Chapter 5 #2
Her gaze tracked the body cam footage as the officers lined up at the door. She whispered a quiet prayer for them to come out safe. She’d seen plenty of scary things unfold from behind screens, but this was different.
This wasn’t hacked systems and stolen passwords. This was a house with a front porch, a wreath on the door…
And a family inside.
The command seemed to boom through the room. “Execute.”
The door crashed open.
There was a flashbang and movement she couldn’t make sense of, along with shouts that felt like gongs in her head. Boots pounded through the entryway, and Elin’s breath locked in her lungs.
The first clear frame made her throat close—a tidy foyer with backpacks on hooks and children’s shoes lined neatly along the wall.
The man they’d come for stood in the middle of it all, terror on his face, hands raised.
He didn’t look like a terrorist—a man who handled bombs.
He looked like an accountant. Mid-forties with brown hair going gray at the temples, wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. He blinked against the light flooding the room, fear twisting his face as an officer shouted orders.
Her pulse thudded painfully like a car skidding on gravel. “He’s not… He doesn’t look like—”
Her voice failed her.
The feed shifted to show a golden retriever barking wildly near the kitchen. One of the Canadian police officers blocked it with his leg. “Easy, buddy. Easy.”
The dog backed off with a whine.
His owner was ordered to his knees, and an officer rushed forward to handcuff him.
“This doesn’t seem right!” Her whisper sounded like a wail to her ears.
His wife and kids would have no idea where he went. They may never see him again.
Just like her and Liam. Panic threaded into her lungs, making it even harder to breathe.
No, no, no. Her data hadn’t lied, but the atmosphere in that house was wrong. Shouldn’t there be weapons lined up on the wall instead of kids’ belongings? Shouldn’t there be evil men aiming weapons and bombs with blinking countdown timers—like the ones on every wall in this base?
Elin’s mouth went dry.
“Hold positions. Sweep all the rooms,” Con’s voice broke the silence.
The live feed split into four panels as officers cleared the humble kitchen, the hallway with photographs of family members and the upstairs bedrooms. Not a single thing in the house screamed that the man she’d placed a target on was a criminal.
Her stomach twisted tighter and tighter until she thought she would be sick.
Then Liam’s hand came to rest on the back of her neck. His thumb brushed along her hairline in slow, grounding strokes.
“You did everything right.” He pitched his voice low for her alone. “Breathe, Elin. The dog’s safe.”
The words hit deeper than she expected. She blinked, realizing she’d been fixating on the animal pacing the hallway on the feed. An officer had clipped a leash on him and led him out the side door.
She forced in a shaky breath. “He doesn’t look like the kind of man who could do this.”
Liam’s smoky eyes were the color of a troubled sea. “No one ever does.” His touch didn’t leave her neck, and he could probably feel the tremor running through her that had nothing to do with an overload of caffeine.
A voice projected through the comms. “Suspect detained. Computer equipment secured. No resistance.”
She scanned the screens that switched views continually, hunting for anything that made sense in this madness.
But the mission rolled on. The man was read his rights. He stammered about his wife being a nurse, working night shift at the hospital. His kids were spending the night at their grandma’s. Tears streaked his face.
Her heart cracked under the pressure of watching it.
This wasn’t what she signed up for. She wanted to protect people—to make the world safer. Not sit here, watching from another country, while some father begged to understand why armed men were in his living room.
Con turned to face the team. All were silent.
“We’ll have him transferred into our custody. They’ll send him to us with an escort. Steele, Sinner.” Both men snapped to attention. “Meet him at JFK.”
The men nodded that they understood the order, but to Elin, those words felt like an asteroid striking the earth, hewing a trail of destruction.
The feed zoomed out to show the suspect being led outside. Somewhere, the dog barked again, scared but alive.
Liam’s voice cut through the static of her thoughts. “It’s over for tonight.”
But it wasn’t. Not for her.
Her body shook with emotion and her brain refused to let go of the questions screaming louder with every heartbeat. What if she was wrong? What if she had just handed them the wrong man while the real terrorist still had his finger on a button, prepared to detonate a bomb?
A rough cry bottled in her throat. She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes, trying to stop the world from spinning.
“Elin.”
Before she could respond, Liam’s fingers wrapped around her arm and he was pulling her out of her seat, guiding her to the door. The mission chatter faded as they left the war room.
He took one look at her and knew she was losing it.
“Fuck, Elin. Come here.” He didn’t ask permission. Didn’t wait.
He wrapped his arms around her and pressed her head against his chest. She gulped back her tears, thinking of the owner. His wife and kids. The dog.
She had no memory of Liam whisking her away, but next thing she knew, she was inside her dim bedroom, worlds away from the chaos erupting in other people’s lives because of her.
He released her long enough to shut the door with a soft click. She stood in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around her middle, trying to hold herself together. “Liam, what if that man was innocent?”
“Then he’ll be released. What you need to ask yourself is what if you were right?”
She searched his face for the truth, hysteria rising inside her. “If I was…and he was armed…those officers could have been killed! It would have been on me!”
“It’s the risk they take in the name of duty.”
She dropped her face into her hands, a cry bursting past her clamped lips. The room felt too small, her chest too tight.
His arms locked around her again and he settled on the bed with her in his lap. His hard body curled around her. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you. You made the right call. You did your job.”
“I did a terrible thing!”
“You did a brave thing.” His lips grazed her hair, and she gulped at the memory of other times when he held her for other reasons than to comfort her.
His arms tightened, and he buried his nose in her hair, inhaling.
She froze. “No. Not like this.”
His fingers sank into her hair, cradling her head to him. “Stay right here. Just let me hold you while your mind processes what just happened.”
Her mind warred between wanting to escape his all-too-familiar arms and burrowing closer to the safe steel of his chest.
Remorse was a raw rasp in his voice. “You made a hard decision. Believe me…I know the feeling.”