David stalked in behind him, claiming the shadowed stretch to the left of the door. Nick mirrored him on the right. All three still wore their tactical gear—not out of necessity but for the visual impact. Camouflage became armor. Gear became intimidation. And the man sweating in the center? He would break against that wall.
Under the harsh overheads, his skin gleamed where the salt traced his temples. His cuffs clinked as he shifted, trying for bravado, but failing in the hard face of what stood around him.
Zach’s voice broke the stillness, smooth and sharp like a blade sliding from its sheath. “Mr. Wilson, care to share with the class what you were up to tonight?” One brow arched slightly, but the look cut.
Wilson’s eyes twitched. He licked his lips, probably without realizing it, and looked from Zach to David to Nick and back again—as if hoping one of them would be the ‘good cop.’ None of them moved.
“I have nothing to say to you,” his voice cracked on the last word.
David tilted his head, watching the man speak like someone observing a lab experiment. Every tic, every slight change in posture—it all painted a picture. Wilson was bluffing. Badly. The desperation crackling off him smelled like fear, which was good. Fear made people sloppy. And they could work with sloppy.
The knife slipped into Zach’s hand like an extension of his own will—Emerson Sheepdog, black, angular and ominous. David recognized the design immediately. He’d once run security diagnostics for one of Emerson’s suppliers.
“Are you sure about that?” Zach drawled.
Wilson smirked. For a blink, his jaw jutted stubbornly—maybe he thought the knife was for show.
It wasn’t.
In fast motion, Zach slid behind him, cut the cuffs with a practiced flick—and without missing a beat, had Wilson down on the cold tile floor, knee grinding into his spine. A grunt escaped him a second before Zach pinned his hand to the ground and drove the blade straight down.
Through Wilson’s hand.
The scream tore the air open.
David’s jaw clenched. He didn’t flinch—he never flinched—but the sound scraped against something inside him, something he kept locked up tight.
Beside him, Nick shifted minutely, his shoulder brushing David’s in a silent pact of endurance.
The coppery tang of blood and the hard stench of urine struck his nostrils as a golden puddle began to spread across the tile.
“You don’t understand!” Wilson whimpered, his voice ragged. His body heaved beneath Zach’s crushing weight, his cheek mashed against the cold floor. “It’s not me! I’m just a grunt! I was just doing my job!”
There it was—confirmation, ugly and raw and shaking with pain.
David’s thoughts snapped into overdrive. He accessed his tablet and opened mental file after file—Wilson’s profile, the LLC network hits, Lena’s tracker data, the offshore accounts they’d flagged last month—patterns coalescing in the dark corners of his mind.
Zach didn’t move. “By whom?” His voice was ice and precision.
“I don’t know his name,” Wilson sobbed. “Never met him. Only received instructions. Electronic payment through an offshore LLC—Cayman-based. It’s called something like Emerald Ridge Holdings—I don’t know!”
The name struck a chord. He’d seen it recently. He’d find it.
Zach wiggled the blade slightly. “What were your instructions?”
The man was spiraling now—words falling out of his mouth in stuttering, panicked chunks. “Sabotage. Utilities. My job was to break things that made the resort vulnerable. Circuits, water, backup power. I don’t even know why. Just… cause confusion—evacuate people or something. Utility tech is my specialty.”
Bile crawled up the back of David’s throat. This wasn’t random chaos. This was orchestration.
He glanced at Nick, who gave a slow nod. He felt the pressure too—something systemic, building.
“How many others?” Zach asked.
“Two. No—three? I think,” Wilson said, breath hitching. “I met one of them at a drop point. Girl. Redhead. She looked like a tourist but knew her way around the back.”
“And the others?”
“A hacker. The guy who wrote all the fancy code. And a staffer who got us access—Andy.”
