“Scrubland. Low brush. Enough cover for two men moving carefully.”
Torch nods once and sits back, filing it away behind those steady eyes.
“Security rotations.” Luke cuts in. “How complete is your mapping?”
“Partial. South and east perimeter confirmed. North and west are still being built. That’s why we’re not ready to move yet.”
More good and sharp questions come from both sides of the table. Letting it run, I watch the room and feel something settle in my chest. This is what I’d wanted when I’d made that call to Quill, two clubs in one room, both sets of eyes on the same problem, both clubs with the same reason to want it solved.
Then Cable says, “There’s something else.”
The room goes quiet in a different way.
He pulls up the second set of images, traffic camera footage, grainy and washed out, a figure moving through the hacienda gate. Letting the room look at it for a long moment, he touches the screen again. The image fills the screen—the build, the height, the way he moves, one hand in the pocket of an expensive jacket, the other loose at his side.
“Two separate sightings. Different dates. Three weeks apart. The footage isn’t clean enough for a confirmed identification.” A pause. “But the build is consistent. The height is consistent. The movement pattern is consistent with—”
“Lawrence.”
Rhyder’s voice.
Flat. Quiet. Absolute.
And the room goes completely still.
Cable looks at me. Giving him a single nod, I watch the confirmation land around the table.
“Consistent with Lawrence.”
Rhyder explodes out of his chair, the feet hitting the concrete floor like a shot, cutting through the silence. He’s up before anyone has fully registered he is moving, both hands flat on the table, jaw set, every line of him pulled tight with a fury that has been building for over a year and has just been handed somewhere to go. “That motherfucker.” Low, controlled, and more dangerous for it. “He ran straight back to Clemente, and we’ve been—”
“Rhyder.” Quill is already moving.
Around the table in three strides, both hands on Rhyder’s shoulders, firm, the grip of a man who knows exactly how strong the other man is. Torch is on his feet from the other side, the two of them forming a wall between Rhyder and wherever he was about to go.
“I hear you.” Quill’s voice drops to something private and absolute. “Every single word of it. And I promise you that man does not walk away from this. Not this time.” Holding Rhyder’s gaze until he feels the tension shift, not gone, just contained. “But right now, I need you to sit down and let Cable finish. Can you do that?”
A long moment.
Torch’s hand is steady on Rhyder’s back.
Rhyder looks at Quill, then he reaches back, rights his chair, and sits.
“Continue…”
Cable turns back to his screen.
Sitting at the head of that table, the anger moves through me in a long, slow wave, not at Rhyder, never at Rhyder, but at myself. Because I had shot Lawrence. Had stood over him and emptied Ryan’s gun into him and watched him fall, but I hadnot gone back to confirm it. In the chaos of the fire, smoke, and Tracker bleeding in my arms, I hadn’t gone back, and this room, this table, that footage on the screen, this is the cost of that.
The cost of not going back to confirm the kill.
That is what I am going to carry for a long time.
Maybe always.
But I am going to fix it.
Cable finishes. Entry points, blind spots, communication patterns, everything he has and everything still needed.
