Chapter Four
The flight from Hawaii to Oregon took just over five hours.
Long enough for tension to coil tight and settle deep.
They flew dark again—not as aggressively as Jakarta, but deliberately.
No filed flight plan on the civilian grid.
Minimal transponder exposure. Luca threaded them through the edges of regulated airspace with quiet precision, while Drew handled comms that weren’t really comms at all—bursts of noise, misdirection, absence where presence was expected.
Niko sat strapped in, watching the Pacific roll beneath them, black and endless. His side still burned when he shifted, a reminder of how close this had already come. He ignored it.
Ethan’s house replayed in his mind, built entirely from fragments: the coordinates Marsh had pulled, satellite images Luca had skimmed too fast, the knowledge that wherever Ethan had chosen to live, it wouldn’t be careless.
Someone had found it anyway.
They landed outside Portland under cloud cover.
He brought the craft down so that the wheels kissed the tarmac with muted finality.
Thanks to the Pathfinders, vehicles were waiting—clean, unmarked, already loaded.
No one spoke as they transferred gear, weapons, and comms. Black Tide moved the way they always did when the margin for error had collapsed to nothing. With intent.
The drive took them out of the city and into the forest.
Tall firs crowded the road, their trunks dark with moisture, branches forming a canopy that swallowed light. The air smelled of rain and pine and earth. Niko tracked distance automatically, mapping approach routes and fallbacks in his head.
They saw the signs before they reached the property.
Tire tracks that didn’t belong. Footprints pressed into soft ground along the tree line. Broken underbrush where someone had moved fast and heavy.
“They’re ahead of us,” Keanu murmured over the team channel.
They stopped at the perimeter, killed the engines, and climbed out.
Niko lifted a hand. "Call signs active."
Weapons came up when call signs went live. The world narrowed to breath and spacing and the quiet certainty that they were no longer alone.
They moved as a cohesive unit.
The house emerged gradually through the trees—a massive structure set back from the road, modern lines softened by wood and glass.
A wraparound deck stretched along two sides, elevated above the slope, railings catching the last gray light of the afternoon.
Floor-to-ceiling windows faced the forest, more defensive than inviting.
The kind of place designed to watch its surroundings.
Luca’s voice cut in, calm and precise. “Drones are up. Five ahead of us. Scouting pattern. Another group inbound from the south—ETA five minutes.”
Niko’s pulse ticked faster.
They spotted the first team near the edge of the deck—five men, armed, spread loose but alert. Professionals. The way they stood screamed that these men were not amateurs.
Niko gave the signal.
The takedown was fast and quiet.
It wasn’t cinematic. It was efficient.
Keanu closed the distance on the first man before he could turn, one arm locking around his throat, blade flashing once at the base of the skull. The body sagged bonelessly, caught and lowered so it never hit the deck hard enough to sound.
To Niko’s left, Luca drove forward with brutal precision—an elbow to the sternum to steal breath, a knee that buckled the man’s leg, followed by a short, vicious strike that dropped him face-first into the planks. The crack of bone was soft, ugly.
Niko took the third himself.
The man saw him half a second too late. Niko slammed into him shoulder-first, carried him backward into the railing, and drove the hilt of his knife up under the rib cage. The resistance was brief. Warm. Final. He held the man upright until the struggle left him, then eased him down.
Another body hit the ground behind him—someone grunting once before going still. Suppressed gunfire coughed twice, close and contained, ending the last threat before it could fully form.
One man reached for his weapon.
Victor crossed the distance in two strides and broke his wrist with a sharp twist, disarming him before driving him to the ground. A knee to the throat ended it. Clean.
Five men down.
No shouting. No warning shots. Just breath, impact, and silence reclaiming the space.
Niko stood over the last one for half a second longer than necessary, chest tight.
Don't let us be too late, he thought. Please God, don't let it be too late.
“South team closing,” Luca warned.
“Split,” Niko ordered. “I’m going inside. Breaker, Torch on me. The rest of you head to the south side of the house.”
Luca and Keanu ran onto the desk and approached the door with him, angling for the house. Tane, Victor, Kael, and Drew peeled off, moving fast and wide to intercept the incoming threat.
Niko vaulted the deck railing and landed hard, pain flaring sharp at his side. He ignored it again. The sliding doors were unlocked.
That worried him more than if they’d been forced.
Inside, the house was all clean lines and controlled space. Concrete floors. Steel beams. Furniture chosen for function, not comfort. The walls held aviation photographs—aircraft in impossible attitudes, frozen moments of mastery.
Ethan lived here.
The thought hit harder than expected.
“Clear,” Keanu whispered from the far hall.
Niko moved deeper, heart hammering. Every shadow felt charged. Every sound carried weight. He didn’t know what he was hoping to find—Ethan standing alive and furious, or signs that they’d already been too late.
Outside, gunfire cracked.
Short bursts. Controlled. Victor and Tane doing what they did best.
Niko forced himself to keep moving.
Whoever was coming for Ethan wasn’t subtle. They weren’t hiding anymore. That meant either desperation—or confidence.
Both were bad.
He reached the staircase and paused, listening. Nothing. No movement. No voices. Just the distant sound of conflict bleeding through the walls.
“First floor cleared,” Luca murmured.
Niko nodded, jaw tight.
He already knew Ethan wasn’t on the first floor.
If he had been, they would have heard something by now—movement, a voice, a fight breaking containment. The silence down here wasn’t absence. It was order. Control. The kind Ethan lived inside.
Which meant he was upstairs.
Where the hell are you? Niko thought, irritation and fear tangling tight in his chest as he started for the stairs. And what the fuck was up with this place?
The house didn’t feel lived in. It looked like it had been lifted straight from an architectural magazine—every line intentional, every surface curated.
Expensive without warmth. Beautiful without comfort.
There were no personal touches where there should have been some evidence of mess, of compromise.
No shoes kicked aside. No half-finished projects.
No signs of a life that allowed itself to sprawl.
And no sign at all that a child lived here.
That realization landed hard.
No toys abandoned under furniture. No crayon marks. No photographs tacked up crooked at a child’s height. Not even the subtle chaos that came with trying—and failing—to keep a space pristine when a small human occupied it.
It didn’t make sense.
Ethan was many things, but careless wasn’t one of them. If he had a daughter—if Poppy existed the way he’d said she did—then this house should have borne some evidence of her presence.
Unless she wasn’t here.
The thought tightened something sharp and cold in Niko’s gut as he took the first step upward, the house still holding its breath around him.
Who are you, he thought, that this many people are willing to risk crossing Black Tide to get to you?
And beneath that:
What will I find when I finally do?
The house seemed to hold its breath.
So did Niko.
****
Ethan had known they were coming before the first tire touched gravel.
He’d caught the ripple early—movement where there shouldn’t have been any, a pattern shift on feeds he trusted because he’d built them himself.
He was already in the safe room when the outer perimeter alarms tripped, seated in the dark with a tablet balanced against his knee, watching the world narrow into angles and vectors and inevitability.
The room was buried deep inside the house, poured concrete and steel, insulated against sound and signal alike. No windows. No soft edges. It wasn’t a panic room. It was a control node.
The first team appeared on his screens like ghosts between trees.
Not subtle. Not sloppy either.
So that’s how you want to play it, he thought, jaw tightening as he tagged them automatically. Five men. Armed. Scouting, not committing yet. He’d seen worse. Dealt with worse.
Then another set of markers flared into existence.
His breath stalled.
Black Tide.
He recognized them instantly—not faces, not silhouettes, but movement. The way they flowed through terrain, spacing instinctive, angles overlapping. No wasted motion. No hesitation.
Of course it was them.
And of course it was Niko.
Ethan leaned closer to the screen despite himself as the two forces converged, fingers tightening on the edge of the tablet. He adjusted the feed angles automatically, pulling in peripheral cameras, slowing one stream while another ran in real time. He wanted to see all of it.
He watched the first clash unfold in clean, brutal efficiency.
The men didn’t even have time to react.
Ethan tracked the takedown frame by frame, impressed despite himself. The speed was ruthless. Efficient. No wasted motion, no hesitation, no need for correction. Five armed men neutralized in seconds, bodies hitting the ground before the next breath could be drawn.
You’re pissed, he thought as he watched Niko move through them like a blade. And you’re still exactly who I remember.
A corner of his mouth lifted despite the knot tightening in his chest.