Page 64 of The ARC Unit: Breach

Dark hair fell almost to the middle of my back after I took it out of the loose braid I’d worn while working. I ran my fingers through the waves until they settled around my shoulders, then tucked one side behind my ear. The black bikini made my skin look warmer than it had under the bathroom’s fluorescent lights on my first night. It also made it impossible to ignore the fact that I had curves whether Wolf liked me being in the field or not.

I turned sideways.

The bottoms stayed where they were supposed to when I moved, and so did the top. The fact that I had just performed a mobility test in a bikini before infiltrating a suspected Cerberus-adjacent pool party felt like one of those career moments nobody mentioned during recruitment.

I pulled the cover-up on and buttoned two of the lower buttons, leaving the rest loose over the swimsuit. Flat leather sandals finished the part of the cover that involved pretending I had no intention of running anywhere.

My phone buzzed on the bench.

Raven: Need you downstairs. Mic check.

I looked at my reflection once more.

“Please let nobody be weird,” I sighed.

Expecting normal behavior from this building was probably my first mistake.

The operations floor had thinned out by the time I came downstairs. Hawk, Viper and Bear were already gone. Raven sat behind his usual spread of equipment while Wolf stood beside him in black tactical pants and a fitted long-sleeved shirt, his plate carrier waiting on the back of a chair. Jackal was checking the magazine on his MP7 near the equipment room before he left for his sector.

He looked up when he heard me.

Then he looked down.

“Jesus fucking Christ.”

I stopped on the last stair. “You have about two seconds to make the rest of that sentence survivable.”

Jackal considered his options with unusual seriousness.

“I was just going to say intelligence has really improved its recruitment materials.”

Raven sighed and rubbed his eyes with one hand.

I pointed at Jackal. “One day I’m going to watch Bear throw you through a wall and do nothing to stop it.”

“That’s fair.”

Wolf looked over.

His attention traveled from my face to the open cover-up, lower across the visible black bikini and bare legs, then returned to me with enough control that anyone who had not spent three days studying every tiny reaction might have missed it.

Unfortunately, I had.

I became immediately aware of the way the bikini top pressed against my chest and the amount of skin visible between it and the low edge of the bottoms. Jackal glanced toward Wolf and whatever he saw there inspired the smartest decision of his life.

“I’m leaving.”

Raven looked at him. “You still have nine minutes.”

“Suddenly motivated.”

He slung the MP7, gave me an innocent smile that fooled nobody and headed for the garage.

Wolf reached toward the equipment on the table.

“Cover-up off.”

For a second I thought I had misheard him.