1
HAYES
The bullet misses my ear by three inches.
I drop behind the concrete barrier, chest heaving, rifle tucked against my shoulder. Dust kicks up where the round buried itself in the dirt wall behind me. Another crack echoes across the range, and I hear Ryder's voice from the observation deck above.
"You're dead, Donovan."
"Like hell I am." I roll left, pop up on the opposite side of the barrier, and put two rounds center mass into the target Ryder's been repositioning with the remote pulley system. The paper silhouette shudders. Both holes sit inside the kill zone.
I rack the slide and clear the chamber. "Pull the target."
The pulley whirs. When the paper comes in close enough to read, Ryder leans over the railing and squints at it. He's quiet for a beat too long, which means I nailed it and he doesn't want to admit it.
"Not bad," he finally says.
"Not bad." I sling the rifle over my shoulder and pull off my ear protection. "That's a clean double tap at two hundred yards after a combat roll on gravel. From your brother, that gets a 'solid work.' From you, I get 'not bad'?"
Ryder shrugs, already resetting the range for himself. "Deck doesn't grade on a curve."
I let it go. Because that's the thing about being the youngest operator at Guardian Peak. Doesn't matter that I spent twelve years in Air Force Pararescue. Doesn't matter that I've fast-roped out of helicopters into active firefights, performed field surgery on a teammate's blown-open femoral artery while taking fire, or dragged a two-hundred-pound Marine through six miles of Afghan desert with a dislocated shoulder. My shoulder, not his.
To these guys, I'm still the kid.
I head up the trail toward the main lodge, peeling off my gloves. March in the Nevada mountains means the mornings still bite, but by afternoon the sun's warm enough to make you forget winter happened. The compound looks good today. Deck's been investing in upgrades since the Nexus situation last month, when Boone took two bullets protecting Mara. New perimeter cameras on the north tree line. Reinforced gate on the access road. Sully rewired the entire sensor grid in seventy-two hours on about four hours of sleep and enough energy drinks to kill a small horse.
The lodge door swings open before I reach it, and Cade steps out holding a coffee mug with "#1 Dad" printed on it. Natalie bought it for him even though their baby isn't due for months. He's already practicing.
"Deck wants you in the briefing room," Cade says.
"Now?"
"Five minutes ago."
I pick up the pace. Deck doesn't call people to the briefing room for casual conversation. The man's idea of small talk is a tactical debrief.
Inside the lodge, the smell of coffee and pine smoke hits me. Someone left the fireplace going. The main room is all exposed timber and leather furniture, the kind of space that looks like a high-end hunting lodge but functions as a command center. Sully's server rack hums behind a locked door to the left. The weapons locker sits behind a reinforced panel to the right. The giant oak table in the center of the room has held everything from mission plans to Thanksgiving dinner.
I push through the door to the briefing room and find Deck standing at the head of the table, arms crossed, looking at a file spread open in front of him. His left arm still moves a little stiff from where he took the bullet last year protecting Vivian, but you'd only notice if you knew to look.
Mace sits to his right, which means this is real. Mace doesn't show up for routine assignments.
"Close the door," Deck says.
I do. "What's the job?"
Deck slides a photo across the table. Corporate headshot. The woman in it has a platinum blonde bob cut sharp enough to draw blood, cheekbones that could cut glass, and blue eyes that manage to look both beautiful and bored at the same time. She's wearing something expensive and dark, and she's looking at the camera like she's deciding whether it's worth her time.
Something low in my gut tightens.
"Alexandra Morrison," Deck says. "CEO of Morrison Pharmaceuticals. Forty years old. Former surgeon. Took the company's top seat at thirty-five and has tripled their market cap since."
I drag my eyes off the photo. "Pharma CEO. What's she need us for?"
"Corporate espionage. Someone inside her company has been selling proprietary research data to competitors. We're talking drug formulas, clinical trial results, and patent filings. Stuff worth hundreds of millions." Deck leans forward on his knuckles. "Three weeks ago, someone also broke into her penthouse while she was sleeping. Nothing stolen. Just a note on her pillow that said 'We can reach you anywhere.'"
My jaw tightens. "So it's not just corporate. It's personal."
