1
MAKESHIFT HQ, SOUTH AMERICA
Lark Strattan snagged the orange tension ball from the shared desk in the middle of the hangar as she marched past, gaze focused on her feet. Heel, toe. Heel, toe. The rhythm of her steps drowned out her pulse and allowed her to concentrate on the mission's details—and only those. Not the white noise of everything that came right before… and certainly not what might or might not happen after.
Those things were currently out of her control.
The tang of rust and over-ripe mangoes clung to the hangar like sweat on old steel. Lark had commandeered the abandoned hangar just outside a rural South American village three months ago. Now, under flickering fluorescent lights and the buzz of ancient ceiling fans, it was the nerve center of her current mission.
A large table, scarred with burn marks and knife scores, was cluttered with satellite maps, laptops, water bottles, and a half-eaten protein bar. Dented lockers lined one wall. A whiteboard smudged with mission notes and comms codes had been pushed against the other wall. A coffee maker chugged unhappily in the corner.
Just beyond, a hallway led to a barracks-type room that she and some of her team had called home for longer than she’d care to admit.
Nearly identical scenes had been Lark’s life for the better part of fifteen years. She loved her career more than anything. It had become her lover, her husband, her family. She knew nothing else and didn’t care to find out if there was an existence outside the world of dark, covert ops.
This was better than sex. Well, almost. A grin tugged at the corner of her lips, but she quickly squelched the memory and refocused on the details of the mission.
She paced the length of the room with military precision. Nerves weren’t new—they were…predictable. More importantly, they were useful. She could work with nerves. The unknown kept her focused.
"Specs, how we doing on the uplink?" she asked.
Janie "Specs" Trujillo, crouched at the console in oversized glasses and a headset that made her look like she was flying a starfighter, glanced up. “Clean line. Meeting’s set. So far, so good... considering." Specs had come from the FBI, and until now, had spent most of her career in a basement working sex crimes and chasing IP addresses. Talk about being underutilized. The woman was pure genius when it came to anything tech related. But Specs had a weak spot. Most people did. Unfortunately, this was a big one, and while they were working on correcting it, Specs wasn’t ready, which was why she was sitting in this hangar, and not out in the field.
Once she learned her way around a few more weapons and became more comfortable with… well… killing, Lark would unleash the beast that lived somewhere inside Specs.
“Being good is exactly when everything goes to shit," muttered Wes Lantham, flipping a blade open and closed from a nearby folding chair. He wore dark camo pants and a black V-neck shirt. His hair was a little too long. The scruff on his face a little too… scruffy. And his attitude was darker than a raccoon on a midnight raid.
"Positive vibes only, Wes," Lark shot back.
“I only do positive after missions when it involves a warm female body and a bottle of tequila.” Wes stabbed the knife into the wooden desk.
Alvarez Benito snorted. “You, tequila, and women are never a good mix,” He murmured from his perch on the windowsill, boots up, rifle across his knees, eyes closed, as if he weren’t paying attention. Only, Alvarez wasn’t the kind of guy who let anything slip by. If he did, it was because he chose to. He was the type of guy who could blend in anywhere. He could play any role. His performances were so convincing that he deserved multiple Oscars. He could also sell you a bottle of free water for fifty bucks. But the man was about as loyal as they came. Hell, if she asked, he’d run to the corner store and buy her a box of tampons without batting an eyelash. “Thought you learned that six months ago when we were in Cuba.”
“Only thing he learned was not to drink the worm at the bottom of the bottle.” Lark rolled her eyes.
“Yeah, well, when this op is done, I’m finding me a nice girl… a sunny beach… and I’m gonna relax… with some tequila.” Wes adjusted his chair and continued to fiddle with his knife.
“This is my last op, period,” Alvarez said. “I got twenty-two years in. I did my time. I got my pension along with all my limbs.”
“Don’t go and jinx us now,” Wes said.
“We walk out of this one with no injuries, I’ll not only buy you that bottle of tequila, but I’ll go vegan like Mina’s been bugging me to do for months.”
"That’s on record," Mina Bakari called from the coffee machine, which she only used to heat her water for her specialtea, raising an eyebrow. "And I’m holding you to it." Mina had spent her military career proving her worth simply because she was a woman, something Lark understood. But Mina was an asset to any team—and her ties to South America gave her insight into the culture that couldn’t be gained through simple research.
They laughed, and for a moment, it was almost easy to forget what they were doing there. Almost.
However, no amount of light banter could cut through the tension in the air, growing thick like the humid mist that crept down from the Andean peaks before a storm. She loved a good storm rolling in and so did…he.The memory tugged at her brain—at the wrong time—like it always did.Healways crawled into her subconscious, whether she wanted him there or not.
“You doing alright, boss?” Alverez asked in that low, even tone that cut through noise without ever rising above the conversational level. “Your hackles look higher than usual.”
“Just normal mission nerves.” She paused, tossed the ball up in the air, caught it, squeezed it, and then repeated the motion once before continuing her pacing. This mission had been in the making for three months. The buy was set to go down in a couple of hours. Her operative, Torin Reece, was already in place. He’d been working undercover for the last few months, having infiltrated a Middle Eastern company with financial ties to terrorist factions ready to shell out millions for stolen U.S. military AI tech.
Lark and her team were using the actual AI prototype. Risky, but Colonel Lorre had fought to get it approved. It had been his idea, but one that she hadn’t argued against—too hard.
Lorre had to take that fight to meetings in DC. Well, not personally, since at the end of the day, he wasn’t the man taking a team in the field. That had fallen on Lark, and it made her twitchy for other reasons.
But she often wondered whether Dustin—Colonel Amber—would have made a different choice regarding the AI prototype. However, she’d never know since he’d had to step down for personal reasons, and that’s when Lorre took oversight of this mission.
