Chapter 26
Ty
The van’s suspension protested every pothole as we rolled through the industrial district on St. Louis’s south side.
Ethan drove with the same steady control he brought to everything, hands relaxed on the wheel despite what we were heading into.
I rode shotgun, my Glock checked and rechecked, spare magazines distributed across my tactical vest.
Behind us, Charlotte worked on her laptop, surrounded by enough electronic equipment to stock a small Radio Shack.
I didn’t like her being here one fucking bit.
“Two klicks out,” Ethan said, voice calm as if we were heading to a coffee shop instead of an arms deal with terrorists.
In the back, metal clicked against metal as Donovan also performed final weapons checks. My brother worked with mechanical precision, each movement economical and practiced.
I watched Charlotte’s reflection in the side mirror as her hands danced across the keyboard, making real-time adjustments to the stabilizer’s parameters. My jaw clenched involuntarily. This hadn’t been the plan. She was supposed to stay back at my parents’, monitoring remotely. Safe. Protected.
Not sitting in the back of a van heading straight into a meet with arms dealers and terrorists.
But she’d discovered anomalies in the Protocol’s signature during her final diagnostics. Something about phase drift and frequency modulation that meant she needed to be within transmission range to make adjustments.
“I can’t debug remotely if something goes wrong,” she’d insisted. “The entanglement protocols need real-time adjustment.”
She’d explained it three times, each with increasing technical detail, until we all had to admit she was right. And most importantly, the mission came first. Always did.
Didn’t mean I wasn’t furious about it.
“Logan, status?” Ethan said into his throat mic.
“Overwatch position secured.” Logan’s voice crackled through the comms, steady and professional. “I have eyes on the warehouse. No movement yet. Approach routes are clear.”
Logan had deployed before us, establishing himself on the roof of an abandoned factory with clear sight lines to our target. If anyone tried to flank us, he would see them coming. Small comfort, but comfort, nonetheless. Ben and Jolly were doing sweeps of the perimeter.
“Copy that,” Ethan replied. “Maintain position.”
Jace’s voice cut through next, transmitted from his command post at a hotel three miles away. “All frequencies clear. Sellers should be arriving soon. I’m monitoring local police bands—no unusual chatter. You’re still dark.”
That was important. Local law enforcement would do more harm than good in this situation.
“George’s team is in position,” Jace added. “Four units staged at the perimeter, ready to move on your signal.”
George had handpicked his backup—FBI agents he knew personally, ones he was certain were beyond corruption.
They’d move in for arrests once we secured the Protocol, and another team was ready to grab Alex Richards back at Vertex.
The FBI was letting Citadel run point because of the mole situation, but they were there, waiting for my signal to bring the full weight of federal law enforcement down on these bastards.
I glanced back at Charlotte. She’d pulled her auburn hair into a tight braid, every strand controlled and contained, like she was trying to impose order through sheer will. Her face glowed blue from the laptop screen, those green eyes tracking data streams I couldn’t begin to understand.
She looked beautiful. Brilliant. And absolutely shouldn’t be here.
“Ty.” Donovan’s voice pulled me from my spiral. “She’ll be fine. We’ve got this covered.”
I met my brother’s eyes in the rearview mirror. He knew what Charlotte meant to me—had figured it out the moment he’d seen her in my shirt at that motel. But knowing it and accepting it were two different things.
“Still hate this,” I muttered.
“Noted,” Ethan said dryly. “But since Dr. Gifford is the only reason we have a chance of stopping this thing, maybe focus on the mission instead of your feelings.”
He was right. I knew he was right. But every protective instinct I’d developed over years of security work screamed that Charlotte belonged behind layers of protection, not heading into the lion’s den with us.
Except she’d been in danger from the moment she’d created the Cascade Protocol. Hell, she’d been targeted, attacked, nearly killed multiple times already. At least here, with us, I could protect her directly.
The van slowed as we approached where we’d be leaving Charlotte—an abandoned office building that had seen better decades. Windows were boarded up, graffiti covered most surfaces, and the parking lot looked like a minefield of potholes and broken glass.
“Home sweet home,” Ethan muttered.
He pulled around back, out of sight from the main road. The warehouse where the buy was being held was a couple hundred meters down the road. Charlotte would still be too close to the action for my liking, but at least not in the same building.
“Donovan, you’re on protection detail with Charlotte,” I said as everyone started moving. “If things go sideways—”
“I got it.” My brother nodded, understanding the weight of that assignment. If things went bad, his only job was getting her out alive.
I helped Charlotte set up in one of the offices. Her equipment spread across a dusty desk—the laptop, the stabilizer, various cables and devices I didn’t recognize.
“This should work,” she said, fingers flying across the keyboard. “I can monitor the Protocol’s frequency from here and deploy the countermeasure when you give the signal.”
I watched her work, memorizing the way she bit her lower lip when concentrating, the little furrow between her eyebrows when something didn’t compute correctly.
We’d never had that conversation we were supposed to have.
Never talked about what happened at the motel, what it meant, where we went from here. There hadn’t been time.
Now I wished I’d made fucking time.
“Stop looking at me like that,” she said without glancing up.
“Like what?”
“Like you’re trying to memorize my face.”
I reached out, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. “Maybe I am.”
Her fingers stilled on the keyboard. She looked up at me then, those green eyes holding mine with an intensity that made my chest tighten.
“You’re coming back,” she said. Not a question. A statement. An order from someone used to dealing in absolutes and proven theorems.
“That’s the plan.”
“No.” She stood, closing the distance between us. “Not the plan. A certainty. You come back to me, Ty Hughes. That’s nonnegotiable.”
The fierce determination in her voice nearly undid me. This brilliant, awkward, beautiful woman who approached human interaction like complex equations had just claimed me as hers. And God help me, I wanted to be claimed.
“Charlotte—”
She kissed me.
It wasn’t gentle or tentative. She kissed me like she was trying to anchor me to this moment, to her, like she could keep me safe through sheer force of will.
Her hands fisted in my tactical vest, pulling me closer, and I forgot about the mission, the danger, everything except the taste of her mouth and the way she fit against me.
When she finally pulled back, we were both breathing hard.
“Come back to me,” she whispered.
I cupped her face in my hands, brushing my thumbs across her cheekbones. “Always.”
The word hung between us, heavy with promise and possibility. Then Ethan’s voice crackled through the comms.
“Five minutes to showtime. Volkov needs his wingman.”
I pressed my forehead to Charlotte’s for a heartbeat, breathing her in. Then I stepped back, shifting into operational mode. Personal had to wait. The mission came first.
“Donovan,” I said, and my brother materialized in the doorway. I didn’t know what else to say.
“I got her.”
I looked at Charlotte one last time. She’d already returned to her laptop, fingers flying across the keys, but I caught the tremor in her hands. She was scared.
Good. Scared meant careful.
“Ready?” Ethan asked as I joined him in the hallway.
He’d transformed into Volkov—subtle changes in posture and expression that somehow made him look older, harder, Eastern European. The accent would complete the illusion.
“Ready,” I said.
We headed for the exit, weapons ready, comms live. Behind us, Charlotte’s fingers typing on her keyboard were the only sound in the abandoned building besides our footsteps.
I touched the spot on my vest where she’d grabbed me during that kiss, still feeling the phantom pressure of her hands.
Always.
The word echoed in my head as Ethan and I stepped into the darkness, moving toward whatever waited in that warehouse.