Blair’s assignment made his gut twist. She’d be exposed, out in the open if that bay lit up. Once that fucking roof guard was down, he would make sure she and Skull were covered.
Blair’s eyes tracked the map with sniper-like precision, nodding.
“Beef, you’re with me at the fence breach here,” Ice said, pointing to the middle west end of the compound, just above the outbuilding.
“Copy that, Master Chief.”
“Then we’ll assault the main building where they’re keeping Marques.” Blair’s gaze assessed the compound feed. “Locklear, pull the bikes up again?”
Ayla complied, the feed focusing back to chrome and steel. “We have eight knowns on the exterior with a fluid fire pit. The unknowns are inside the main structure and possibly the garage. If we subtract those eight, that leaves us with approximately fifteen hostiles inside,” she said calmly. She leaned closer, studying spacing, angles. “That’s a typical night load for the Eights.” Her finger tapped the screen once. Decisive. “We won’t know exact positioning until we breach. But if I had to wager a bet,” she said with a slight smile and a nod at Ice. “I’d put my money on Tier 1 operators and the RCMP every time. I think we have a solid plan, Ice.”
Ice returned that slight smile. The fact that his boss liked this woman so much was another goad to his system.
“Jock up and get ready to move,” Ice said.
Chairs scraped as he and the team rose.
He wasn’t sure when she learned to see the world that way, or sure how she did anything at all with that level of calm, but she grounded him without even knowing she had the power to.
He grabbed one of his gun cases, opened the locks, and removed the 7.62mm semi-automatic precision rifle, a beautiful SR-25, heavy and compact, built for precision at a distance and violence up close. He ran a quick check of the weapon, loaded magazines into his pouches, and turned to file out with the rest of the team.
Blair hesitated as they reached the door at the same time. He stopped and waved her in front of him. Breakneck swallowed hard, ignoring the stab of pain behind his sternum. He should have felt nothing but mission focus. He should’ve closed the door on everything else.
He closed his eyes for one breath, realizing he was in more trouble with her than he had ever been with a rifle pointed at him.
She didn’t just unsettle him. She clarified him, and he hated how much he needed that.
He tried to breathe past it, tried to find the center he always found on the scope, that cold surgical stillness that never failed him, but Blair fractured it just by her proximity. He couldn’t see past the kid he used to be, the one who wanted something simple and impossible. He had been foolish enough to believe strength would erase that want. It hadn’t. It had only buried it deep enough that moments like this cracked the surface and showed him exactly how breakable he still was.
He would be a fool to open himself up to anything that could only be temporary, to let her inside when he already knew the ending. He had outlined all the reasons Blair Brown didn’t fit the mold. She wasn’t someone a man touched carelessly, someone who came into a life like his and stayed, or someone he could keep, even if he were stupid enough to imagine a future that was anything beyond this op.
He was on foreign soil, half broken inside, on a mission that could get them both killed. He had no idea how to be the kind of man she deserved, barely knew how to be the kind of man he deserved to be.
Best to keep his hands off her.
His whole body disagreed. Everything in him tightened, pulsed, and ached at the thought, the denial ripping through him with a violence that almost stole his breath. He had never imagined anything would be harder than Hell Week, but this was grinding him down in slow, relentless waves that made every nerve feel exposed. He could hold a firing position for hours without a tremor, but one quiet woman with magnolia on her skin was making him ring out before the op even started.
Staring at nothing, jaw locked, lungs tight, fighting for distance inside a space that offered none, the truth hit like recoil.
This was going to cost him something. He already felt the price rising. He never lost sight of his teammates through a scope, not once in his career, and he had no intention of losing this woman to the violence waiting for them. Her competence wasn’t in question, but the need to protect her rose in him with the same ruthless certainty he brought to every firefight. It settled in his chest with heat and weight, the kind of instinct that had nothing to do with ego and everything to do with the way she steadied him, moved him, shifted things inside him he had never examined closely. The thought landed with a terrible, galvanizing clarity.
He’d warned himself to stay clear of her, but he was fucked up, his judgment just as fucked, and the trust in himself was just as cold and empty as all his zeros combined.
Breakneck lay prone behind the ridge, rifle settled into the dirt, muzzle angled down toward the compound that sprawled below like a rusted wound carved into the forest. He’d been inserted by chopper a mile out and run the rest through rugged terrain, breath controlled, fatigue threatening to drag him down. He forged ahead. There was work to do.
The Hell’s Eights had built their little vicious kingdom here, a scatter of metal and timber structures fenced in by chain link and welded scrap, motorcycles gleaming under the floodlights like an altar to bad decisions and unspoken violence.
He adjusted the scope. The world pulled in tight, shrinking until there was nothing except crosshairs and targets. The pain in his torso flared every time he breathed too deep, but he ignored it. Pain he could handle. Pain made sense. Pain was clean compared to the mess in his head.
He cataloged the targets below. One biker paced the north fence, cigarette ember bright in the dark. His buddy with the brown and white pit bull patrolled opposite to him. He moved his scope, focusing in on the fire pit, where there were now four laughing, drinking men.
He slid his muzzle toward the south of the compound. Two more bikers guarded the front gate, weapons slung at the ready across their chests. Confidence with no idea what was coming.
He eased the crosshairs over the roof. A lanky biker crouched, rifle in his hands. His eyes were hunting, tracking the treeline with a predator’s patience.
Ayla’s voice came through his earpiece, low and controlled. “Iceman, TOC has you live. How copy?”
Ice’s voice followed, steady as carved stone. “Good copy, TOC.”
