We pushed forward, room by room, angle by angle.
The house was a maze—hallways branching off, doors opening into sitting rooms and libraries and spaces I didn't have time to identify. But we'd done this before. Different houses, different continents, same brutal calculus.
Move. Clear. Confirm.
Another man appeared at the far end of the hallway, raising a rifle. Gideon and I fired simultaneously. The man's chest exploded in a spray of red, and he crumpled.
"Five down, second floor hallway," Gideon called.
I reloaded as we moved, shotgun shells hitting the floor with metallic clinks.
A door to my left burst open. A woman—no, a target—with a pistol. I pivoted, fired. She went down hard, pistol clattering across the hardwood.
"Six down, bedroom," I said.
We reached the back of the house, linking up with the Charleston Danes in what looked like a sunroom. Bodies on the floor. Blood on the walls. The acrid smell of gunpowder thick in the air.
"Clear!" Atlas called.
"Clear!" Ethan echoed.
Dad's voice crackled over the radio. "Montana Danes, kitchen. Now."
We moved.
The kitchen was massive—marble counters, stainless steel appliances, a farmhouse sink big enough to bathe in.
Dad stood in the center, shotgun lowered, staring at someone I couldn't see yet.
Then I rounded the corner and saw her.
The woman from the voice. Victoria.
She sat at the kitchen table, cigarette in hand, wrinkled face twisted into something between a smile and a sneer. Four men flanked her, weapons drawn and aimed at my father.
The tension in the room was a living thing.
