Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
Consciousness didn’t arrive in a clean wave. It came jagged, uneven, like breathing glass.
Shannon surfaced piece by piece. First came the noise, a slow mechanical rhythm. Beep. Pause. Beep.
Then came the pain, not sharp at first, just pressure. It was a thick, thudding weight in her chest, her hip, and her head. Suddenly, it escalated. There was a ripple of heat behind her eyes. Her throat burned. Something was in her mouth. Deep. Plastic. Choking.
Her body lurched. She couldn’t move.
Panic detonated like a mine. Her hand jerked, but something held it down, not tightly, but enough. Her head heaved against the ventilator tube. An alarm wailed. Someone said her name.
Her vision swam into place. The light was bright and cold. Dante.
Right there. Eyes wide. Face close. His hand on hers. “Shan…hey… honey, stop. You’re okay.”
She shook her head or tried to. Her leg screamed. Her ribs burned and twisted. She couldn’t breathe. Tears streamed sideways into her hair. She fought. Kicked her right leg. The tube gagged her. The machines blared.
“Shannon, listen to me,” Dante said, voice low but sharp. “You’re intubated. You’re okay. It’s helping you breathe.”
She thrashed harder and tried to scream. She choked.
A nurse was suddenly there. A doctor. Nothing made sense. Another shadow. Pressure on her arm. Something injected.
“She’s spiking,” someone snapped. “Sedation?”
“No!” Dante barked. “She’s fighting because she’s scared.”
“She’s crashing,” a nurse called out.
“Give me one minute!” Dante didn’t wait for a response. He climbed halfway onto the bed and cupped her face with one hand, pressed his body against her right side, and slid his arm underneath her, holding her tight against his chest without jarring the lines.
He whispered calmly, fiercely, “I’ve got you. You’re not alone. Not for one second. Not now. Not ever.”
Her fingers curled against his arm. She stopped thrashing. She was still crying and still gasping around the machine, but not fighting anymore.
In the doorway, Sam stood silently with Ford at his shoulder. And behind them both was Mike, who hadn’t moved or spoken. Dante’s eyes locked on the image, but he didn’t stop.
Dante remained bent over Shannon, his arms around her, calming her with nothing but steadiness, warmth and voice.
He wasn’t the lost boy holding on to the hospital stretcher six years earlier with white-knuckled fists and a blank face.
His father had just died. Tony Olivetti, KIA for Chase Security. He would never repeat that scene.
Dante had stood beside his father’s flag-draped coffin like he couldn’t remember how to breathe. And now he was teaching Shannon.
Dante heard Mike’s whisper to Ford, “He’s not the same kid.”
Sam said, “He’s not going anywhere.”
Mike exhaled once and didn’t disagree.
1720 HOURS
Shannon surfaced again, slower this time. Clearer. Her body still ached, her throat burned, and the ventilator hissed at the edge of her hearing, but she didn’t panic. She remembered.
The climb. Mara calling to her, then going silent. The crash.
She tried to open her mouth, but the tube stopped her. A monitor beeped faster. Someone moved beside her.
Dante was still there, holding her hand, thumb rubbing slow circles over her wrist like he’d never stopped. Her eyes opened fully.
He leaned closer. His face was tired, unshaven. “You’re okay,” he said softly. “You’re safe. Hunt says another day or two, and they’ll try to extubate you.”
Her eyes filled. She blinked once, then twice.
Dante reached for the whiteboard Ford left earlier. “Can you move your hand?”
She lifted it. Shaky. Barely controlled.
He slid the board beneath it and passed her the marker.
The first word came slowly, the lines crooked. M-A-R-A
Dante inhaled softly. “She didn’t make it.”
Shannon’s face crumpled. She blinked again. One tear slipped sideways into the bandage on her temple. Her hand moved excruciatingly slow: W-H-A-T H-A-P-P-E-N-E-D?
Dante shook his head. “Ford is going to find out.”
She carefully dragged out one final word: K-R-U
Her hand stopped.
But he understood. He covered her hand with his. “He’s not getting near you again.”
FORT NOVOSEL – SECURED HANGAR 2 – 1741 HOURS
Ford stood with arms crossed, watching two Bravo techs lay out the evidence under portable floodlights. Krueger sat in a locked room fifty feet away.
The frayed tail rotor cable chemically scored with an acidic agent not assigned to that bird’s maintenance. A recovered piece of shattered glass ampoule near the intake. Sabotage components bagged. One pair of gloves, stained.
Paulsen handed over the manifest. “Timing matches his hangar shift. Tools unaccounted for. The acid was signed out under a supervisor code that doesn’t exist.”
Ford nodded once.
“And the kicker?” Paulsen flipped open another folder. “This isn’t the first time Krueger’s name has shown up in sabotage tags. He was flagged two years ago in New Mexico. Buried under classified flight line logs.”
Ford’s mouth thinned. “Because of who his father is.”
Paulsen said nothing.
Ford snapped the file shut. “Get the lawyers ready and lock down internal comms. Chase doesn’t leak.”
CHASE SECURITY HQ DC – 1840 HOURS EST
The lights in the boardroom dimmed automatically with the setting sun. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls bled gold over the city skyline, but inside the room, no one looked up.
Ian Chase stood at the head of the long table, sleeves rolled, jaw tight.
To his right sat Tate Webster, CEO of Chase DC, his voice low and deliberate as he reviewed the internal damage reports.
He had once built intelligence infrastructure for JSOC.
Now he helped run one of the most powerful private military networks in the country.
To Ian’s left, Zach Wentworth, head of the domestic law enforcement bureau and an attorney, scrolled slowly through a classified asset file on his secure tablet. His gray suit looked corporate, but nothing about his posture was. He was the hammer Chase used when soft gloves failed.
Across from him sat his wife, Saoirse Kennedy Wentworth, former US Attorney and legal counsel for Chase’s high-risk response team and the NY branch. Her heels were off, her briefing binder open and tabbed. She had memorized every flight log before they entered the room.
“Krueger’s father has arrived at Fort Novosel,” Saoirse reported. “He’s attempting to invoke private counsel on his son’s behalf. Threatening to escalate to DoD oversight.”
Ian looked at Zach. “Don’t let him.”
Zach nodded. “We’ll box him out. The boy’s not going anywhere.”
Tate folded his hands. “And Shannon?”
“In the ICU,” Ian said. “She is in and out of consciousness.”
Zach shut the tablet. “We fly down tonight. Take custody of Krueger. Interrogate on Chase ground. Your jet’s fueled?”
Ian nodded. “Wheels up in thirty.”
Saoirse slipped her heels back on and stood. “We’ll coordinate with Ford on the handoff. No leaks. No deals.”
Tate leaned forward. “You’re not going to like this, but Krueger’s sabotage has financial fingerprints.
The acid he used—the badge override came from a requisitions queue ghost-managed by a shell company out of Nigeria.
We’re still digging.” He took a breath. “Graycut Partners, LLC have a couple of their teams in the area.”
Ian’s jaw clenched. “Graycut.”
“They’re still trying to unseat our pentagon contract in Kenya,” Tate added.
“I’d give it to them if they had the capacity to handle it. But they’ll be destroyed.” Ian shook his head.
Zach pushed his chair back. “We have him for one count of murder, one count of attempted murder, destruction of government property. But with the Nigerian connection, we have him for espionage and treason.”
Ian straightened, then calmly closed the briefing folder. “Good. Burn everything that protects him.”
FORT NOVOSEL ICU
Shannon surfaced again slowly. The morphine’s effectiveness had bottomed out. They added Dilaudid. The pain was deep and grinding, threading through bone and muscle. Her chest burned with every breath, like glass shifting beneath her ribs.
Her left eye throbbed in a distant, ugly pulse. Her eyes opened… then stayed open, because even blinking hurt.
She tried to move, but nothing answered except her right hand, twitching weakly against stiff sheets. Straps, dressings, and the tight pull of bandages pinned her down.
A low ventilator hiss filled her ears. She was intubated. And she didn’t know why.
Her breaths hitched, ragged around the tube. Panic sprinted up her spine so fast, she saw white. The monitors chirped then screeched.
A shadow shifted beside her. Dante.
He stood instantly, filling her vision with steady warmth she remembered from somewhere safe, somewhere before everything broke. “Hey.” He leaned close so she didn’t have to look far. “Shannon. Your helicopter went down. You’re in the hospital. You’re okay.”
She tried to speak, but only a strangled vibration escaped around the tube. She choked, panicked harder, breaths hitching out of rhythm.
The alarms spiked.
“Shan, stop,” Dante said, voice firm but soft. “Don’t fight the tube. I’m right here. Look at me.”
But she couldn’t. Her mind was sliding sideways.
The helicopter.
The fight for control.
Esten collapsing.
The mountain spinning.
The canopy tearing apart.
The final impact.
Her right hand flew upward, reaching for the tube, fingers curling to rip it out.
Dante caught her wrist gently but decisively. “Hey. No, don’t do that. I know it’s awful, but don’t hurt yourself.”
Her eyes begged, enormous and terrified.
Hunt Montgomery burst in, Lucas Hale right behind him.
“She’s panicking,” Dante said quickly. “She’s going for the tube.”
Hunt took one look at her wild eyes, the alarms, her saturations plummeting, and knew.
“She’s going to extubate herself.” He grabbed gloves. “We do it for her before she tears her airway.”