"We go when I say," I answer, and it comes out softer than it should, because the thought of that room and that one heat source is hollowing me out. "And we don’t go loud if we don’t have to."
The floodlights sweep. Ettoro moves, a gray smear cutting the distance between shadows, his breath steady in our speakers. He flattens under the eaves. The mic goes up, adhesive kissed to corrugated tin. Inside, we hear the rattle of a tray, the slow drip of fluid into a bag, a man grunting the way pain teaches you to. It’s him. It has to be.
My throat burns. For a second, all I can see is Nico’s face when he was nineteen, stupid and unkillable. I blink hard, and he’s back in a box with a tube in his arm and men with guns at the door.
"Ettoro," I say, and my voice doesn’t wobble, thank God, "pull back to the ditch. Mark every camera on the east face. We’re coming back hot."
"Copy," he breathes.
I turn to Oksana. She’s still furious, still blazing, still the best wrong decision I’ve ever made. The room smells like her skin and night plans and fear I will not show.
"You’re not jumping," I say. "You’re not rappelling. You’re calling the shots from here. That’s the only version where I let you live, and Nico lives too."
She steps into me, chest to chest, eyes bright and dangerous. "You don’tletme do anything," she whispers. "I choose."
I nod once. "Then choose not to die."
Her gaze flicks to the screen, to the little bright sun in thedark. The compass in her chest realigns with mine. "Get the helicopter," she says. "And don’t you dare be slow."
I’m already dialing. "I wasn’t slow today," I say, not looking up.
"No," she says, and her mouth curves with memory and accusation both. "You weren’t."
I don’t apologize for that. I won’t. I tell the voice on the other end what I need and when, and the room becomes a staging area instead of a bed. The best sex of my life is already filed underlater, if we’re lucky. Right now, my brother is a single heat signature in a building with extra guards, and luck is a thing you buy with planning and the right kind of violence.
We’re done arguing. For the next six hours, we become what we are when we’re useful: practical, merciless, efficient. Not heroes, but killers with a vendetta.
I hate being stuckbehind glass while the others do the hard part. I hate the way the room still smells of sex, the way the fan moves the hot air around without cooling it. But I understand why I'm here. Stephano needs a clear head. Nico deserves hands that don't tremble.
I make the room into a map. And just so I don't feel completely left out, I dress in boots, dark jeans, and a black shirt. You never know, they might still need me.
Ettoro's head-cam feed fills one of the two screens; the other shows thermal tracks from the drones, which still hang high above the base, broadcasting heat blooms and patrol lines. I pin the time on the feed and dole out orders in short, clean sentences. My voice is small in the room, but it moves out into the air as law. Men repeat back:
"Copy,"
"Copy,"
"On it."
Those voices aremysoldiers now. I taste the control like metal in my mouth, and it steadies me. This is not my first time being in command, but damn it, I'd rather be on the ground with them.
Outside, the night thickens. Ettoro's head moves up to give me an image of the copper coming in. The rotors are getting louder, getting the attention of the Mexicans.
"Alpha, Bravo, NOW!"
On my mark, the two teams that crept close to the base using the cover of darkness throw their grenades, turning the night into a fiery fury. The explosions are deafening and tune out the rotor noise. Ettoro allows me a full view of Steph and two others rappelling down onto the roof, and my stomach lurches. This shouldn't look sexy. My attention should be on a whole lot of other things besides how one man's biceps bulge or his glutes stretch his pants, butdamn!
Someone on the ground makes them out, lifts his rifle. "Sniper, six o’clock. Take him."
I'm barely done with my command to our sniper before the man crumbles to the ground. Clean shot. The men reach the roof. I can almost smell the action: the diesel, the hot metal, the unique scent of spent bullets, the fire. On the feed, I watch Stephano wedge in the explosives and pull the charge. For a heartbeat, I see the flash on theroof, a hole being detonated neat as a nail. Metal screams. Dust blooms.
And then he and the men are gone from my sight, only to return as a heat source on one of the screens.
"Nico!" I hear Stephano exclaim. They found him!
I only have one second to enjoy the victory before the door tomyhotel room explodes inward.
Sound takes the room in one breath. Wood shatters, glass spiders, and the smell of burnt oil and something acrid, like pistol lube or someone who smokes too much, fills the air. Four men flood in like a dark tide, rifles leveled. My money is on them being Cartel, by the cadence in their voices as they yell at me in quick Spanish.
