"Out of the vehicle. Slowly."
They complied, hands raised, moving with the careful deliberation of people who knew exactly how many guns were pointed at them. Blade materialized at my shoulder as they stepped onto the sand.
"Take them to the front," I ordered. "Secure them to the steering wheel."
Blade nodded and guided the marshals around the van's crumpled front end—not roughly, but not gently either. The woman started to protest, then thought better of it when she saw Blade's expression.
Tyler was already climbing into the van's rear compartment, bolt cutters in hand.
Behind the marshals' former position, handcuffed to a metal bar, sat Sarah Reyes.
She looked older than the photos Tyler had shown us. gray threading through her dark hair, new lines around her eyes, the particular pallor that came from weeks of federal custody. Her orange jumpsuit was stained and wrinkled. Her wrists were raw where the cuffs had bitten into skin. But her eyes—her eyes were sharp, alert, taking in the situation with the speed of someone who'd spent decades reading dangerous rooms.
"Tyler." Her voice cracked on his name. "They told me you were dead."
"Cross lies about everything." Tyler climbed into the van, already positioning the bolt cutters around her chains. "That's what he does." The cuffs came free with a metallic snap. Sarah rubbed her wrists, wincing at the raw skin beneath.
"He knew you'd come." Her voice was barely a whisper. "Cross. He told the guards this morning—said there might be 'complications' during the transfer. That's why he brought extra men."
"He underestimated us." I reached into the van, offered Sarah my hand. "Can you walk?"
She took it, let me help her to her feet. Swayed once, steadied herself. "I can do whatever I need to do."
"Then let's move. We've got wounded, and Cross might come back with more people."
The extraction was chaos organized intosomething resembling efficiency. We loaded our wounded into the surviving vehicles. Sarah went into the back of Hawk's truck, Tyler beside her, already checking her vitals. The marshals we left zip-tied to their steering wheel—not our enemies, just people doing a job. They'd have a hell of a story to tell their supervisors.
I mounted my bike and fell into formation as the convoy pulled out. Behind us, the battlefield faded into the distance—bodies and burning vehicles and the scattered debris of a fight that had almost gone very wrong.
Cross was still out there. Wounded, but alive. And now he knew about me.
You'll regret this.
His words echoed in my head as the desert swallowed us. A threat. A promise. The beginning of something that wouldn't end until one of us was dead. But that was a problem for later.
Right now, Sarah was safe. Our people were alive. And we had a long ride back to the compound.
The ride back took two hours. Two hours of open road and cold wind and the steady vibration of the engine beneath me. Two hours to process what we'd done—the violence, the near-disaster, the federal crime we'd committed in broad daylight. Two hours to keep the box in my chest closed, to not think about Danny, to focus on the simple act of riding.
We took the back roads, threading through a maze of dried-up riverbeds and unmarked trails that only locals knew. No signs of pursuit. Cross had retreated, probably regrouping, licking his wounds. We'd won this round.
But it had cost us.
Irish was in bad shape—the shrapnel in his leg had gone deep, and Rosa would have her hands full getting it out. Declan's burns needed treatment. Three other Phoenix members had taken various hits, nothing life-threatening but enough to remind us that we weren't invincible.
Tyler stayed close throughout the ride. Every time I glanced in my mirror, his bike was there—holding position, watching my back. The way he'd done during the firefight, moving with me like we'd been riding together for years instead of weeks.
I'd shot Cross. Hadn't killed him, but I'd hurt him. And in the process, I'd put myself on his radar.
You're the one who's been watching him. The one he's been?—
Cross had seen something in the way Tyler and I moved together. Had recognized something that we hadn't even fully acknowledged ourselves. And now that knowledge was a weapon he'd use against us.
Later,I told myself.Deal with that later.
The compound walls appeared on the horizon like a promise—twelve feet of reinforced concrete, razor wire glinting in the morning sun, the heavy gates swinging open as our battered convoy approached.
We'd made it. Sarah was safe. Cross was wounded and retreating.
