A smaller team broke off from the convoy, moving toward the gangway. One carried a megaphone. Another had restraints clipped to his belt.
Negotiation. Or capture.
Once, Maddox had been the reason she joined the program. The man who’d pulled her out of the wreckage of her first mission and told her she was worth more than her father’s shadow. But the men flanking him now wore unmarked uniforms and moved like operators, not allies.
She lifted the rifle, sighted down at the trucks. “Maddox,” she whispered, “what did you do?”
Lightning split the sky, freezing everything—trucks, men, black water, and Maddox, staring straight up at the ship.
Right at her.
Their eyes met through sleet and distance. Relief or regret, she couldn’t tell which lived in his face.
Thunder cracked, shattering the moment. A woman’s voice boomed from a loudspeaker, sharp and impersonal.
“Vivian Durand. Thomas Blake. Stand down and come out slowly with your hands visible.”
Vivian flinched. Not Maddox. Someone above him. Thirteen’s warning about someone close to him being the leak leached into her thoughts.
Blake gave a humorless huff. “There’s your rescue party.”
“They want us alive,” Vivian said, forcing her brain to keep working. “Alive is leverage.”
The ship groaned under them, tilting another inch toward the water.
“We hold here,” she said. “Nobody gets up the ramp until we know whose side Maddox is on.”
Blake nodded once. “Then let’s find out.”
She slid into the shadow of the control room bulkhead, pressing her shoulder to cold steel. Below, headlights cut through the rain, turning the pier into a wash of white and shadow. Men moved with mechanical precision. Too controlled. Too clean.
The loudspeaker crackled again. “You’re surrounded. Stand down and prepare for retrieval.”
Retrieval. Like she was cargo.
“Something’s wrong,” Blake said.
“Everything’s wrong,” she answered.
Floodlights along the pier snapped on, bathing the deck in white glare. Vivian ducked deeper into shadow.
“If they’ve got thermal, we’re done,” Blake muttered.
Maddox’s voice came over the loudspeaker, distorted but unmistakable. “Hold positions. I’ll make contact.”
Her chest squeezed. “He’s stalling,” she murmured. Buying them time, or setting the board. She didn’t know which.
Blake’s gaze locked on Maddox’s figure commanding the men below. “He’s not moving like a man in charge. He’s moving like a man on a leash.”
“If there’s any part of him left, I can reach it,” she whispered.
“And if you can’t?”
She didn’t answer.
The loudspeaker barked again. “Final warning. Stand down or we will engage.”
Vivian inhaled slowly, let it out. “We can’t take them all.”
