Chapter 8
KANE
Willa's truck disappears around the corner toward the clinic. My gut says follow her. Stay close. Put myself between her and whatever's coming.
Instead, I force myself to wait, watching the surveillance feeds on my tablet. Tommy's voice crackles through my earpiece with updates—traffic patterns normal, no unusual heat signatures, Mercer is in position inside posing as a pharmaceutical rep.
"She just pulled into the parking lot," Tommy reports. "Right on time."
I watch her exit the truck on the thermal feed. Even through the digital interference, I can see the tension in her shoulders, the way she scans the area before heading to the door. Good. She's alert.
"Stryker, Rourke, confirm positions," I say into my comm.
"North rooftop, clear sightlines," Stryker responds.
"South rooftop secured," Rourke adds.
The team's in place. Willa's wired with tracking and audio. We've planned for every contingency. So why does it feel like I'm sending her into a meat grinder?
Because I care about her. Simple as that. And caring gets people killed.
I start the engine and take a different route toward the clinic, circling wide to approach from the east. The Committee will be watching her, not the perimeter. Standard tunnel vision when you've got a target in sight.
Through my earpiece, I hear Willa making her first call to animal control. Her voice is steady, professional, exactly what a concerned veterinarian would sound like. Pride cuts through my anxiety. She's good at this. Better than most operators I've worked with.
The second call goes to her colleague in Kalispell. I listen to her weave in details about her father, establishing her knowledge base without making it obvious she's creating a paper trail. Smart. Natural.
I'm two blocks from the clinic when Tommy's voice goes tight with urgency.
"Kane, we've got a walk-in. Male, mid-forties, utility worker jacket. Facial recognition is running but—shit. Boss, that's Dominic Cray."
Everything in me goes cold. "Mercer, confirm visual."
One tap through the comm. Yes.
“Does Willa see him?”
One tap. Yes.
"Is he armed?"
Three taps. Unknown.
Fuck.
I'm already moving, foot to the floor, the SUV eating up the distance to the clinic. Too far. I'm too far away.
"All units, weapons hot," I order. "Willa, that’s Cray standing at the counter. Keep him talking. We're repositioning."
Through the audio feed, I hear Cray's voice, smooth and professional: "Dr. Hart? I'm here to check your electrical panel. Routine inspection."
Then Willa's response, steadier than it should be: "Actually, the panel's in the basement. Let me just finish this call and I'll show you."
Good girl. Buying time. Keeping him in play while we move into position.
I abandon the SUV and move in on foot, HK416 hidden under my coat, suppressor already attached. Too recognizable with the scars—Cray would make me instantly if I walked through that door. But I can get close. Can be ready when this goes sideways.
Because it will go sideways. It always does.
Through the audio feed, I hear them talking. Cray's probing, testing, trying to determine if she's alone or working with someone. Willa's deflecting, playing the concerned civilian perfectly.
Then Cray says it: "Fifteen years in this work, you develop instincts. Right now, my instincts say you're more than a small-town vet who saved a dog."
"Stryker, do you have a shot?" I ask, moving into position behind the clinic.
"Negative. Angle's wrong. Can't get clean separation between them."
Through the window, I watch Willa back toward the basement door, Cray advancing on her with predatory patience. He knows. Knows she's not what she seems. Knows this is a setup.
And he's going to kill her anyway, just to be sure.
"Rourke, prep for dynamic entry," I say. "Back door, my signal. Mercer, when Rourke moves, you engage from inside."
"Copy," Rourke responds.
One tap from Mercer.
"Execute," I say.
Rourke hits the back door like a battering ram.
Through the window, I see Mercer coming out of the waiting room, weapon drawn, moving on Cray from the front while Rourke comes through the back.
I'm moving before the wood finishes splintering, weapon up, angling for a shot that won't put Willa in the line of fire.
But Cray's faster than I expected. His arm snakes around Willa's throat, gun materializing in his other hand, muzzle pressed to her temple before I can acquire a target.
"Don't." His voice is calm, controlled. Professional. "Everyone stays exactly where they are, or the doctor dies."
Everything else disappears as I enter the clinic. All I see is Willa's face. The gun against her skull. Cray's finger on the trigger. One twitch and I lose her.
I can't lose her. Not like Morrison. Not like the men in Kandahar. Not her.
Mercer's in the hallway, weapon trained. Rourke holds at the back door. Through the window, I see Stryker's rifle scope catching light from across the street. We've got Cray bracketed, but he's got the one thing that matters.
"Smart move would be letting her go," I say. "You're outnumbered and outgunned."
"Maybe." Cray's arm tightens around Willa's throat. "But I've got leverage. Lower your weapons or I paint these walls with her brains. Your choice."
I force my voice steady, commanding. "Willa, when I say go, drop. Don't think. Just drop."
Her eyes find mine. I see the fear there, but I also see trust. She's going to do exactly what I tell her, even though every survival instinct must be screaming at her not to move with a gun to her head.
That trust terrifies me more than the gun.
Cray's talking to Rourke now, negotiating terms that we all know are bullshit. He's not walking out of here. This ends with him dead or us dead. Those are the only options.
I watch his eyes. His trigger finger. The subtle shift in his stance as he prepares to move.
Now.
"Go."
Willa drops like her legs vanished. I'm already firing—three suppressed bursts center mass.
Cray must have body armor on as he spins to return fire.
Rourke's faster and hits him with another suppressed round punching through his chest. The gun falls from Cray's hand.
He collapses, blood spreading across the clinic floor.
"Clear," Rourke says.
"Clear," Mercer echoes.
I'm moving before conscious thought processes the order, dropping beside Willa where she's hit the floor. My hands find her shoulders, checking for injuries, for blood, for any sign that Cray's bullet found her.
My voice comes out rough. "You okay?"
"Yeah." She's shaking now, adrenaline crash hitting hard. "Is he...”
"Alive." Rourke's already checking wounds. "Barely. We need medical."
My brain shifts into tactical mode. Cray knows things—Committee operations, Protocol Seven targets, maybe even where they're storing the chemical weapons.
He's worth more alive than dead but bringing him to Echo Base is a calculated risk.
If he escapes, if he survives long enough to report back, we're compromised.
But we need what's in his head more than we need to stay invisible.
"Tommy, prep the med bay at Echo Base. We're bringing him in." To Willa: "Can you walk?"
She nods. Mercer helps her up while I coordinate the extraction. The suppressors bought us time—the shots sounded like doors slamming, nothing that would immediately trigger 911 calls. But someone will have heard something. We've got minutes, maybe less.
By the time local PD gets the disturbance call, we're ghosts—Cray secured, scene staged to look like a robbery gone wrong, team dispersed.
I pull up in the SUV and guide Willa into the passenger seat. She's still shaking, still processing what just happened. Cray tried to kill her. Would have killed her if she'd hesitated even a second when I gave the order.
The thought makes me want to hit Cray with another round—this one through his skull.
"Rourke's taking your truck back to base," I say as we pull away from the clinic. "We can't leave it here for the police to process."
"Good thinking."
The silence stretches. I keep one hand on the wheel, the other on my comm, but what I want is to reach over and touch her. To prove she's alive and whole and here beside me.
Keep it professional. Keep her at arm's length.
"You did good," I say finally. "Kept him talking. Bought us time to position."
"I froze. When he grabbed me, I just froze."
"You followed orders. Dropped when I told you to." My jaw tightens. "That's what kept you alive."
She doesn't respond. Just stares out the window at the forest sliding past, processing trauma in whatever way her doctor's brain handles it.
By the time we reach Echo Base, she's stopped shaking. Tommy reports that Cray's stable, Khalid watching him in the med bay. Sarah's monitoring vitals.
"I need you to look at his wounds," I tell Willa. "Make sure he stays alive long enough to talk."
"I'm a veterinarian...”
"You trained as a trauma nurse." I meet her eyes. "I need that training now, Willa. Can you do this?"
I watch the conflict play across her face. The doctor who took an oath to save lives versus the woman who almost died because of this man. For a long moment, I think she'll refuse.
Then: "Show me the med bay."
Two hours later, she strips off bloody gloves. Cray's stable, wounds cleaned and dressed, vitals holding steady. She saved the man who tried to kill her because that's who she is at her core—someone who saves lives, even when those lives don't deserve saving.
"Nice work, Doc."
"Don't call me that right now." Exhaustion crashes over her features. "I just saved the man who tried to kill me. I don't feel good about it."
"You weren't supposed to feel good about it." I move closer, close enough to smell antiseptic and blood on her clothes. "You were supposed to do what needed doing. And you did."
"Before I put him under, he kept talking… about Jack. About Chicago. About everything I ran from." Her voice cracks. "How did he know that?”