Page 46 of Make Them Pay

I drag a hand through her pink hair. “I can’t lose you, Enley.”

“I can’t lose you either. I don’t want to lose you.” She trails kisses down my neck. “You made me a promise. You better keep it.”

I push up a bit so I can look her in the eyes. “I’ll always keep my promises I make to you. You’re the most important person to me in this world.” I rest my forehead against hers. “I promise you won’t lose me.” I know it’s a thing I can’t really promise. It’s something no one can ever promise, but I will try my damndest to make sure I come back to her. Because I need more of this. More of these exact moments.

I kiss her again as her body falls apart around me. Her orgasm is subtle and smooth. Her whole body tenses and then releases in such a beautiful glory that I’m stunned into silence. I watch her through the whole thing. Mesmerized.

I keep rocking my dick into her, my orgasm so fucking close I can barely hold on. But I also want this moment to last forever. “I love watching you come all over me.” I thrust my hips. “I love watching you fall apart just for me.” My body builds and builds. “You’re the prettiest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.” My body coils up and then explodes. I keep pushing deep inside her as my orgasm slams straight through me.

I hold onto her as the aftershocks of my orgasm ripple through me. I can’t let go. I don’t ever want to let go.

After a few more minutes of soft breathing and holding each other, we clean up quickly and return to the final preparations. The next four hours pass in the focused rhythm of two people finishing the last steps of an operation they’ve been building for eight days. I verify the communications one final time. She verifies the system one final time. I check the weapons. She checks the digital tools. I pack the breach kit: bolt cutters, a secondary sidearm, flex cuffs, a medical kit for the hostages who will need attention right away.

At one in the morning I change into the operational gear from the supply shelf. Dark pants. Tactical vest. Close-fitting black shirt designed for movement under the vest. When I pull it on I catch Enley watching me with an expression that mixes the professional and the personal in a way that’s new. She’s looking at me the way a partner looks at someone gearing up for a job. She’s also looking at me the way a woman looks at a man she was riding ninety minutes ago.

At one thirty I run through the plan one last time out loud. Not for me. For her. So every step is clear in her head the same way it is in mine. So that when she’s on the radio and the situation shifts, which it will, she’ll know the intent behind each move well enough to adapt the digital support in real time.

“Two o’clock: Knight and BRAVO breach the fence and secure the perimeter. At the same time, Diaz and two operators take the eastern building and control the stairwell. I enter through the stairwell and go down to the first underground level.”

“The lock on the second level corridor,” Enley says.

“I reach it around two-oh-four. You activate the system remotely. If it works, the lock opens without setting off the alarm. If it doesn’t, I go manual and we lose the element of surprise.”

“It’ll work.”

“I know. Second level. Poe’s cell. I get him and we move back up. Knight meets us on the first level to open the general holding area. We get Arrow, Gage, Ozzy, Lark, and Orchid. We exit through the stairwell and BRAVO covers the extraction to the vehicles.”

“And I trigger the evidence drop the second you enter the stairwell.”

“Correct. The digital side starts the same second as the physical side. By the time we’re out of the building, every agency on the list will have the complete Goldenbell file.”

She nods. The plan is in her head. In her hands. In the systems she built and tested until the testing itself became its own kind of prayer.

At one forty-five I pick up the go-bag. Check the weapon one final time. Slide the sidearm into the holster. The weight of it against my hip is familiar in a way that should probably concern me but stopped being unusual a long time ago.

Enley stands. She’s already packed the mobile terminal and the antenna into a case she’ll carry to the position two hundred yards from the facility. She’ll set up alone. She’ll operate alone. She’ll be the voice in my ear while I move through a building full of armed guards and chained hostages and the long consequences of a vendetta that started eleven years ago on the other side of the world.

I look at her. She looks at me. The storage unit is comfortable. The uplink light blinks its steady green. Outside, the industrial district waits in the dark for whatever comes next.

“Ready?” I ask.

“Ready.”

I pull the padlock and roll up the door. The night air hits us cold and sharp. The industrial district is empty. The street is dark. The sky above the flat roofs is clear enough to show stars.

We step out together. The storage unit closes behind us. The padlock clicks shut on eight days of hard floors and metal walls and mint water and stolen code and a kiss against a shelf and a slower, deeper second time on the cot and a promise I intend to keep.

The facility is forty minutes away.

We walk into the dark.

19

Enley

There’s thirteen minutes left until the breach and my heart is seriously out of control. The tablet comes alive at exactly 1:47 AM.

I’m currently crouched behind a small utility shed about two hundred yards east of the facility, knees in the stiff, frost-covered grass. The blue light from the screen makes my hands look weird in the dark, almost like they don’t belong to me. The antenna’s clamped to the roof of the shed so I’ve got a clear shot to the facility’s security network and the encrypted channel linking me to all nine operators.