“It’s not finished yet. Kessler’s still out there.”
Isaac keyed his comms to the compound’s frequency. “Command, this is Primary. Trap is sprung, crew captured—three men, en route to compound with Ryder for interrogation. Kessler was not present. I’m heading back now with transport. ETA forty minutes.”
Isaac settled into the seat as Cafferty pulled away from the curb. The suburban streets unspooled around them, quiet and ordinary, the cul-de-sac shrinking in the side mirror. His body was still running on the clean adrenaline of a successful operation, but more, the desire to find Kessler.
The clock was now ticking. Every moment his men didn’t report back was a moment that notified Kessler something was wrong.
Cafferty turned onto the county road that connected the suburb to the highway. Open land stretched on both sides—scrub brush, low fences, the occasional cluster of trees.
He thought about Fallon. She’d know by now Kessler wasn’t among the men they’d taken. Isaac would call her directly once they were closer to the compound. Tell her what the next steps looked like. Tell her?—
The impact came from the left.
No warning. No sound before it. One instant they were driving, and the next a vehicle slammed into the driver’s side at full speed. The world became glass and metal and a force that drove the air from his lungs and threw his body against the seatbelt with enough violence that his vision whited out.
The van spun. Or stopped. He couldn’t tell which. His ears rang. His left shoulder screamed where the seatbelt had caught him. Blood ran from a gash above his temple and into his left eye.
Training took over before his conscious mind caught up. He reached for his weapon. His right hand wouldn’t close properly—something wrong with the wrist, the fingers sluggish and uncoordinated. He tried his left. Found the grip. Drew.
He turned to Cafferty in the driver’s seat.
Fuck.
The driver’s side had absorbed the full force of the impact, the door caved inward, the window a ragged mouth of brokenglass. Cafferty’s neck was broken. Isaac could see it in the angle of his head against what was left of the headrest.
He was reaching for the man’s pulse when his door wrenched open behind him.
Isaac twisted in the seat, trying to bring his gun around, but his shoulder caught against the seatbelt and the weapon snagged on the center console. Two men reached through the door and grabbed him before he could clear it.
He fired once—the shot went wide, his aim destroyed by the awkward angle and the blood in his eyes—and then the weapon was stripped from his grip and arms locked around his torso and hauled him from the vehicle.
He fought. Drove an elbow into someone’s jaw and felt the contact. Threw his weight sideways and broke one man’s hold. But there were too many of them, and his body wasn’t answering the way it needed to. His shoulder screamed every time he moved his left arm. A knee drove into his back, and his face hit asphalt, the weight of two men pressed him flat.
His cheek ground against the road. He could see the wrecked van. Cafferty slumped in the driver’s seat. The vehicle that had hit them—a black truck, heavy, built for exactly this—idling ten feet away with its front end crumpled but its engine still running.
A pair of boots stepped into his field of vision. Unhurried. Deliberate.
Isaac was hauled to his knees. He looked up.
Dominic Kessler stood over him. The same face from the briefing photo, unremarkable by design, the kind of man who could sit next to you on a plane and you’d forget him before the wheels touched down. Calm, composed, patient: a man who had planned this moment down to the second and watched it unfold exactly as he’d intended.
Goddamn it, Kessler had been watching the entire operation. The trap, the takedown, the split. He’d sacrificed his own menand waited for the division of forces. Chose his moment with the patience of a predator who understood that the most dangerous point in any operation was the walk home.
Isaac understood exactly how badly this had gone wrong.
“You took three of my men,” Kessler said. His voice was even. Conversational. “That was unavoidable. They served their purpose.”
Isaac said nothing. Blood dripped from his temple onto the asphalt.
“You built a good trap. Clean execution. But you assumed I came here for the woman in the house.” Kessler crouched until they were eye level. “I didn’t. I came here foryou.”
The words rearranged everything Isaac thought he’d understood about tonight. The trap, the crew, the takedown that had gone so clean. Kessler had let all of it happen because getting Isaac alone was worth more than three of his own men.
“I’ve known about you for a while now, Isaac Baxter. Who you are. What you are to my target. You’re the reason she’s still in one place instead of disappearing the way she always has.” His eyes were flat and steady and empty of anything Isaac could appeal to. “Which means you’re the fastest way to reach her.”
He straightened.
“She’ll come on her own. The moment she finds out I have you, she’ll come. People who care about others always do. It’s their constant pressure point.”
Isaac’s jaw locked. He pulled against the men holding him and they tightened their grip until his damaged shoulder sent white fire down his left arm.
Kessler nodded to someone behind Isaac.
The blow came hard and fast against the base of his skull. The county road, the wrecked van, Kessler’s face—all of it collapsed into a single bright point and then into nothing.
