And now I wait like a trap with a heartbeat.
The silence stretches, and I count seconds to keep from unraveling. Thirty-three. Thirty-four. Thirty-five—
Something shifts.
It’s small at first—air pressure, maybe. The kind of thing you only notice when your senses are raw and screaming, when your body is attuned to survival like it’s a song on repeat. A subtle change in the way the cold sits on my skin. Then it’s a thud. Distant. Muffled. A body dropping? No, two. A grunt. Boots sprinting. The staccato echo of chaos starting somewhere down the hall.
Before I know it, it’s pure chaos.
The door doesn’t creak this time. It explodes open, slamming against the concrete wall with a shriek of rusted hinges. Light from the corridor slices into the room in a harsh, yellow strip, making the dust and smoke look like it’s alive. Shadows burst through the frame. I blink against the sudden brightness, momentarily blinded, but I know that silhouette. The mass of him. The speed. The precision of movement.
King.
He moves like a storm—all fire and calculation—with that stupid shirt draped over his face, just like always. A makeshift mask to hide the snarl I know he wears underneath. Shoulders wide, steps sure, eyes locked on the threats as if I’m already checked and accounted for in the corner of his mind.
Two Russians rush forward, but they’re too slow. Too loud. Too cocky. One goes down with a sickening crack—neck or knee, I can’t tell from this angle—and the other is slammed into the wall so hard the plaster caves in, dust raining down like ash. King doesn’t stop. He’s a moving wall, all momentum and violence, pushing through them like he’s done this a thousand times.
He pivots toward me, reaching for the rope at my wrists, but he hesitates. Just long enough for a shot to ring out.
He grunts, jerks back, body twisting, and three more men swarm in like they were waiting for that exact opening. One slams the blunt end of a rifle against the back of King’s skull, and I see him stagger. His mask shifts. His arms lift, reflexively defensive, but the numbers aren’t in his favor. They swarm like wolves. Boots, fists, blows that would shatter bone if they landed on anyone less stubborn than him.
He goes down hard, landing next to me with a grunt, blood already seeping through his shirt from a gash on his ribs. The impact rattles through the floor and up my spine.
“Get his gear!” someone shouts in Russian.
They tear the comms unit from his ear, fingers ripping the wire like they’re tearing out a vein. They yank the vest over his head, rough and eager, and stomp on the small black transmitter with deliberate, gloating pressure. It crunches beneath a boot like it deserved to die.
But not before I hear it.
His voice.
Jon.
“—King, report. What do you see? King?”
Then static. Then silence.
My lungs stop working.
Jon didn’t come. He sent someone else.
And for a moment—just one—I wish they’d killed the transmitter sooner because that voice undoes me more than the bruises, more than the fear. It cuts through the fantasy I’d been clinging to. The one where he stormed through that door with blood on his knuckles and my name on his lips. The one where he proved, without a doubt, that I wasn’t the only one who felt it.
Every look. Every argument. Every electric second, when our hands brushed too long or our stares locked too hard. Every time his gaze dipped to my mouth and then snapped away like he’d burned himself.
I thought he wanted me too.
I thought.
God, I’m so stupid.
“Your boyfriend sent someone else,” one of the Russians mocks as he kicks King’s rifle out of reach. The metal skitters across the concrete and slams into the far wall. “Guess you’re not worth as much as you thought.”
I don’t look at him. I don’t flinch. I keep my eyes pinned to a crack in the floor, to the smear of King’s blood spreading slowly toward my boot.
But inside, I’m falling apart. Because he’s not my boyfriend; he never has been, and apparently, he never will be. He’s my captain. My handler. My mistake.
King groans beside me, rolling onto his side, blood slicking his shoulder. His breathing is rough, uneven, but he’s still here. His eyes meet mine beneath the fold of his mask, and for once, they’re not arrogant or cocky or even amused. They’re furious. With the enemy, with himself—for failing. For getting caught. For not being enough to get us both out.
