"Where are you going?" He's watching me with narrowed eyes, but I have nothing here to hide from him. I turn to meet his gaze, wondering if I can actually trust that truce we made.
"Work." The word feels surreal given everything that's happened in the past twelve hours. "I have a taskforce meeting this morning and if I don't show up, it raises questions I can't afford to answer."
"You're going to sit in a briefing and pretend everything is normal while a man you stabbed is bleeding in your apartment."There's no judgment in his tone, just observation, and I almost laugh at the absurdity of it.
"That's exactly what I'm going to do." My keys are on the counter and I grab them along with my bag, slinging it over my shoulder. "And you're going to stay here and try not to die before I get back."
He doesn't respond, but the look he gives me suggests he understands the stakes as well as I do. When I leave the apartment, he's still sitting at my kitchen table with his coffee, and I lock up, not knowing if my new friend Jace Morelli is going to be there when I get back or if I'll return home to a bomb or some other device intended to do to me what he's already done to at least four of my former colleagues.
At work, my new commander, Lieutenant Colonel Sarah Mitchell, stands at the front of the room reviewing documents on a tablet, and when she sees me enter, her expression is neutral. "Staff Sergeant Hart, good, you're here. I need your report on the weapons smuggling operation."
The words trigger an automatic response, years of training kicking in to deliver information with clarity and professionalism despite the exhaustion pulling at every part of me. "Yes, ma'am, we've tracked three shipments in the past two weeks, all originating from overseas suppliers with ties to former military contacts. The pattern suggests coordination at a level above street distribution, likely involving someone with access to logistics networks and secure transportation."
I walk in, setting my bag on the table and eyeing the coffee pot in the corner. It's empty, which means I'll be asked to make more. I'm the low man on the totem here and I hate it. I outrankedeveryone at my last post except Bryan, and this is humiliating. Just another price I have to pay for what he did to me.
Mitchell nods and makes notes on her tablet while I continue the briefing, outlining the progress we've made and the gaps that still exist in our intelligence. The whole time I'm talking, my mind is trying to figure out how to access Bryan's files without triggering every security protocol designed to stop exactly what I'm planning.
Ten minutes—that's all I'll have once I breach the system, and in that ten minutes, I need to locate and download personnel records, assignment details, and private files that lie buried behind layers of classification and restricted access. One mistake, one wrong keystroke, and I'll be locked out before I can get what we need.
And if I get caught before we have the proof, Bryan wins. He walks away clean while I rot in a military prison, and Jace finishes his list before his boss decides he's expendable. We both lose, and the people Bryan murdered stay locked in limbo with no justice, all while he goes on to whatever promotion or up-rank awaits him. That thought sickens me.
Once I make that access and pull those files, there's no going back. My career, my freedom, my entire future hinge on whether we can move fast enough to stay ahead of the people who want us dead.
When Mitchell dismisses the team, I return to my desk and stare at my computer screen, the cursor blinking in the login field while my hands rest on the keyboard. All the information I need is in this system, protected and classified and waiting for someone brave enough or desperate enough to reach for it.
But not today.
Today, I go through the motions and pretend everything is normal while a hitman recovers in my apartment and Captain Jason Bryan continues his cleanup operation, unaware that his next target is planning to burn his entire world down.
But soon. Very soon.
And when that moment comes, I'll be ready.
5
JACE
When Sabine leaves, her house gets quiet real fast. My leg throbs with every heartbeat and the fever makes everything feel distant and unreal, but I'm alone now, and that means opportunity. Training says to use the time wisely, to learn everything possible about the woman who stabbed me, because I have some sort of verbal truce with her now. We've made this arrangement like symbiotes, and the more I know about her, the better I'll be in the end.
Standing takes effort, and the walk from the kitchen table to her bedroom feels longer than it felt coming out here. My injured leg drags slightly with every step and pain radiates up through my hip. I didn't make the bed because I can barely stand, and the sheets are stained from where my wound seeped, but they're not as bad as the floor. My blood is everywhere. No doubt about my DNA being present if she did decide to call the cops.
Her dresser stands against the far wall with nothing on top except a lamp and a small dish that holds spare change and hair ties. The drawers are disgustingly organized with everything folded to almost sharp lines. Shirts in the top drawer, pants inthe second, and when I open the third drawer, I find exactly what I expected to find and also what I wasn't looking for.
Her bras and panties are all cotton and practical, nothing sexy or silky, and under them sits a small zippered pouch that my hands open before my brain can decide whether this crosses a line I shouldn't cross. I'm here snooping in a target's bedroom, and I find a dildo and a vibrating bullet. God, how embarrassing for her, but what a turn-on for me. My dick twitches as I close the pouch and set it back where I found it, and that's when I see the notebook tucked beneath a stack of sports bras in the back corner of the drawer.
The leather is worn and cracked at the edges, the pages yellowed, showing years of handling. A diary, maybe, or a journal where she documented things she couldn't say out loud. My hands pull it free and open it to a random page, and the date at the top readsOctober 2022.
Her handwriting is flawless, like her training. Every loop of a letter, every I dotted and T crossed is a work of art. My eyes skim over every word of every entry as I lower myself onto the bed and relax a little. This isn't a "dear diary" sort of book. This is a military journal where this woman wrote down specifics of things that happened to her, things she did on missions.
I flip through a few pages noting how she wrote down specific commands given by specific people and her reactions to them. They're stamped with time and date, and even locations at some spots. Like she's recording for her own record what happened so she wouldn't forget.
When I stumble upon an entry from around two years ago, my reading slows. I see the name she mentioned before, Captain Jason Bryan, and suddenly, her handwriting isn't so neat andmeticulous anymore. Now it's scrawling, scribbles and rushed writing, like her hands were shaking. It's hard to make out some of the letters at times, but I get the gist.
This sick fuck forced them to walk into a house or building where innocent people were and then proceeded to kill them all with his own service weapon after some of his men protested and refused to help.
It makes me feel for her, but I'm not here to judge anyone or take sides. If that man thought it was the right thing, she was obligated to follow his command, regardless. He outranked her. She was his subordinate.
But I keep reading. And the thoughts get messier and the words darker.
