Maddox’s hands dropped away just before the agents burst through the blasted doorway, rifles up, lights slicing the dark.
“Hands where we can see them!” one barked.
Vivian raised shaking hands. Maddox stepped back, expression unreadable.
“She’s our last survivor?” another agent asked.
“Confirmed,” Maddox said, tone clinical—handler mode. The version of him the agency trusted.
So clean. So controlled. It made her stomach twist.
Cold cuffs locked around her wrists. Someone pulled her to her feet. Maddox’s gaze flicked toward her—not comfort, not apology, just a silent order:
Stay alive.
They escorted her down the gangplank. Agents moved like a hive—coordinated, efficient, impersonal. Radios crackled. Floodlights cut harsh lines through the rain. They ushered her by a line of dead bodies laid out on the docks. A white van idled at the base of the pier, waiting to swallow her whole.
Vivian had taken two steps toward it when a woman in a windbreaker slid into her path, blocking her with surgical precision—three seconds of stillness carved out of chaos.
“Agent Durand,” the woman said, voice cool and almost kind. “On your way to debriefing, you might want to think about the man you’re protecting.”
She pressed something thin into Vivian’s cuffed hands. A photograph—glossy, cold, too deliberate.
Before Vivian could react, the woman leaned in, rain softening the edges of her words.
“Look closely. One of the men in that photo is on the dock behind us. Dead. Ex-military. Part of the contractor group Laurel Tide hired.”
A beat.
“I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt—you were played, not complicit. Think about whether you want to climb out of this mess—or disappear into a hole because you backed the wrong man. Loyalty’s admirable. Blind loyalty gets people killed.”
She stepped back, letting her see the picture fully.
Vivian’s breath thinned.
Blake—smiling that half-cocked smile she knew—stood in desert fatigues, arm around Rone Archer. She glanced back at the man in militia clothing lying motionless behind her, and hematched the man in the photo. But what punched the air from her lungs wasn’t them.
It was the other men beside them.
“And there,” the woman murmured, tapping the corner, “your friend Dan. Friendly little Dan from the docks.”
The thin, quiet man stood beside Blake in the image, almost swallowed by the others—but unmistakablywith them.
A military contractor unit.
A Laurel Tide asset.
A corpse resting behind her.
The math was too clean. Too fast. Too perfect.
Vivian’s stomach twisted hard, a punch from inside.
Blake. Archer. Dan. And the stranger from the militia. A group shot. A narrative already assembled for her to fit inside.
Her pulse hammered. The rain blurred the edges. Every instinct screamedtrap—composite, arrangement, misdirection—but the emotional hit still landed with precision.
“Transport’s ready!” someone called.
