Steady ground.
Delaney took a breath and made sure her voice was level before she spoke. “So, what’s our mission?”
Noah went to the center of the war room where he picked up a slim remote from the table and turned it toward the massive wall screen. It blinked to life, casting a cold blue glow over the high-tech space. The room was lined with monitors, encrypted gear, and intel boards. Ruby’s and Owen’s money and design had built Crossfire Ops into a fortress disguised as a ranch compound.
Images filled the screen. An aerial view of a sprawling property tucked deep in the Hill Country. Low buildings with metal roofs. A perimeter fence. Carefully maintained gravel roads winding between structures. A garden. A therapy pool. From a distance, it looked like a luxury retreat.
“This is the Hale Institute,” Noah said. “Private recovery center about an hour from here and tucked away on over 200 acres. Clients pay high six figures to spend time off the radar in a carefully controlled setting. It’s run by Dr. Cyrus Hale, a licensed psychologist with a background in trauma therapy, behavior modification, and whathe calls ‘adaptive reprogramming.’”
“Is that code for brainwashing?” Eli asked.
“From what we’ve learned so far, yes,” Noah confirmed without a shred of hesitation.
He clicked to the next image. Closer shots of the compound. A shaded courtyard. A windowless dormitory wing. Two men in plain clothes, but carrying radios and tactical knives. Not just staff. Security.
“There’s a mix of clients,” the boss went on. “Some older. Some teenagers. Most are sent by family members with very deep pockets and no patience for healing through more conventional, more public means.”
Delaney felt something twist low in her gut. On paper, it didn’t sound criminal. But she knew too well how easily places like this could hide behind clinical language and confidentiality agreements.
“Why are we involved?” Eli asked.
Noah clicked the remote again, and a photo filled the screen. A young woman with tangled brown hair and wide, dazed eyes. Her face was scraped and bruised. She wore a shapeless gray sweatshirt that looked two sizes too big.
“This is Olivia Camden,” Noah said. “Just turned eighteen. She escaped the institute and made it to a roadside motel near Fredericksburg. Clerk called her mother, who in turn, got in touch with us. The mother doesn’t trust the cops since she says they’ve been stonewalling her search forher daughters.”
Delaney stepped closer, studying the photo. Olivia’s expression wasn’t just fear. It was exhaustion. The kind that came from being watched, silenced, and stripped of control.
“She wasn’t a court-ordered placement,” Noah continued. “She and her sister, Ava, were both signed in involuntarily by their grandfather. Ava’s still inside.”
Eli muttered something under his breath that Delaney didn’t catch. “She left her sister behind?”
Noah nodded. “Olivia says she couldn’t find her. She claims clients are locked away on the grounds and are severely punished for resisting treatment. Isolation. Sleep deprivation. Some kind of behavioral resets that aren’t in the brochure.”
The words were careful, clinical. But the meaning behind them was familiar. Abuse under a different name.
“Why did the grandfather have the girls admitted to a place like that?” Delaney wanted to know.
Noah clicked the remote again. Another photo appeared on the screen. The man in the image looked to be in his late sixties, silver hair parted with precision, face lined but stern. He wore a navy blazer and sat behind a mahogany desk, posture rigid and eyes flat with disapproval.
“Lawrence Melborne,” Noah explained. “The girls’ grandfather. Retired judge. Very old-school. He caught Ava and Olivia at a party about sixweeks ago. Loud music, underage drinking, a few boys. Nothing out of the ordinary for teenagers, but he saw it differently.”
Delaney’s jaw tightened as she watched the man’s frozen expression on screen.
“Their mother, Vivian Camden, was out of the country on business and had left the girls in his care since the bio-dad is out of the picture,” Noah went on. “The grandfather asserted what I’ll call unofficial temporary guardianship and had both girls admitted to the Hale Institute without their mom’s knowledge.”
“Lawrence Melborne just… put them there?” she asked, the disbelief dripping from her voice.
“He called it an emergency intervention,” Noah answered on a soft huff. “When Vivian got back from her business trip, the girls were gone. He refused to tell her where they were. Said they were safe, getting help for reckless behavior that she had allowed to happen. Vivian spent nearly a month digging through sealed placement records to find them.”
“She must have been out of her mind with worry,” Eli muttered.
“Along with being furious,” Noah supplied. “But she’s also used to being pushed around by her father. It’s clear she’s not the one in charge in that family.”
“But she wants her daughters back,” Delaney said, looking again at Olivia’s bruised face.
“Yes,” Noah replied. “Vivian’s the one whogot in touch with us. Went through an old contact of Owen’s and paid up front. She didn’t want this going through law enforcement or the courts. Or through her own father, who might have shut down her search. And she doesn’t want headlines. She just wants her daughters out before something worse happens.”
Delaney nodded slowly, feeling the familiar tension coil in her chest. “Lawrence Melborne and the facility owner are not going to let them walk out,” she said, still studying the grandfather’s photo.
