"North clear," Leo reports. Steady. Professional. The same easy tone he uses joking with Frankie at the bar, now dialed into pure focus. "Moving to secondary position." The precision is impressive. Victor doesn't hire amateurs. Guns are checked. Positions taken. The quiet before the storm.
All I can think about is the clubhouse, a few miles away. Common room cleared out. Tables shoved aside. Sloane's hands moving fast, prepping IV lines and scissors, muttering as she inventories supplies. Her brow furrowing when something's missing. Maggie already bossing prospects into hauling blankets.
Two years ago, before Sloane crashed into my life in that freezing Chicago parking lot, all I cared about in ops like this was keeping my brothers breathing. But things changed the night she flinched when I touched her shoulder… and let me touch her anyway.
Now the mantra is different. Don't let this world touch her again. Don't bring home ghosts she can't outrun. Don't make her watch another girl bleed.
It's been that way since the day I married her for protection and ended up loving her by accident. Malachi's voice comes low over comms. Orders. Counts. Then everything snaps.
Shouts. Footfalls. The scrape of metal. My body moves without waiting for my brain, sweeping the right flank with James. A guard cuts around the corner of the stacked containers, gun half-raised, too slow. I put him down.
For a second, the container yard flickers. Sand. Heat shimmer. Burning fuel instead of salt water. A different container. Different country. A different mistake.
Kandahar. The compound. The interpreter's daughter—pigtails, eight years old. His family held in a back room while command used him as leverage. I wanted to go in. They said stand down. I stood down.
I blink hard. Mississippi. Docks. Not Kandahar. My hands are steady on the gun, but my pulse slams in my throat.
James' voice cuts through. "Knox. With me."
I move. Muscle memory overrides the flashback. But it sits there, heavy and wrong. These girls. That man. All the times I stood down.
Three minutes of movement and noise. Then five. Then ten. Angles, signals, the steady pound of my pulse. A door breached. Cries from inside the container.
We hear Victor through the comms. "We've got them. Repeat, we've got them."
My lungs finally let the air out. We funnel them out in a fragile line. Girls. Teens, maybe one or two early twenties. They never should've seen the inside of that steel box. Filthy, shaking, wrapped in thin T-shirts.
Leo appears at the perimeter, hands up and visible, voice low and soothing as he guides the first girl toward the transport van. "You're okay. You're out. Keep your eyes on me, okay? That's it."
One of the girls flinches when he moves. He stops immediately, gives her space, and adjusts his position so she can see both his hands.
"I'm not gonna touch you. Just here to make sure you get to the van safely. See that guy over there?" He nods toward James. "He's gonna get you inside and keep you safe. I promise."
The girl takes a shaky step forward.
"That's it," he murmurs. "You're doing great." He's good at this. Not just the violence. But what comes after.
He guides her without touching, voice steady, presence calm. Repeats the process with the next girl, then the next, patient every time. Arden materializes beside him, silent, face expressionless, but his position is intentional. Watching Leo's back. Watching the shadows.
"Clear on the east perimeter," Arden reports, voice flat.
But his eyes stay on Leo. The way he tracks Leo's movements is subtle and constant. The kind of quiet coverage you only see between people who have worked together a long time. Like he trusts Leo to handle what's in front of him.
Leo keeps shepherding girls toward the van, talking low, hands up where they can see them. I fall in beside him, helping guide the next group. One flinches when my hand brushes her shoulder, and something inside me goes cold. I shift back half a step, giving her space, letting Maggie's voice in my head remind me every inch of my frame is a weapon to someone who's spent months being hurt.
Donovan's shadow hangs over the place like smoke. East caught sight of him earlier, but we didn't take the shot. The girls came first. I keep counting as they move past me. One, two, eight, ten, twelve. Twelve who made it out. I hang onto that.
The clubhouse doesn't smell like stale beer and burgers tonight. The air reeks of antiseptic and metal, sharp with fear.
The common room's transformed. Couches pushed to walls. Cots in rows. Prospects moving like quiet ghosts, carrying water and blankets. Maggie floats between beds, voice low and soothing, comfort wrapped in human form.
Sloane is the eye of the storm. She moves from girl to girl, latex gloves snapping, hair escaping her knot in wild curls. Blue scrubs already splashed with someone else's blood and iodine,pockets stuffed with gauze and scissors. She grabs a clipboard from the supply table and tucks it under her arm, hands busy.
"Okay, sweetie, look at me. You're not going back in that container. I've got you. Can you drink this for me?" Soft voice, but iron under it. The kind of steady tone you get from years of telling people in pain to hold on. I hover at the edge at first. My size, my cut, my gun all feel wrong in this space. But she doesn't treat me like an intruder. Just snaps out orders without looking up. "Knox, blanket. Thick one. Her fingers are blue."
I move. Find the blanket. Wrap it around the girl on the nearest cot. She doesn't look at me; she's locked onto Sloane, the only calm in the room.
Sloane's hands move fast and precise. Blood pressure cuff. Pulse check. Quick mental triage. Rattling off vitals to Maggie, rearranging who needs the cot with the space heater. She's in command here in a way I've never seen.
