Ghost turned the phone back towards him and opened up the picture app. “The pictures taken were only of the front gate. So they wanted confirmation.”
“Confirmation of what?” she asked, sharper now.
Ranger answered. “Where you were.”
That did it.
It wasn’t panic.
It wasn’t collapse.
It was the moment she understood she wasn’t a coincidence.
She was a target.
Brutus spat into the dirt. “He called you unfinished business.”
Amanda’s fingers curled into my vest.
I leaned down, voice low. “Look at me.”
Her eyes lifted. Present. Focused. Scared, but here.
“You’re inside the fence,” I said. “They didn’t touch you.”
“Yet,” she said.
The clubhouse door opened.
Cap stepped onto the porch already armed, eyes sweeping the yard before landing on her.
Ranger briefed him fast. “Lookout at the warehouse. Burner phone. Photo of our compound and Amanda sent five minutes before we intercepted him. They’re tracking lanes. Confirming targets.”
Cap’s jaw set.
“Perimeter doubles,” he said. “Now.”
Men moved immediately.
He looked at Amanda. “Just like Ariel, you are never alone again.”
Then to me. “Wrecker’s your shadow.”
My grip tightened around her.
Cap turned back to Ranger. “Status?”
“Lookout’s restrained at the warehouse tree line,” Ranger said. “Alive. No phone.”
Cap nodded once. “Good. Let them wonder why.”
Ghost’s voice cut in quietly. “This wasn’t scouting.”
Cap didn’t look away from the dark beyond the fence. “No.”
“It was a message,” Ghost finished.
Cap’s mouth curved into something sharp. “Then we answer it.”
