Chapter 29
TRENT
Tucker Quentin hadn’t spared any expense on our new headquarters, even if the outside still looked like an abandoned shipping facility. Three days since we’d returned from Estonia, one week since the highway extraction in Finland, and we were finally starting to look like a real operation again.
If you ignored the fact that we were all technically fugitives in certain parts of the world.
I scanned the faces around the table, mentally noting the empty chairs.
No Kate, who was across town at the medical facility we’d set up in one of Quentin’s properties.
No Gage, whose condition had deteriorated rapidly since returning.
Alistair wasn’t hopeful about his prognosis, and Kate refused to leave his side, monitoring his vitals herself, cross-referencing every medical journal and experimental treatment that might buy him more time.
I’d visited yesterday. Found Kate asleep, her head resting on Gage’s bed, her hand clutching his.
His skin had taken on that gray cast of systemic organ failure, gold fractal patterns flaring beneath it with each labored breath.
He’d opened his eyes when I entered, that metallic sheen to his irises more pronounced than I’d ever seen it.
“Don’t let her waste her life trying to save mine,” he’d said, voice barely above a whisper. “When it’s time, get her out of here.”
I’d nodded, knowing he was right, knowing Kate wouldn’t listen to either of us.
“Yo, Bricks!” Flynn’s voice jolted me back to the present. “Earth to Bricks. You with us, man?”
I blinked, realizing everyone was looking at me. “Sorry. What?”
Flynn grinned, leaning back in his chair. “I was asking about the big day. Is this gonna be one of those courthouse specials, or are we actually invited to witness the miracle of you voluntarily putting on a suit?”
It took me a second to process what he was talking about.
Right.
The wedding.
My wedding.
To Evelyn.
In three days.
“It’s small,” I said, shuffling the papers in front of me. “Just a quick ceremony.”
Leo’s grin matched Flynn’s, both of them enjoying my discomfort far too much. “Three days, isn’t it? Getting nervous yet?”
“No.” The answer came too fast, too defensive.
I wasn’t nervous about marrying Evelyn. I was nervous about everything else—keeping Sophia safe, building this new version of Edge Ops, the constant threat of Innovixus finding us.
The wedding itself was the only thing that felt right in a world gone sideways.
“No bachelor party?” Nolan asked, dropping into the chair across from me. His boots hit the table edge as he leaned back. “Last chance for freedom, brother.” He waggled his brows. “If you know what I mean.”
“I have no idea what you mean,” I replied flatly, “and I’d prefer to keep it that way.”
“Come on, one night out with the boys,” Nolan pressed. “Before you officially hang up your player card—“
“Can we focus on the briefing?” I cut him off, tapping my fingers against the stack of files. “We have actual work to do.”
Ethan entered from the side door with Jade Collins close behind him. She’d been our CIA liaison before. Now that we’d been burned, I wasn’t entirely sure what she was, but she’d been hanging around a lot since we got back to town.
“Focus up,” Ethan said. “You can plan Bricks’ social calendar after we finish discussing the operation that nearly got all of us killed or imprisoned in Finland.”
The humor drained from the room, everyone straightening slightly as Ethan took his place at the head of the table.
He had that effect—the ability to shift the energy of a space with just his presence.
Even with our new unofficial status, he carried himself with the same military bearing, the same quiet authority that had made him such an effective leader of Edge Ops.
“Sorry, boss,” Flynn said, though he didn’t look particularly apologetic. “Just trying to make sure our boy here doesn’t get cold feet. We’ve got a pool going on whether he actually shows up on time.”
I shot him a glare. “I’ve never been late to an objective.”
“True,” Rafe commented from his spot near the window. “But you’ve also never voluntarily put yourself in a situation where you have to wear a tie.”
A brief chuckle rippled through the room. Even Ethan’s mouth quirked slightly at the corner.
“For the record,” I said, “I’ll be on time, appropriately dressed, and there will be absolutely no need for anyone to drag me to the altar.”
“That’s what they all say,” Nolan muttered with exaggerated wisdom.
“Alright, enough,” Ethan said, though his voice lacked real heat.
He understood what they were doing—using humor to release the tension that had been building since Finland.
Since Estonia. Since we’d all thrown away our careers and legitimate lives to rescue one little girl and establish this new, shadowy version of our old unit.
“Where’s Evelyn?” Leo asked, glancing at the empty chair to my right.
“Running late,” I answered. “She’s been coordinating with social services for the Garnett survivors.”
Jade nodded. “I spoke with her this morning. She’s helping three families relocate to Seattle, setting up support services, housing, the whole package.”
“Woman’s a machine,” Flynn said, genuine respect in his voice. “Planning a wedding, raising a kid, building an intelligence network, and still finding time to help civilian victims.”
“She sleeps about four hours a night,” I said. It wasn’t an exaggeration. I’d wake at three a.m. to find her side of the bed empty, follow the soft glow of her laptop to the kitchen where she’d be cross-referencing Innovixus facility blueprints or creating profiles on potential targets.
When I tried to get her to rest, she’d look at me with those dark, haunted eyes and say, “They’re still out there. They’re still doing this to other people.”
The side door opened, and Evelyn slipped in, looking slightly flushed, like she’d been hurrying.
Her hair was pulled back in a simple ponytail, her usual bookstore clerk softness replaced by something sharper, more focused.
The transformation still caught me off guard sometimes—this woman who had hidden in plain sight for years now stepping fully into her power.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said, sliding into the chair beside me. Her hand brushed mine briefly under the table, a silent greeting that sent warmth through my chest.
“Perfect timing,” Ethan said, opening the thick binder in front of him. “Let’s get started with the official after-action report on Operation Garnett.”
As everyone turned their attention to Ethan, I caught Nolan watching me with a knowing smile.
He mimed a whip-cracking motion when Evelyn wasn’t looking.
I responded with a gesture that would’ve gotten me reprimanded in our military days.
Some things never changed, even as everything else around us had transformed beyond recognition.
We were fugitives with new identities, operating outside the law we had once served. We had exchanged government paychecks for private funding and military structure for something more fluid, more responsive. We had traded safety for purpose, security for freedom.
And somehow, in the midst of all that chaos, I had found the one thing I never expected: a family.
A woman who had been through hell and come out stronger.
A little girl who called me “Daddy” when she thought I couldn’t hear her practicing the word.
A team that had become my brothers and sisters in every way that mattered.
In three days, I’d make it official with Evelyn. But the truth was, we were already bound by something stronger than paperwork or vows. We were bound by what we’d survived together, what we’d built from the ashes of our old lives.
The teasing was just their way of saying they saw it too. That even in this dangerous new world we’d chosen, some things were worth celebrating.
“Bricks?” Ethan’s voice pulled me back. “You ready to begin?”
I nodded, pushing thoughts of the wedding aside. “Ready.”
It was time to get back to work.
Ethan opened the three-inch binder and laid it flat on the conference table.
Operation Garnett: After-Action Report. The cover page was clean and official-looking, as if this had been just another sanctioned mission and not the operation that had decimated the original Edge Ops and forced us all underground.
I’d already read it cover to cover three times, searching for something we’d missed, some thread we could have pulled differently that would have saved more people.
Some decision point where choosing left instead of right might have spared Sheriff Parker or kept Dutch Henderson from taking that bullet.
“By the tactical metrics,” Ethan began, his voice steady and professional, “Operation Garnett meets all criteria for mission success.”
Success. Such a clean, simple word for the mess we’d left behind.
“One hundred eighty civilians freed from neural suppression,” he continued, flipping to the statistical summary page.
“Forty-seven test subjects recovered from the facility. Primary target Langston Winslow is dead. Dr. Helena Kovacs is in federal custody, facing multiple life sentences. The Garnett facility was completely neutralized.”
Numbers on a page. Checkboxes ticked. Success by any standard operational measure.
I glanced at Evelyn beside me, wondering if the clinical accounting of what we’d done provided her any comfort.
Her face remained carefully neutral, but her fingers tapped a restless rhythm against her thigh under the table.
“The Justice Department is satisfied with the outcome,” Ethan added. “And I’ll mark it as a successful operation in our official record.”
Our “official” record. The irony wasn’t lost on anyone at the table. There was nothing official about us anymore.
“Now for the cost analysis.” Ethan flipped to another section, his voice dropping slightly. This was the part the government reports wouldn’t include. The human toll that couldn’t be quantified in asset recovery or neutralized threats.
“Dutch Henderson,” he said. “Permanent nerve damage in his left shoulder and arm. His days of running mountain trails and tracking game are over. Doctor says he’ll regain about sixty percent function with physical therapy, but he’ll never have full use of that arm again.”
I remembered Dutch in that cabin, blood soaking through his flannel shirt, still barking orders at us to get the civilians to safety. Still putting himself between the threat and the innocent, even as the light faded from his eyes.
“Sheriff Wade Parker,” Ethan continued, “took his own life in federal custody three days ago. Left a note saying he couldn’t live with what he’d done under mind control, couldn’t face the families of people he’d hurt.”
The room went quiet. Parker had been a good man, caught in forces beyond his control.
The kind of small-town sheriff who knew every kid’s name, who organized the summer baseball league, who helped old ladies change flat tires on county roads.
The kind who couldn’t reconcile his actions under Innovixus’ influence with the man he believed himself to be.
“Beth Morris remains at St. Elizabeth’s Psychiatric Hospital,” Ethan said. “Her memories of the conditioning are fractured and incomplete. Doctors report that while she’s physically recovering, the woman she was before Garnett is essentially gone.”
I thought of the elementary school teacher who’d welcomed Sophia on her first day, bright sweaters and mismatched earrings, a smile that made scared kids feel safe. Now she couldn’t be in rooms with more than two people without having panic attacks.
Evelyn’s hand found mine and squeezed. When I glanced at her, I saw a sheen of tears in her eyes.
Ethan closed the report with finality, signaling we were done for the day. “We won the battle,” he said, echoing my earlier thought. “But the war is far from over.”
I found Evelyn an hour later, still working in the intelligence suite, sorting reports and facility schematics. Her eyes were red-rimmed from staring at screens too long, her shoulders tight with the tension she carried constantly now.
“Hey,” I said quietly. “It’s past eight. Sophia’s probably wondering where we are.”
Evelyn looked up, blinking as if coming back from somewhere far away. “Is it that late already?”
“Come home,” I said. The domestic normalcy of that statement—Come home, our daughter is waiting—still caught me off guard sometimes.
I had a home now.
A family.
Something worth protecting beyond the mission parameters.
She nodded but didn’t move from her seat. “Are we making a difference? Innovixus is so big. We shut down one facility, but sixteen more are still operational.”
I heard the exhaustion and doubt in her voice, recognized it because I’d felt it myself after every mission that cost more than it saved. “We saved one hundred eighty people,” I reminded her gently. “We got Sophia back. We stopped Langston from ever hurting anyone again.”
“It feels like trying to fight an ocean tide with a bucket.”
“Then we get more buckets.” I lifted her from the seat. “And we keep fighting, because what else is there? We can’t save everyone, but we can save someone. And sometimes that has to be enough.”
She looked up at me, her eyes searching mine for something. Certainty, maybe. Or hope. “You really believe that?”
“I have to,” I said. “Otherwise, what’s the point of any of it?”
Evelyn nodded slowly, her hand finding mine as we resumed walking to the car.
I didn’t have all the answers. Didn’t know if what we were doing would ever be enough to stop Innovixus for good.
But I knew we’d keep trying. Keep fighting.
For the people we’d already saved, and for the ones we still could.
For Sophia, waiting at home for us to return.
For the family we were building in the aftermath of so much destruction.
For the chance to make something good from something broken.
And for tonight, that would have to be enough.