The fear didn’t freeze her—it ignited her.
She pushed forward into the smoke.
Consciousness came back in fragments—coldmetal under Blake’s cheek, the taste of salt and rust in his mouth.
Then pain.
A white-hot streak through his shoulder that pulsed with his heartbeat, turning every inhale into a knife edge.
He groaned and blinked, the dim flicker of an emergency light stuttering across the cargo hold. Shadows jumped and collapsed with each blink of power, the light barely strong enough to reveal the slick sheen of oil on the floor. The air was heavy with fumes and seawater and something sour—blood, maybe. His blood.
His hands were bound behind him, wrists raw where the rope bit into skin. The fibers were soaked, either from the humidity or the storm outside—it didn’t matter. Wet rope tightened harder.
Memory flickered—men in black fatigues swarming the corridor, the flash of a rifle butt, the sting of a needle at his neck. Hands dragging him across the deck. Cold pipe at his back, rope cinched tight, and then nothing.
He shifted, testing his weight against the pipe he was tied to. Metal bit through the fabric of his shirt, cold and merciless, pressing into muscle that was already screaming. The deck rolled with the rhythm of the storm—each pitch of the hull sent a shiver through the ship’s bones, the sound of water smashing against steel echoing up through his spine.
Somewhere above, boots clattered. The sound was sharp, efficient. Military.
Blake lifted his head an inch, listening.
A radio crackled. “Sweep the aft compartments again for the woman, Maddox’s star agent, and the kid—find them.”
The words came muffled through the deck plates, but they landed like a punch.
The woman. Vivian. Maddox’s star agent. And the kid.
Wait. Was she here? No, he willed it to be a hallucination because she needed to be miles away by now.
He let out a slow, quiet breath. The ache in his ribs deepened, matching the burn in his shoulder. This wasn’t just a retrieval or clean-up op—it was containment. Nobody leaves, nobody talks.
Another voice joined the first, closer this time, maybe on the other side of the bulkhead.
“Word is there’s a tracker. Maddox’s team is inbound because it’s the last locale for those two agents. They need to disappear.”
Blake’s pulse kicked up hard enough to throb in his wound. Tracker. Inbound.
That had to be Vivian’s car—the one she’d left at the lighthouse before they went dark.
Maybe help was coming.
But if that were true… why were these men still here? Why did they sound like they were taking orders from someone else?
Blake shifted, testing the ropes again. The fibers scraped open flesh, and pain flared bright enough to make his stomach twist. He gritted his teeth and forced himself still.
The hull groaned again under the storm’s pressure. One of the guards walked past, his shadow sliding through the faint light leaking in under the bulkhead. Blake caught a glimpse of the man’s uniform—standard black fatigues, soaked at the seams—and no insignia.
They didn’t want to be recognized.
They weren’t Laurel Tide.
He leaned his head back against the pipe, eyes half closed, forcing his mind to stay sharp. He needed to know how many. Needed to find a weapon, a way out, a reason to keep fighting beyond instinct.
He had one.
Vivian.
She wouldn’t leave him. Wouldn’t leave Mara. She’d die before she did. He knew that as sure as he knew the storm outside was turning the ocean into knives.
