Voices shouted deeper inside. Doors slammed. Footsteps pounded against old wood.
“Copy,” Ice said.
They pushed as a unit, Breakneck shifting fluidly between lanes, covering blind angles as the stack compressed and expanded around him. He wasn’t overwatch anymore. He was in it, moving with them, breathing the same air, riding the violence forward.
Blair felt him before she saw him at her back, close enough that his presence registered as heat and certainty. His movement was economical, hips turning with his steps, feet placing him exactly where he needed to be. Nothing wasted. Nothing rushed. The rifle stayed aligned with his body as if it were an extension of him, his balance low and controlled, every pivot smooth and deliberate.
It shouldn’t have been distracting. They all moved with precision, but his kind of control promised consequences she didn’t have time to want.
The contained, precise way he moved did something to her that had nothing to do with tactics. She had a sudden, vivid awareness of how that control would translate elsewhere. How he’d move against her. Over her. Slow where it mattered. Steady where it counted. The thought slid in uninvited, dangerous as a live wire, and she crushed it just as quickly.
She kept her muzzle up, eyes forward, but her body registered him anyway, the quiet power of his proximity, the way he adjusted to her without crowding her space, covering her blind side as if it were instinct, as if she were something worth protecting without question.
Her pulse kicked harder. She forced it down, leaned into the discipline that had kept her alive this long. Later, she told herself. If there was a later.
For now, there was only the hallway narrowing, the pressure building, and the man who moved like control made flesh, and made it damn hard to remember why she shouldn’t want to test what would happen if he ever pushed him to lose it.
Blair shut it out, tracked the interior as they advanced. The clubhouse stank of stale beer, sweat, gasoline, and beneath it all the sour-copper tang of old blood. Skulls, flags, and biker patches lined the walls. A neon sign flickered above the long bar, casting washed-out light over overturned stools.
She’d been in dangerous rooms before. She’d seen men die. Seen blood on walls. Heard screams.
Something in her spine straightened. This was what it looked like when the very best pushed into danger. It awed her. Steadied her. Terrified her in a way that somehow made sense.
The main hall narrowed into a corridor. A stairway climbed along one wall. A door at the far end led down.
“Boomer,” Ice said, jerking his chin upward.
“On it,” Boomer replied, already pounding up the stairs, Beef tight behind him.
Ice shifted toward the basement door.
Breakneck peeled off just long enough to cover the hall behind them, then flowed back in as Blair stepped up, muzzle trained where the door would swing open. Oh, God, was there no end to this man’s distractions? His forearms flexed as he worked the rifle, bare, powerful, and her focus slipped for half a heartbeat. He was a damn disconcerting problem. She had a feeling she wasn’t done cataloging every nuance about him, and not just his body.
Her heart hammered, vision razor sharp, the team breathing and moving around her like a single organism.
A biker burst from a side room, yelling. His shotgun came up too slow.
Blair fired twice.
The man jerked as the rounds hit center mass, slammed into the wall, then slid down, leaving a dark smear behind him.
Breakneck clocked the threat the instant it appeared, tracked it through her shot, then checked past her for secondary movement. He didn’t crowd her. Didn’t correct. Didn’t step in.
“Nice,” he said quietly from behind her shoulder.
She didn’t answer. There would be time later to feel the weight of it. The mission was foremost, and the man below them who was bleeding for a choice he’d made to help Breakneck do his job.
She hadn’t been able to see him when they were outside, but the sense of him had been just as strong then. In here, surrounded by noise and movement, it hit even harder, a breathless distraction layered on top of everything else she’d already clocked.
She couldn’t shut him out, but she had to manage it. Blair shifted her focus, centered her eyes on Iceman, and locked back onto the op before she got someone killed. Including him. Including herself.
Ice yanked the basement door open.
Cold, damp air rolled up the stairwell, thick with the smell of concrete, mold, and something metallic and dark that could only be blood.
Ice led them down, boots striking the steps in a rapid, controlled rhythm. Blair followed close, shoulder nearly brushing his back, rifle steady, breath measured around the hammering of her heart.
At the bottom of the stairs, a short hallway stretched toward a single metal door. Light leaked around the edges. Voices on the other side. One man, angry, talking too fast. Another sound, softer, rough with pain. A third voice drifted in and out, low, watchful.
