By the time Chase shouted from two rooms over, Ash was already moving.
Chase had two men on the floor, face down, hands stretched above their heads. Ash yanked the zip ties from his pocket and moved in to secure them.
Cipher’s people folded fast—two in this room and a third located in an upstairs bedroom. They were the kind of men who knew enough to be useful to the terrorist but were smart enough not to die for him.
Within minutes, Con handed them off to the FBI agents waiting outside, along with two hard drives and a server unit that made the agents’ eyes light up.
It should have felt like a win. But the only thing Ash felt was the anxiety balled in his gut.
He stood in the yard, the cold night air cutting through his gear, and tried to figure out why the back of his neck hadn’t stopped prickling since they’d left base.
He balled his fists at his sides in an attempt to ground himself in the moment—and stop the flood of memories lobbing into his brain like a missile strike.
Melina.
He remembered loving her. Remembered the heaviness of it. The certainty.
But the feeling itself was distant now—like something he could observe through a wall of glass.
He hoped that distance held. Because the last time his instincts had gone this tight, this quiet…
An op had unraveled. And she hadn’t come home.
This op wasn’t the same at all. Blackout Charlie had come here to do a job, and everything had gone exactly as planned. There was nothing wrong.
Then why the fuck did his veins itch this way?
Across the yard, Con and Chickie stood on the outer edge of a group of FBI agents milling around the property, taking photos and collecting evidence. Con pulled out his phone and his whole body stiffened.
The kind that moved through a man’s body when he heard something—or saw something—he didn’t like.
Con lifted his head and fixed his stare on Ash.
His gut plummeted straight through the ground.
In a few quick strides, he crossed the yard. “What.” His flat tone held a command.
Con turned the phone so he could see the screen. Six messages from Elin, the timestamps running close together like she’d sent one every few minutes.
Before he even skimmed the words, he already knew what they were about.
Ellory’s gone.
She left base.
Vehicle’s missing.
She won’t answer her phone.
I don’t know where she went.
I’m sorry.
Halfway through, the words stopped making sense and the buzz in his ears turned into a swell that swallowed him. He read the messages again.
“First timestamp’s two hours ago.” His same flat tone was a thin layer over the torment taking over.
Two hours. She’d had a two-hour head start into whatever she’d walked into. Nobody knew where the hell she was. And he was standing in a yard hours from base with Cipher’s lackeys being loaded into a van not ten feet away.
