The cabin behind him exploded into movement—doors quietly closing with purpose, boots moving with silent purpose, voiceshushed.
“Number?” he asked.
RITA’s voice came over the mic. “Drone footage shows at least a dozen to the east. Another dozen to the west and north. Eight coming in across from the lake.”
Nearly four to one.
Armed, trained, lethal.
Coming for her.
Nikos’s jaw clenched. He turned back to the shoreline and sprinted faster.
Kiki spotted him then, her expression twisted with regret as she stepped forward. Her head was already shaking back and forth before he spoke.
“You need to go,” he said, his voice tight. “Now.”
She shook her head again. “Nikos?—"
He reached up and touched her lips with his fingers, silencing her. “I need to know you are safe, Kiki. We’ve got this.”
She kissed the tips of his fingers and lifted her hand to grasp his. Her eyes darkened. He knew she was seeing things none of the rest of them could.
“You don’t know what you are up against. I do,” she murmured.
“Neither do they,” he replied.
“You can handle Benoit’s men. I have to be the one to face Benoit and Eric,” she warned.
“If it comes down to that. Until then, stay with Cosmos and RITA in the safe room. They’ll be following what’s going on and communicating with us.”
She nodded reluctantly. He bent and captured her lips, pouring every bit of his love for her into it before stepping back. She gave him atrembling smile before she released a deep breath and strode toward the house.
Nikos watched her go, then turned back to the forest. He knew what she could do. She could end the entire thing with a thought. But, he also knew the toll it took on her from the memories she had shared with him earlier.
He would protect her from having to go through that again if he could.
He rolled his shoulders. It was time to end what had started eight years ago.
Twenty
The air went still, like the calm before a major storm. Nikos had felt this type of stillness numerous times before—right before a battle.
He stood in the center of the long gravel driveway, his boots planted wide, the rifle in his hands held low but ready. The black SUV approached with the slow, controlled crawl.
He tracked it with his eyes, narrowing them when the two men sitting in front came into view.
Intel poured through him.The driver: Average height. Mid-30s. European heritage. Buzz cut. White-knuckling the wheel like he didn’t want to be here.
Passenger:Older male, late 50s, early 60s. Caucasian. Calm. Formidable. Surveying the situation.
It wasn’t the driver that set Nikos’s instincts screaming. It was the man riding shotgun—the one sitting composed, like a spider who already knew where every thread of the web was spun.
“Got eyes on the SUV,” Nikos murmured into the comm. “Two men. The passenger’s triggering every warning bell I’ve got.”
RITA’s smooth, husky voice flowed through the earpiece like silk over steel.
“Passenger is Benoit Jeffries. Former military research scientist. Discharged—honorably, though barely—after an incident involving classified tech at a DARPA-affiliated black site in Nevada. He disappeared into the private sector under the name GenTech Solutions, a biotech think tank with too much funding and no oversight. They tried to recruit Cosmos. He declined. Strongly.”
