“Nothing.” Bear held up his hands. “Just remembering the time you planned Derek’s surprise twenty-fifth birthday party down to the minute and then forgot to actually invite Derek.”
Lincoln could feel his teeth grinding. They brought this up every time. Every damned time. “That was a scheduling error.”
“You scheduled the party. You did not schedule the guest of honor.”
“The system had a flaw. I corrected it.”
“After we’d been waiting at the restaurant for an hour,” Theo added.
Derek grinned. “I was at home watching TV. Very surprised when Bear called, screaming about cake.”
“This is not the same situation.”
“It’s exactly the same situation,” Bear said. “You get so deep in the details that you miss the obvious thing.”
“There is no obvious thing I’m missing.” Lincoln gestured at the screens surrounding them. “Entry points, contingencies, extraction routes. Simple operation. We get in, we grab Randall, we get out.”
“Uh-huh.” Bear leaned back in his chair. “Just like Derek’s birthday was a simple party.”
Callum cleared his throat. “Can we focus on the operation that involves actual criminals instead of the one that involved sheet cake?”
“It was ice cream cake.” Derek chuckled. “Which melted. Because someone?—”
“Moving on.” Lincoln pulled up the final tactical display. “We leave in two hours. Drive time puts us in Denver with enough buffer to get positioned before Randall arrives. Bear and Derek, you’re with me on primary entry. Theo and Callum, secondary position covering the north exit. Morgan stays with our group until we’ve secured Randall.”
The briefing continued. Questions about equipment, communication protocols, contingencies if they were spotted. By the end, the plan existed as a complete architecture—positions mapped, timelines synchronized, every scenario accounted for.
They were ready. Randall didn’t know it yet, but he was about to go down. About to pay for every mark he’d left on Morgan—physically and emotionally. “Let’s gear up.”
Bear stood, stretching. “I’ll start loading. Try not to forget anyone this time.”
“That was one time.”
“It was twice. You also left Theo at a gas station a few years back.”
“I came back.”
“After forty-five minutes.”
“The timeline was—” Lincoln stopped himself. “This is not productive.”
Theo patted his shoulder as he passed. “We love you anyway, Linc.”
They were teasing, trying to lighten the atmosphere. Lincoln appreciated it even as he dismissed it. He didn’t need entertainment. He just needed to take Randall down.
The room began to empty. Derek and Bear headed for the armory, their bickering fading down the hallway. Callum paused at the door, exchanged a look with Lincoln, then followed.
Morgan remained at her workstation.
Lincoln crossed to crouch down beside her. The displays still glowed with Randall’s network, the Denver location, all the data he’d assembled. She was staring at the building schematic with an expression he couldn’t quite read.
“You don’t have to do this,” he said quietly. “If you’d rather stay?—”
“No.” Her voice was steady, but her hand had drifted to her forearm, fingers tracing the faded scars through her sleeve. She caught herself doing it and stopped. “I’m not sitting this out.”
He understood. Some things required showing up. Required facing the thing that had tried to break you.
“I’ve planned for everything,” he said.
