Ares’s expression hardened. “I’ve seen this before.”
Leo folded his arms. “Where?”
“Kandahar.” The word came out like something scraped from broken stone. “Insurgents used rooftop vent shafts as insertion points. They’d lower explosives on a line into lobbies, ballrooms—anywhere civilians gathered. There were no visible bombs within the actual room. No physical devices in ducts. They kept everything above the ceiling grid.”
A shiver ran down my back. It wasn’t just from the surprisingly chilly breeze.
Ares continued, “I recognized the configuration on the old schematic. Then Neville and I checked the hatch. Last night,between three and three twenty a.m., the hatch logged open. Not logged closed.”
Neville nodded grimly. “That’s the entrance point, opened electronically for quick insertion later.”
Orion crouched next to the vent, peering down the shaft. “So that’s why the ordnance team found nothing. There’s no bomb yet.”
My stomach dropped.
Ares nodded once. “Exactly.”
Orion stood, turning to us. “Now the helicopter exfil Marcus and the other guy talked about fits. He’s planning to come in on the helipad, drop a device down this shaft—directly into the ballroom’s primary load support—and then fly out before anyone knows he was here.”
“He’s going to show up when?” I asked.
Orion’s jaw clenched. “Anytime. He doesn’t need cover of night. He just needs noise. Chaos. Movement.”
Leo’s face went slightly ashen. “We have several guests arriving by helicopter tonight for the gala.”
“Great,” Orion said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “So now we get to check our guests as they arrive, look for a bomber among high rollers and CEOs, and pretend everything is perfectly normal while we wait for Marcus to show up. Fantastic optics.”
“It won’t be that easy,” Neville said quietly. “This guy is good. He can sneak in with the commotion of VIP arrivals. All he needs is thirty seconds of distraction.”
Ares finished showing us the vent, the shaft, and the route the ductwork took past the ballroom. When he stepped away, the cold desert air felt thinner, sharper—like the roof itself had become a pressure chamber.
Orion turned to Ares. “We need a plan for what we do when he actually gets here.”
Ares exhaled slowly in a controlled inhale-exhale that told me he was already calculating, already building a strategy in his mind, already stepping into the space where fear had to take a back seat to leadership.
His voice was low, steady, and dangerous. “He’s coming. And we’re going to stop him.”
He backed away from the vent housing, exchanging a look with Neville—one of those silent, heavy, tactical conversations only men who’ve survived things together can have without speaking.
“We’ll need to adjust for timing,” Neville murmured, scrolling through his tablet. “And guest traffic patterns. That many arrivals gives him too much noise to hide in.”
I pressed my lips together. This sounded much too risky. Ares must have seen my expression, and he motioned for Neville to follow him. They moved a few feet away, heads bowed over the schematic Ares had pulled up again, speaking in low, clipped tones. Leo drifted after them, listening, asking the occasional question.
I stayed where I was, the cold wind tugging at my hair, staring at the shaft that led straight into the heart of the ballroom where I had planned the biggest, boldest declaration of my life.
A bomb. Dropped from the sky. Into the middle of everything.
My chest tightened. “Maybe we should call off the gala.”
No one listened, and I raised my voice.
“We should call off the Gala,” I said, almost shouting into the rooftop wind.
All three men turned immediately.
“No,” Orion said—too fast, too certain.
I swallowed. “But—your hotel, the guests, you—” I shook my head, trying to make the words line up with the very real fearsqueezing behind my ribs. “All of you are at risk. I can’t bear the idea of?—”
