I couldn’t help the raucous laughter that bounced up from my chest as we made our way back to the lukewarm food. I didn’t care that breakfast was cold. I didn’t care that the coffee was no longer steaming.
I only cared that I shared it with Anna.
Because all I wanted to do was share everything with her until the day we died.
24
BRUTUS
The call came in at half past two in the morning.
I was awake when it did, lying in the dark with Anna curled against my side, her breathing slow and even in a way that told me she'd finally found real sleep after a long stretch of not having it. I felt my phone buzz against the nightstand before I heard it, and I had it in my hand and off the mattress before the second vibration could wake her.
Cap's name was on the screen.
I eased out from under Anna's arm, pulled the blanket back up around her shoulder, and slipped out into the hallway in nothing but my jeans.
"Yeah," I said, keeping my voice low.
"DOJ made contact twenty minutes ago." Cap's voice was flat and even, the way it always got when he was already in mission mode, already ten steps ahead of everyone else in the room. "They've had eyes on a warehouse off Route 9 for the past seventy-two hours. Blacked-out vehicles. Rotating security. One man who keeps showing up in a suit and leaving before dawn." He paused just long enough for that to land. "Sound familiar?"
It did. It sounded like every single piece of intel we'd been building toward for the better part of two years.
"How confident are they?" I asked.
"Confident enough that they want him gone before they move on the ring." Another pause. "They're not equipped for this part, Brutus. We are."
I already knew what he was asking. I'd known since Ghost had tracked that blacked-out car through Redd Valley three days ago that we were running out of road on this thing. The Watcher had been out there the whole time, calm and untouchable, moving through our world like he owned it. And now he'd finally gone somewhere he couldn't walk away from.
"What time?" I asked.
"One hour. Everyone rides."
I stood in the dark hallway for a long moment after he hung up, listening to the quiet of the house. The soft sounds of women sleeping. Anna's slow, even breathing through the cracked door behind me. All of it fragile in a way I felt in my chest every single night.
I got dressed without waking her.
Route 9 wasempty at that hour, just the occasional semi hauling something through the dark, headlights cutting wide arcs across the tree line. We rolled in pairs, staggered, nothing that would read like a convoy to anyone watching. Both crews. Every man who could ride. By the time we pulled off onto the gravel access road behind the warehouse, there were fourteen of us standing in the cold, and the only sound was engines ticking as they cooled.
Ranger stood at the edge of the group with Smoke at his left knee, the dog's black coat making him nearly invisible against the dark tree line. Smoke wasn't moving, wasn't making a sound. He was just watching the building the way dogs watch things when they already know something is wrong inside. Ranger hadone hand resting loosely on the dog's back, and neither of them looked anything but ready.
Scout stood two men down from me, shoulders squared, jaw set. He was still young enough that his tells showed. The way he kept rolling his neck, the way his hands didn't quite know where to settle. But his eyes were steady. After everything he'd been through, after what had happened to him before Wrecker brought him back, Scout had more than earned whatever was waiting inside that building. He knew it too. You could see it in the way he stood.
Cap gave the layout in about ninety seconds. He'd already walked it in his head a dozen times over, you could tell. East and west entries, loading dock at the rear, second floor catwalk with sightlines down to the main floor. Three vehicles on site matching the DOJ description. Estimated four to six men inside plus the Watcher himself.
"He'll have military training," Cap said, his eyes moving across all of us in the dark. "Don't treat him like civilian muscle. He isn't." His gaze moved to Ranger. "Hold Smoke until we need him. You'll know when."
Ranger nodded once. Smoke didn't move.
Ghost and Ranger took the east entry. King and two of his men covered the loading dock to cut off any exit at the rear. The rest of us stacked on the west door with Cap and Wrecker at the front. I fell in right behind them, checked my weapon, and kept my breathing steady.
The breach was loud the way those things always are. Controlled chaos, shouting, the crack of the door giving way, cold air and motor oil and concrete dust hitting you all at once. Cap's voice cut through everything, directing, positioning, never rising above the level it needed to be.
The Watcher's muscle was better than anything the ring had been running before. Two of them were up on the catwalk beforewe even had the ground floor cleared, and they had angles on us that made the first thirty seconds genuinely dangerous. A shot skipped off a steel beam two feet to my left and I felt the air move past my ear.
"Ranger," Cap said into the earpiece, low and even. "Send him."
I heard Ranger's single sharp command from somewhere near the east stairwell, and then the sound of Smoke hitting the bottom catwalk step at a dead run. What happened next was fast and ugly and completely effective in the way only a trained military dog operating in a dark enclosed space can be. One of the men on the catwalk started screaming almost immediately. The other one made the mistake of turning to look, and that was when Scout came up the west stairs and took him off his feet before he could reset his aim.
