Chapter Seven
The truck groaned its way up the mountain road like it resented every second of the climb.
Ricky lay curled near the back on a pile of worn-out tarps, the smell of diesel and rust thick in his nose.
The engine shuddered beneath him, a low, mechanical growl that reminded him of old firefights and extraction zones that didn’t go according to plan.
He kept one hand tucked under his head, the other loosely curled around his duffel strap. Hood drawn low. Eyes mostly closed.
Pretending to sleep was easy. Actually doing it? Impossible.
He ran the mission over and over in his mind, each beat drilled into him like a mantra.
Get inside. Blend in. Get eyes on the target. Confirm ID. Tag the mark. Prepare for extraction. Evacuation window opens at 0600. Dust-off by 0630. No heroics. No improvisation. No loose ends.
He’d been on ops like this before—covert insertions, low-profile work, tight turnarounds. But this one buzzed under his skin in a different way. Not because of the danger. Not because of the stakes.
Because of her.
Sophia.
Van’s kid. The little girl who no doubt had fire in her blood and a price on her name. The mission wasn’t just about clearing a ledger anymore. It was personal. And Ricky had never been good at keeping personal things clean.
Around him, the other men in the freight crew shifted silently in their seats.
Albanian. Tired. No eye contact. Just six guys doing a job, pretending none of this was more than it seemed.
Ricky fit in seamlessly—the rough exterior, the sharp eyes dulled to steel, the easy posture of a man who’d carried too many secrets too far.
The guy he’d replaced? Off-grid. One-way nap courtesy of a blow to the skull and a good bit of sedation. Marsh had handled it. Quietly. Efficiently. The kind of ghostwork that made these ops possible.
No one here knew Ricky didn’t belong.
And that’s how he’d survive.
The truck hit a pothole, bouncing him hard enough to jolt his spine. He didn’t react. Instead, he let his thoughts slip sideways—to warmth, to breath, to the feel of Ezra’s body beneath his hands.
The night before they left the states.
God. That morning after.
Ezra had stayed. Ricky had woken up to sunlight cutting through the blinds and Ezra sprawled half on top of him, all heat and tangled limbs and sleep-rough murmurs.
He remembered the way Ezra blinked awake and smiled—smiled—like nothing in the world could touch them there. Like maybe, just maybe, they’d finally found a pocket of safety to exist in.
“You smell like burnt toast,” Ezra had mumbled, nose buried in Ricky’s neck.
“That’s because you tried to make toast at 3:00 this morning and nearly set the kitchen on fire.”
Ezra harrumphed, “You distracted me.”
“I was the only one wearing clothes,” Ricky reminded.
“Details.”
Ricky had laughed—really laughed. The kind that started deep in the chest and climbed until it shook his shoulders. Ezra had grinned and kissed him.
And then, just before he left for this op, Ezra had pressed Van’s bent dog tag into Ricky’s palm and said, “Bring her home. But bring you back in one piece, too. That’s just as important to me.”
Now, inside the jostling metal coffin of a truck, Ricky reached up and tapped his earpiece, grounding himself with the faint crackle of open comms.
Static.
Then—
“Today’s lunch report ... I attempted soup. It bit back.”
Ricky bit down on a smirk.
“Define ‘soup.’” His voice barely above a whisper, but with Marsh’s tech, he didn’t have to be louder than that. Ezra would have him clear as day.
“Hot water. Random ass spices. Mystery meat. Possibly a sea sponge. I regret my choices.” He sounded so sad, he had to fight a smile.
“Sounds like deployment food.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t miss it.” He was fast becoming addicted to the man’s voice. Jesus he had it bad.
“I miss your mouth when it’s not running.”
“Liar. You love me. Say it.”
“I’d rather eat your sponge soup.” Although he was pretty sure he felt it, he wasn’t quite ready to say it over comms, when the likelihood of his teammates listening in was pretty damn high.
Ezra chuckled in his ear, and Ricky closed his eyes for half a second, letting that warmth wash over him. He knew Ezra was out there—watching. Tracking. Waiting. Not able to touch, but tethering him to something real.
Sometimes Ezra would just check in with a joke. Other times he’d whisper where he was. “Two clicks west, line of sight. You’ve got backup.” And once he’d said simply, “You’re not alone in there.”
That had meant more than any mission briefing ever had.
The truck began to slow.
Tires grinding over gravel turned to a low hiss as they hit paved stone. The shift in sound made every muscle in Ricky’s body coil tight.
This was it.
The compound’s gates loomed ahead—two security guards posted at either side, rifles slung low, posture casual. Don’t ask, don’t care. Ricky recognized the look. They were either paid well or scared stupid. Maybe both.
The rear door rattled open with a squeal. Sunlight spilled in, harsh and blinding after the shade.
One of the local guys jumped down first. Then another. Ricky followed, landing in a crouch, his boots hitting concrete with practiced ease. His duffel swung at his side. He kept his head low, his posture neutral. A man with a job, not a mission.
The compound sprawled in all directions—outbuildings, stacked crates, satellite dishes disguised as water tanks. High walls. Too clean. Too staged.
The kind of place that looked safe until you looked twice.
Ricky scanned without turning his head. Just subtle glances. Angles. Reflections in windows. Movement behind curtains.
Then—
There.
A flash of color.
A child’s laugh, light and quick.
A little girl darted across a patch of artificial turf, chasing something invisible, a stick clutched in one hand like a sword. She was maybe five. Maybe six. Dark hair in a messy braid. Scraped knees. Dirt-smudged cheeks. Could it be her?
Then, she looked up and he caught sight of her eyes.
Hazel-gold. Bright. Curious. Wild.
Van’s eyes.
And that smile—
That smile.
It hit Ricky like a sucker punch to the chest.
She didn’t look scared. She didn’t look hurt. But she looked wary. Like she knew that every movement she made was monitored. Controlled.
He swallowed hard.
“Target in sight,” he said, voice flat and low. “Visual confirmation—Sophia located. She’s here. She’s alive.”
He felt it in his chest—that sharp click of mission and meaning locking into place.
Now it was real.
Now it began.
****
The hotel room smelled like cold coffee, hot wires, and twenty-four hours of held breath.
Every surface was stacked with tech—laptops, signal boosters, makeshift jammers, and two oversized monitors running grainy CCTV feeds of the compound Ricky had just walked into.
Marsh sat at a chipped wooden table in the corner, fingers flying over a keyboard like he was defusing a bomb.
Hogan stood behind him, arms folded, one foot tapping out an anxious rhythm against the peeling tile floor.
Ezra paced.
Back and forth. Back and forth.
His palms itched. His chest ached.
The room was thick with tension. The kind that didn’t just sit—it clung. Like static before a lightning strike.
And then—
“Target in sight.”
Ezra froze.
Ricky’s voice crackled through the comms, low and composed. Too composed. But Ezra knew him—knew that clipped tone meant his heart was racing.
“Visual confirmation—Sophia located. She’s here. She’s alive.”
Time stopped. And then—
Everything snapped into motion.
Marsh let out a low whistle and sat back on his heels. “Hot damn. That’s a lock.”
Hogan swore under his breath. “She’s alive.”
Bateman stood from the makeshift ops table and grabbed the nearest map, eyes blazing. “We’ve got our confirmation. That changes everything.”
The tension in the room didn’t vanish—it transformed. From coiled fear into something sharper. Focused. Hopeful.
Ezra exhaled for the first time in what felt like hours, dropping into a battered hotel chair like his legs had given out.
Sophia was alive.
They had her.
The excitement around him swelled—questions, logistics, movement—but he only half-heard it. His mind was tethered to that voice, that steady rasp in his ear that had been the only thing keeping him grounded.
Most of the conversations he’d had with Ricky since the op started had been private. One-on-one whispers, jokes, nerves. Marsh had rigged something—some brilliant bit of programming black magic—so that when Ezra keyed in on a private channel, the others’ comms dropped to ambient.
“Channel 7-G,” Marsh had said with a shrug. “Private echo stream. Works like a whisper. You talk, only he hears. He talks, only you do.”
Ezra hadn’t asked how. He didn’t want to break the spell.
He just knew that hearing Ricky say what he had for lunch—hearing that he was okay, that he was alive—had made all the difference.
Now, though, Ezra keyed back to the open line.
Bateman’s voice came clear and strong. “All right. We go hard on this. Sophia’s confirmation means we start prepping the extraction window. I want boots ready in under twenty-four hours.”
Hogan nodded. “Pullout route?”
“We’ll run three,” Bateman said, already pointing at terrain features on the digital map. “Primary through the forested west corridor, secondary via drone-lift from the adjacent supply pad, and a fallback through the river route if we have to swim it.”
“Backup?” Marsh asked, not looking up from his screen.
“We’ll call Kai if we need muscle,” Bateman said. “Tell him to pack light and mean.”
Ezra blinked, absorbing it all. The momentum. The planning. The shift.
A few hours ago, they were hoping for a miracle.
Now they had a mission.
He should have been riding that high with the rest of them—should’ve been grinning and jostling shoulders, asking when they rolled out.
But instead, he sat back in his chair, staring at the waveform on the open comms channel that pulsed every time Ricky breathed.