The warehouse had become a war zone.
Half the front wall was gone, torn open by Hawk's signal—I could see daylight through the breach, see Blade's vans parked at angles outside, muzzle flashes winking from behind them like angry fireflies. Flames licked at the edges of the wound, spreading quickly across something flammable that had been stored too close to the entrance. Smoke hung thick in the air, acrid and choking, turning the industrial lighting into hazyorange halos that gave everything a hellish, unreal quality.
The smell hit me first—burning plastic, cordite, the copper tang of blood already spilling. Then the sound: gunfire crackling from every direction, men screaming orders in Spanish and English, the groan of metal as something structural gave way near the front.
Men were running everywhere—some toward the breach, some away from it, some just staggering in shock from the explosion. The guards who'd seemed so confident moments ago were now scrambling, their carefully rehearsed positions abandoned in the pandemonium.
"Fan out!" Axel's voice cut through the noise. "Clear the west side! Tank, Tyler—center! Push toward the shipment!"
Our team dispersed into the smoke, each man finding his own path through the maze of shelving and debris. Axel and Declan peeled left, their rifles speaking in sharp, controlled bursts. Vega, Santos, and Marco went right, disappearing into the gray haze. Tank grabbed my arm and pulled me forward, toward the center of the building. Toward the shipment.
I had my rifle up, stock tight against my shoulder, moving the way I'd been trained at Quantico—quick but controlled, scanning corners, checking angles. A guard emerged from behind a crate, weapon raised, mouth opening to shout a warning. Tank put him down before the sound could form—two suppressed shots that punched through the man's chest anddropped him like a puppet with cut strings. Blood sprayed across the concrete. We stepped over the body and kept moving.
Another guard, this one facing away from us, shouting into a radio. I squeezed my trigger—a three-round burst that stitched up his spine, the impacts jerking his body like electric shocks before he collapsed. No hesitation, no thought. Just action. The guilt could come later, if there was a later.
We worked through the maze of shelving and crates, boots splashing through puddles of something I didn't want to identify. Tank moved ahead while I covered, then I moved while he covered—a leapfrog rhythm drilled into me during FBI tactical training. Clear left. Clear right. Contact ahead—take him. Move.
A bullet snapped past my ear, close enough that I felt the heat of its passage, and I dropped to one knee, returning fire at the muzzle flash. The shooter stumbled back, clutching his throat, and went down gurgling.
The training was taking over now—years of FBI drills and range time, the muscle memory of a hundred simulated engagements. My body knew what to do even when my conscious mind couldn't keep up. Sight picture. Breath control. Squeeze, don't pull.
We found the shipment near the loading dock. Pallets stacked five high, wrapped in industrial plastic, exactly where Vince had said they'd be. Thousands of pills—fentanyl-laced poison that would kill addicts across three states if it reacheddistribution. The sight of it should have felt like victory.
My gut screamed that it was wrong. "Tank." I grabbed his arm, pulled him behind a forklift. "Something's off."
He scanned the area, rifle up, eyes sharp. "What?"
"This is too easy." I gestured at the chaos around us—the running guards, the spreading fire, the complete lack of resistance near the most valuable thing in the building. "The guards are all heading for the front. No one's protecting the shipment. No one's even looking this way."
Tank's jaw tightened. He saw it too.
"It's—" I started.
The lights blazed on. Not the industrial floods—those were still flickering from the explosion. These were different: bright, white, blinding. Stage lights, I realized with a sick lurch in my stomach. Someone had installedstage lightsin a drug warehouse.
Because they wanted to see us when we arrived.
"Welcome, Phoenix."
Cross's voice echoed through the building, amplified by speakers placed in the walls and ceiling. Smooth, cultured, achingly familiar. The voice that had whispered poison in my ear for three years, that had told me I was worthless, that had promised love while delivering pain. The voice I heard in my nightmares.
"I've been expecting you."
Hidden doors opened along the walls—not doors, I realized, but sections of shelving that swung aside on concealed hinges. Men poured out fromeverywhere, heavily armed, moving with military precision. They'd been waiting. Hiding. Listening to us move through the warehouse, letting us think we'd gotten the drop on them.
It wasn't a trap at the entrance. It was a trapinside. They'd let us in on purpose.
"DOWN!" Tank tackled me behind the forklift as the world erupted in gunfire.
The noise was overwhelming—a wall of sound that hammered at my eardrums until I couldn't think, couldn't process, could only react. Bullets punched through metal, sparked off concrete, filled the air with the whine of ricochets. I pressed myself flat against the floor, tasting dust and fear, feeling the vibrations of impacts through the concrete beneath my cheek.
Tank was beside me, returning fire, his rifle barking in short, controlled bursts. Brass casings pinged off the floor near my head. The forklift shuddered as rounds tore through its frame, and I knew it wouldn't hold for long.
"Vega! Santos! Report!"
"Pinned behind the east shelving!" Vega's voice came through the earpiece, high with panic. "Marco's hit—he's bleeding bad?—"
"Apply pressure and hold position!" Tank's voice was iron, no room for fear. "Axel, Declan?"
