Laney kept her weapon trained, forcing herself to stay sharp. She couldn’t afford to believe Sherry. Not yet.
Sherry’s voice kept tumbling out, a frantic stream of excuses and pleas, but Harlan cut her off with a sharp hush. He angled his head, his body going still.
Laney froze, her senses straining. Then she heard it, too.
Footsteps.
The sound was faint under the ringing in her ears from the last explosion, but steady enough to send her pulse racing. She kept her weapon trained on Sherry, unwilling to take her eyes completely off the woman, yet every nerve in her body urged her to look elsewhere.
Carefully, she shifted her gaze through the haze of smoke and grit. The air was thick, but in it she saw movement. A shape on the road. The outline of a man where no man should be.
Her stomach clenched.
Laney leaned close, her voice a whisper that scraped at her throat. “Could that be Crossfire Ops?”
Harlan’s jaw tightened, and he didn’t take his eyes off the figure. “No. If it were, they would have signaled. That is not one of ours.”
The figure in the smoke shifted again, slow and deliberate. Laney’s pulse hammered in her ears as the haze thinned enough for her to see the wool mask stretched over his face. Not a glimmer of skin, not even eyes she could read. Just a blank, black void.
And then he lifted the weapon.
Her stomach dropped. Not a rifle. But a grenade launcher.
The man turned fully toward them, the long barrel swinging into place like a predator zeroing in. Laney’s breath caught in her chest. He was not searching. He knew exactly where they were.
One squeeze of that trigger and the culvert would become their coffin.
Laney’s heart leapt into her throat as the man leveled the grenade launcher at them. There was no time to think. Only to act.
“Now,” Harlan hissed.
They both rose just enough to get clear shots and opened fire. The man jerked, stumbling to the side. Most of their bullets punched into the dirt and smoke, but one landed solid. He howled, collapsing to one knee, clutching his leg.
The launcher clattered from his hands and hit the road with a dull thud.
Laney squinted through the haze, her pulse slamming in her ears. For a heartbeat, the mask still kept his face hidden. But then the man clawed at it, ripping it away as if the wool suffocated him.
It was Billy.
Laney’s fury burned hotter than the smoke swirling around them. Her voice ripped out of her throat before she could stop it.
“You came after my daughter!” she shouted, every word edged with rage.
Billy laughed, the sound jagged and cruel. He hit the dirt, dragging himself behind a chunk of broken concrete and twisted rebar. Blood streaked down his leg, but the wound had not slowed him enough. The grenade launcher was just a few feet from where he sprawled. Too close. If he got his hands on it, they might not survive the next blast.
Laney raised her Glock, finger steady on the trigger, but the cover blocked her shot.
Harlan’s low voice cut through the chaos. “I’m going to circle around, come at him from the side. I can take him out before he gets to that launcher.”
Laney’s stomach dropped even more. The thought of him stepping into the open turned her blood to ice. She wanted to tell him no, to stay tucked against the culvert wall, where at least they had some protection.
But she also knew the truth.
They were sitting ducks here. If Billy grabbed that weapon, no amount of cover would save them.
Her chest ached with the weight of the choice. Let Harlan risk everything, or stay and wait to be blown apart.
She met his eyes. There was no fear in his, only the grim determination that she knew would be there.
