Page 2 of Vicious Temptation

"After you."

She lets out an annoyed breath but pulls out her phone. A sudden, heavy click sounds behind me as the door locks. Before either of us can react, our devices vibrate at the same time.

UNKNOWN: Drawer C.

Nothing else.

I look up, and she's staring at her phone, eyebrows drawn together until her attention shifts to the metal cabinets lining her side of the room. Mine follows to the matching set on my own. We move at the same time, and I wrap my fingers around the handle labeled C and pull. A disassembled pistol rests inside, and beside it lies a single round.

I stare at it for half a second, trying to understand what I'm looking at when a speaker suddenly crackles somewhere above us.

“Only one of you will leave this room.”

When I glance over my shoulder, the woman isn't looking at me anymore. She's already reaching into the drawer, snapping the pistol together piece by piece.

Shit.

This isn’t a briefing, and she isn’t just my competition for an assignment. Someone brought two agents into this building knowing one of us would be dead before the night was over.

I grab the frame, throwing mine together as fast as I can. By the time I slam the magazine home and rack the slide, she’s already turned toward me. Two sharp clacks echo through the room as we chamber our rounds and raise our weapons.

Her chest rises with a quick breath, and her muzzle wavers, but I don't wait. I squeeze the trigger.

For one brutal instinct, I see the fear in her eyes and know she must see the same in mine. This woman isn’t some armed suspect threatening a civilian or a target I tracked down because she hurt someone. She’s standing in the same fucking room I am because Helios put her here, holding the same weapon and facing the same impossible choice.

None of that changes what happens next.

The shot cracks through the air, and she gasps as the round strikes her square in the chest. Her gun slips from her hand, and her eyes widen as she crumples to the floor.

The ringing left by the shot fills the room as I keep my weapon trained on her. She doesn’t move. My firearms instructor taught us that a fraction of a second could mean the difference between going home and becoming the next name carved into a memorial wall. I learned never to hesitate long before Helios recruited me.

Knowing why I pulled the trigger doesn’t make this any easier.

I don’t know her name, how long she’s been an agent, who recruited her, or whether someone is going to wake up tomorrow wondering why she never came home. All I know is that she wanted to survive this room as badly as I did. And I killed her for it.

I became a police officer because I believed the badge meant something. I joined SWAT because I wanted to stand between innocent people and those who would hurt them. Helios promised the same mission but never mentioned I’d be pointing my weapon at one of its own.

The door swings open, and I whip around, raising my pistol on instinct even though I know it’s empty.

A woman who looks to be in her forties steps inside, dressed in a charcoal pantsuit with a long black coat draped over one arm. Her dark hair is pulled into a low bun, not a strand out of place.

Her gaze lands on me first and lingers as she assesses my stance and the empty pistol in my hand. Then her attention shifts to the woman on the floor and the blood spreading beneath her.

Not a single flicker of shock or concern crosses her face.

I hate how casually she looks at the body. There’s no grief or anger, not even disappointment. Whoever she was before tonight doesn’t seem to matter at all.

She studies the scene with the detached focus of someone reviewing a completed training exercise, then looks at me again.

“Operative 427,” she says. “I’m Commander Duvall.”

My grip remains firm around the empty pistol.

“What the hell was this?”

“Your introduction to how things operate under my command.”

She walks toward the fallen operative, her heels clicking against the tile.