I shake it off. Focus on the job.
Movement on the catwalk above. A figure—slender, feminine, moving too fast to be careful. Lab coat flapping. She stumbles, catches herself on the railing.
Found her.
The mercs spot her half a second after I do. Weapons swing up, red laser dots painting the catwalk.
"Contact!" one of them shouts.
I'm already moving.
The remote detonator in my pocket triggers charges I placed thirty minutes ago—strategic positions calculated to cause maximum chaos, minimum casualties. Old factory equipment explodes in sequence: north wall, then south, then the ventilation system. Smoke and fire and the beautiful percussion of controlled destruction.
The mercs scatter. Confusion is my oldest friend.
I hit the catwalk stairs at a run, taking them three at a time. Above me, Dr. Durand is still moving—smart girl, didn't freeze—but she's heading toward a dead end.
"East exit," I call up in French, my Cajun accent butchering the pronunciation. "Move!"
She spins, and I catch my first real look at her face in the firelight. Elegant features. Green eyes wide with terror but sharp with intelligence. The kind of beautiful that makes men stupid.
I make a lot of stupid decisions. This won't be one of them.
"Who are you?" she demands, voice steady despite the chaos. Controlled. That takes spine.
"Your ride." I reach the catwalk level and extend my hand. "Remy Pascal. Cerberus. We need to go. Now."
She hesitates. Behind us, the mercs are regrouping, voices shouting in German and English. Below, my charges have created a wall of flame between us and them—but fire's temporary. Chemistry's unforgiving.
"You're American military," she says, reading me in seconds. The accent, the bearing, the controlled violence I carry like a second skin. "Special operations."
"Used to be." I keep my hand extended. "Right now I'm the man between you and a bullet. Your choice, doc."
Another explosion—this one not mine. Someone else is playing with fire in this warehouse.
Her eyes narrow. "That wasn't you."
"No." My gut goes cold. "That's someone who knows what I know."
And if someone's matching my demolitions expertise, that narrows the field to maybe three people on the continent. All of them dangerous. One of them with a personal score to settle.
Dr. Durand takes my hand.
Her grip is firm, steady, and the contact sends an electric jolt up my arm that I absolutely don't have time to analyze. I pull her close as another charge detonates below—someone else's work, sloppy and reckless—and press her against the catwalk railing.
"Stay low," I order. "Follow my lead. Don't argue. Clear?"
"Crystal." But there's fire in her eyes that says this woman doesn't take orders easily.
Good. Broken spirits don't survive what's coming.
We move through smoke and chaos, her hand locked in mine, and somewhere in the chemical haze and adrenaline, I make a tactical error: I look at her face again. At the determination cutting through her fear. At the way she's cataloging the explosion patterns while we run—scientific mind working even in crisis.
She's not just cargo to protect. She's something else entirely.
And that's the most dangerous realization I've had since Yemen.
We hit the east exit as the warehouse groans behind us, metal shrieking as support beams fail. My truck is waiting, engine running—never turn off a getaway vehicle.
