Chapter 15
RCMP WILD Headquarters, TOC, Outskirts of Kamloops, British Columbia.
Breakneck adjusted his stance near Ayla’s console, the bruises under his plates throbbing with every breath. He didn’t let it show. He’d taken worse hits in worse places, but the ache twisted tight under the bone, vision narrowing at the edges every time he inhaled too deep.
He forced himself still, moving slightly, but he released a soft grunt he couldn’t bite back. Blair heard it and looked at him.
Geezus.
She unraveled him just by breathing next to him, but that soft, compassionate, worrying look slid through him like a blade through hot butter.
She looked away, her eyes a bit glassy. He realized he wasn’t the only one who had to recenter, pull his shit together, and that didn’t help his focus one damn bit.
He forced himself cold. He had to. Blair was talking, taking it to a professional level.
He switched ruthlessly to tracing the map, calculating distance and wind direction and muzzle rise over elevation, mapping sniper real estate the way his mind always did. But her voice pulled at him, low and steady, each syllable anchoring him and lodging there like a clean shot.
He didn’t like how much he was drowning in that voice.
Ayla changed the feed, and the image of the compound expanded across the wall. Breakneck’s posture tightened. The formation was hostile, messy, dangerous, exactly the kind of chaos he should’ve been devouring whole.
He focused. Hard. Multiple structures. Gate choke point. North fence patrol. Fire pit cluster. Porch sentry with overwatch dominance. Garage bay with unknowns, heat signatures, a problem waiting to escalate.
His sniper brain clicked through the threat matrix on instinct. His body lagged behind, shaking and exhausted.
Blair stepped in beside him to study the screen, the warmth of her presence brushing against the cold in him, and the contact lit something he’d sworn he’d gotten under control.
Her scent was close, magnolia, leather, and the faint trace of heat under her skin. Every time she spoke, the vibration of her voice threaded through the quiet space between them like she was somehow inside him already, finding places he didn’t let anyone go.
This was not good, safe, or smart. He needed to sit down, and he folded back into his seat.
He was in the worst place mentally he had ever been.
The swamp of his mother’s betrayal clung to him like mud he couldn’t scrape off, every breath reminding him that Derrick’s blood ran in his veins, the same blood that terrorized his childhood, the same blood that led him to sick, ugly questions he didn’t want answers to.
He didn’t know who he was anymore or trust the man behind his own eyes, not the stillness, or the violence, or the frightening lack of remorse that came with doing what had to be done.
This was a goddamned terrible moment to be sitting inches from a woman who made him feel…everything.
Blair shifted slightly, reaching forward to tap the screen, and the side of her arm brushed his, pearl-handled composure wrapped around steel, a quiet command that stirred something low in him, he should have buried years ago.
His hand tightened on his knee to keep from reaching for her.
His pulse hammered so hard it throbbed against the bruises on his ribs.
Men didn’t touch a woman like Blair Brown lightly or use her as a distraction.
She was a turning point. They didn’t fuck her and forget her.
They didn’t survive doing that. She had too much gravity, too much clarity in the way she moved, too much honesty in her eyes. She wasn’t built for half measures.
He didn’t want her to be the kind of woman a man took and walked away from.
Ayla pointed at the thermal markings. “There’s a fluid in and out at the fire pit. Two moving along the north fence, along with one K9.”
Jackie spoke up. “They favor pit bulls, and they train them to attack.”
“No eyes inside the garage bay, another fluid, but unknown pathway,” Boomer said.
Breakneck’s jaw flexed. “Roof sentry’s priority,” he said quietly. “He’s got the highest vantage. If he clocks movement on the flank, you’ll lose your breach window.”
Ice nodded without looking away from the screen. “Agreed.”
Blair shifted slightly, close enough that the faint scent of her reached him. It nearly undid every wall he’d spent a decade building.
He stared harder at the screen, exhaling through his teeth, quiet, harsh, controlled.
He was terrified of needing anything. Terrified of trusting anyone.
Terrified of letting someone see the damage he hid behind sarcasm, charm, and sniper calm.
Terrified of letting anyone touch the abandoned boy he used to be, the one who learned early that fear was weakness and weakness got punished.
He thought he had killed that boy long ago, buried him under discipline and precision and ruthlessness. Thought becoming a Tier 1 operator meant he had scorched all softness out of his bones.
Yet one woman stood next to him and the whole lie trembled.
Ayla zoomed in on the outbuilding. Blair angled toward it, assessing, calculating, her entire body narrowing into focus. Breakneck watched her shoulders tighten, watched the intelligence harden her eyes, watched the immediate shift from suspicion to strategy.
It hit him harder than any bruise.
“Team can stack here,” she murmured to Ice. “Outbuilding gives a blind angle from the roof and the fire pit.”
He stole a glance. She was beautiful without trying. She looked like something he couldn’t afford to want.
Blair turned her head slightly. She must have felt him looking because her eyes flicked to his for a breath-long second. Calm. Steady. Curious. Not afraid of him. Not intimidated. Not blind to what he was.
That alone knocked the air out of him.
He had spent his entire life being read as danger, chaos, beautiful in a way that got him used, wanted, lusted after, but never recognized.
She looked at him like she saw something more.
He faced forward again, jaw locked to stop anything real from slipping out. He couldn’t let her see how close she was to his fault lines. He couldn’t tell her the truth, that the closer she got, the more he felt the edges of him.
Breakneck found his voice again. “West treeline gives me clean lanes,” he said, quiet but certain. “I’ll have eyes on roof, gate, fire pit, and garage.”
“Gate guards will be first,” she said. “We can hit them before they alert the roof or the fire pit.”
Breakneck nodded. “As long as the garage bay stays quiet.”
Ayla’s fingers moved in a blur. “Unpredictable.”
Breakneck’s stomach twisted. “If they exit armed, they’ll flank the breach. Need someone watching that wall.”
Ice gave a slow exhale. “Recommendations?”
Breakneck pointed to the screen. “If I take up a position here at the west side of the compound, it’ll give me complete overwatch.”
Ice nodded. “Boomer and Kodiak will handle the north perimeter tangos and the K9. Brown and Skull will hit the gate and the garage bay, then all positions will collapse inward with us once those threats are eliminated.”
Blair’s assignment made his gut twist. She’d be exposed, out in the open if that bay lit up. Once that fucking roof guard was down, he would make sure she and Skull were covered.
Blair’s eyes tracked the map with sniper-like precision, nodding.
“Beef, you’re with me at the fence breach here,” Ice said, pointing to the middle west end of the compound, just above the outbuilding.
“Copy that, Master Chief.”
“Then we’ll assault the main building where they’re keeping Marques.” Blair’s gaze assessed the compound feed. “Locklear, pull the bikes up again?”
Ayla complied, the feed focusing back to chrome and steel.
“We have eight knowns on the exterior with a fluid fire pit. The unknowns are inside the main structure and possibly the garage. If we subtract those eight, that leaves us with approximately fifteen hostiles inside,” she said calmly.
She leaned closer, studying spacing, angles.
“That’s a typical night load for the Eights.
” Her finger tapped the screen once. Decisive.
“We won’t know exact positioning until we breach.
But if I had to wager a bet,” she said with a slight smile and a nod at Ice.
“I’d put my money on Tier 1 operators and the RCMP every time. I think we have a solid plan, Ice.”
Ice returned that slight smile. The fact that his boss liked this woman so much was another goad to his system.
“Jock up and get ready to move,” Ice said.
Chairs scraped as he and the team rose.
He wasn’t sure when she learned to see the world that way, or sure how she did anything at all with that level of calm, but she grounded him without even knowing she had the power to.
He grabbed one of his gun cases, opened the locks, and removed the 7.
62mm semi-automatic precision rifle, a beautiful SR-25, heavy and compact, built for precision at a distance and violence up close.
He ran a quick check of the weapon, loaded magazines into his pouches, and turned to file out with the rest of the team.
Blair hesitated as they reached the door at the same time. He stopped and waved her in front of him. Breakneck swallowed hard, ignoring the stab of pain behind his sternum. He should have felt nothing but mission focus. He should’ve closed the door on everything else.
He closed his eyes for one breath, realizing he was in more trouble with her than he had ever been with a rifle pointed at him.
She didn’t just unsettle him. She clarified him, and he hated how much he needed that.