“Have Sage send the drone that way,” he ordered. “Low and wide.”
“Copy.” Law relayed the call.
The hum deepened overhead as the feed shifted. Still nothing visible but heat shimmer.
He kept walking anyway—every step harder to justify, every second louder in his head.
The call came an hour later—movement on the edge of the drone feed. A heat bloom, faint but human-shaped. For one breath, he thought finally. Then the image sharpened: cartel, not Titus. Two bodies half-buried near the ridge, torn apart by the blast.
He stared at the feed Sage had patched through, jaw tight, pulse hammering once before he forced it down.
All that effort, all that push, for nothing.
The light was bleeding out of the sky, the desert turning the color of old steel.
“Losing daylight, we calling it?” Rhett said.
He keyed the mic, voice flat. “That’s a negative. Sweep again.”
By the time full dark settled, the wind had died, leaving the world unnervingly still.
Searchlights swung in wide arcs across the flats, catching the smoke in silver veins. Comms crackled with clipped check-ins—Law, Rip, Black—each voice steady, precise, unshaken.
Viper listened, answered, and kept moving. Law had called for rotation an hour ago; he hadn’t stopped. The others followed his lead, faces washed green under NVGs, boots dragging through powder-fine sand.
He told himself it was procedure—finish the grid, confirm the count—but every step said different.
It wasn’t duty driving him anymore.
It was the hollow silence where Titus’s voice should’ve been.
He almost missed it, but his NVGs caught it—a faint glint half-buried near the base of a dune, where the ambient light thinned out. He crouched, brushed the sand away, and found a spent .45 casing—the kind a Ruger 1911 spits out, brass dark at the mouth but cool now to the touch.
Proof Titus had been here. Fought here. Maybe bled here.
The night stretched on, long and soundless except for the faint hiss of static in his ear. The others had rotated out, voices fading one by one until it was just him and the wind. Searchlights dimmed, drones looping overhead like silent vultures.
He should’ve stood down hours ago, but stopping meant replaying the last time he’d seen Titus—flash, impact, the look in those blue eyes across the distance. Too far to read, but he imagined resignation there. Maybe an accusation. That they’d left him. And if it had been the other way around—hell, he’d have felt the same.
He squeezed the casing once before pocketing it, jaw tight, and kept moving—drawn by something past reason, past duty. Each step heavier, the sand swallowed the sound until even his own footsteps disappeared.
Movement flared on the ridge—caught in the sweep of a searchlight, shadows breaking against the sand. Rip and Ramsey brought one perp down hard, dragging him in through the dust.
Up close, Viper saw the sneer, the tattoos—Morelli blood. Young, mean as sandpaper. Winter had winged the guy—blood streaked down his arm where the round tore through.
Viper didn’t waste time. He grabbed a fistful of the man’s shirt, jerking him close. “Where is he?” he growled, voice low, lethal.
The man grinned, blood on his teeth, and spat in his face. “All I see is a dead man.”
For a second, no one breathed. Then Ramsey was there—ripping the bastard out of Viper’s grip and shoving him toward the waiting chopper. The man’s laughter carried over the wind, sharp and ugly, until the rotors drowned it out.
Viper wiped the blood from his face with the rag Law passed over. He handed it back, then turned toward the cold, dark desert and the lonely howl of the wind.
“Viper, you can’t keep this up,” Law said quietly, keeping stride beside him.
Static cracked in his ear.
“Viper, Savage wants you to call him ASAP,” Real’s voice came through the comms.
