Chapter 2
Captain Jonathan
The air is thicker now. Oppressive. My stomach keeps folding in on itself, like at any moment the ground might split wide and drag me down with it.
It’s a quiet kind of dread—no alarms blaring, no sirens howling—just that goddamn silence that seeps in before the bad hits, like the world knows what’s coming and doesn’t want to ruin the surprise.
The kind of silence I’ve only ever heard before explosions, before gunfire, before someone says a name that changes everything.
No matter how many messages I’ve left for Larkin, I’ve gotten nothing back.
Not even a damn thumbs up. This—this right here—is exactly why I’ve always specified that missions shouldn’t move forward unless I’m present.
Unless I’m doing the briefing. Unless I have eyes on the ground and fingers on the pulse.
Because when I’m not, things go sideways. They always have.
I know how the chain of command works. I’ve followed it my whole life, bled for it, enforced it.
But that doesn’t change the fact that no one knows this base—my team, my people—like I do.
Not even Larkin. And she’s lucky she’s one of my closest friends—aside from King—or else I’d already be in her office tearing her a new one for going around me, protocol be damned.
“Your neck’s turning red, Cap,” King mutters beside me, adjusting the fabric mask covering half his face.
His fingers tug at the edge of it, smoothing it back into place.
His voice is calm, dry as ever, like he’s commenting on the weather instead of my barely-contained fury.
The bastard could stand in a burning building and sound like he’s reading a grocery list.
I shoot him a glare from the corner of my eye.
I know it is.
But it isn’t just Larkin’s silence, or the fact that I had to leave my son’s brother’s damn wedding mid-toast to rush back here.
That sentence alone is a mouthful—and the reality’s even messier than it sounds.
One minute, glasses raised and vows echoing over the water; the next, my phone vibrating like a detonator in my pocket.
No. What’s really got my blood boiling is the silence on Delilah’s end.
I’ve sent four messages. Called twice. Told her I needed her on base for this hostage debrief—one I had no intention of running without her insight.
Not just because she’s got the sharpest damn instincts I’ve seen in years, but because I trust her judgment.
Because when she speaks in a briefing, the room shuts up and listens. And yet… nothing.
She mentioned she’d be visiting her parents during the break, but this kind of silence? This long? That’s not her. Even when she’s mad at me, she answers. Even if it’s just to argue.
I know what this is.
She’s hiding. Still afraid of giving something away.
Still terrified of disappointing her father—of letting him know that she not only enlisted in the Army he swore to keep her out of, but that she’s actively working in the same hellhole of shadows that nearly ruined his life.
That drove him into retirement. That forced him into a protection program after they took his wife.
And here I am—his best friend—covering for his daughter. Watching over her. Letting her take on assignments he’d never forgive me for.
Sassy, sweet, loyal, smart—and so fucking infuriating it hurts. She’s a walking contradiction in combat boots and soft smiles, and every version of her is currently a ghost in my head instead of at my side where she should be.
The halls of Greenport blur around me, sterile concrete and fluorescent lights, each one identical to the last with only minor, hidden differences visible to a trained eye.
Section markers. Security clearances. Quiet tells that say exactly where we are to anyone who knows what to look for.
The air smells like disinfectant, cold metal, and old coffee, the familiar cocktail of every bad day I’ve ever had here.
“She’s probably blowing this out of proportion,” King offers, as if that’s going to settle the storm brewing in my gut. “It’s Lark. You know how she gets.”
I grunt, not bothering to respond. I’ve known Larkin long enough to tell the difference between a standard protocol call and something she doesn’t want to say over the comms. This isn’t theater. She sounded off. Uneasy. And if Larkin’s uneasy, it’s already too late.
I dig through my cargo pocket, fingers wrapping around the cigar I keep stashed for moments like this. I don’t light it—just need the weight of it between my teeth. Something solid. Something to bite down on before I start saying things I’ll regret. Before I start breaking things I can’t fix.
We reach the end of the corridor, each heavy step echoing against the sterile concrete like a countdown.
The lights above buzz faintly, casting a dull glow that makes the polished floor shimmer like a quiet threat.
The air feels different here—too still, too clean.
It always does right before something shatters.
The door to her office is cracked open just enough to see the shadow of movement behind the frosted glass. I don’t bother knocking. I never do when I feel the heat in my chest rising like this—like pressure behind my eyes, like grief dressed up in rage.
I push in.
Larkin looks up from her desk slowly, hands still poised over a tablet.
The monitors behind her throw a pale glow across her face, washing out the usual color in her cheeks.
Her expression is too composed, too flat, and I know her well enough to know what that means.
She only gets like this when she’s about to lay down a truth so sharp it could gut you from the inside out.
“Jon. King,” she greets, calm and precise. Always with the even tone. Always with the goddamn control.
“Skip the pleasantries,” I snap, voice cutting sharper than I intended. It slices through the room, bouncing off metal and glass. “What the hell’s going on?”
King doesn’t move, just leans back against the far wall with his arms folded across his chest like he’s waiting for a storm he already saw brewing hours ago. He’s seen me like this before. He knows better than to interrupt now.
Larkin folds her hands, a practiced gesture meant to ground the situation, but it only pisses me off more. Her fingers lace together on the desk, knuckles white. “We’ve got a hostage situation,” she says evenly. “It’s bad.”
I narrow my eyes. “I know. I briefed you on it two days ago. That’s why I needed Delilah here.”
Her gaze dips—subtle, but not subtle enough. A single beat of hesitation. The tiniest crack in that perfect composure.
“This isn’t that one,” she says so slowly it makes my blood run cold.
I go completely still, every instinct in my body turning toward that razor edge of focus that only comes when something is catastrophically wrong. The hum of the ventilation, the tick of the wall clock, the faint chatter from the comms down the hall—all of it fades to a low, distant buzz.
“What do you mean?”
“There was a separate intel leak. Unauthorized contact. The extraction team was ambushed. The perimeter was compromised.”
She’s dodging. Circling the real answer like it’s going to sting if she says it out loud. And I already know—on some guttural, bone-deep level—that I’m not going to like what’s next. My skin feels too tight, my pulse pounding against the cigar between my teeth.
“Larkin,” I say, warning plain in my voice.
She flinches almost imperceptibly, then straightens her shoulders like that’ll shield her from the fallout. Her jaw tenses, and for the first time since I walked in, she looks… tired.
“Jon, I need you to stay calm.”
“Don’t,” I bark, stepping forward. The word lands like a shot. “Don’t patronize me. Who is it?”
King shifts slightly beside me. I don’t even have to look to feel the change in him—alert, ready, unsure how to steady either of us. His boots scrape once against the floor and then fall still. I’m barely holding my own goddamn spine up.
She breathes out slowly. “We don’t know where she is.”
The room goes quiet.
No, not quiet. Muffled. Like I’m underwater. Like my heartbeat is the only thing I can hear—and even that starts to go faint, like it’s happening in someone else’s chest.
“Who,” I say again, this time through clenched teeth, because I already know. I just need her to say it. I need the lie to die in the air between us. I need the world to pick a side—either this is my worst fear or it isn’t.
She holds my gaze, and for the briefest second she looks like she did the first time I met her—back when we were young, green, trying to save the world and failing. She looks like she doesn’t want to say it. Like she’s searching for some minor miracle that’ll make this easier.
“Say it,” I demand.
Her voice barely makes it across the desk. “Delilah.”
And just like that, the earth drops out from under me.
There’s no breath. No pulse. Just a searing, hollow white noise where my body used to be. It’s like someone took a sledgehammer to my ribcage and everything inside turned to dust.
“No,” I choke, the word falling from my lips like a reflex, like my body is trying to reject the information before my brain fully processes it. “No—she wasn’t even supposed to be out. She told me—she said she was with her parents—”
“She was,” Larkin replies softly. There’s no comfort in her tone, only regret. “Until she wasn’t. She knows the case as well as you do, Jon. I needed someone I could trust, someone who already had access and intel. So I called her back.”
My body starts moving before my brain does.
I’m pacing, jaw clenched, teeth grinding, cigar shoved back between my lips.
I can’t sit still. I can’t breathe. The walls feel closer, the air thinner.
I pray to every god I stopped believing in years ago that this is some mistake, that she’s wrong, that I misheard her—
“We received a distress call,” she continues, pressing a key on the comms panel. Her fingers don’t shake, but I can see the tension in her shoulders. “Secure channel. You should hear it.”
The speaker crackles. A second passes, stretching long and taut. Then:
“This is Echo Sierra Nine,” Delilah’s voice, strained and distant, comes through. “I’ve been compromised. Repeat, I’ve—”
Silence.
I freeze, the sound of her voice slicing clean through me like a blade I didn’t see coming.
It’s not just the words—it’s her tone. Controlled panic.
That particular cadence she only uses when she’s thinking fast and bleeding faster.
The muffled edge around the consonants, the faint echo that tells me she’s somewhere enclosed, somewhere wrong.
And then it’s gone. Cut off mid-breath.
I don’t think. I move.
I turn for the door, barely aware of my own limbs, of the sweat breaking out down my spine. Every instinct I have is screaming at me to run, to get to her, to put myself between her and whatever the hell is out there. I need to go. Now.
“King!” Larkin’s voice snaps across the room, sharp as a whip.
He’s faster than I expect, catching my shoulder before I reach the doorframe. His grip is firm, fingers digging in just enough to remind me he’s there, that there’s more than one person in this room trying to keep me from detonating.
“Move,” I growl, ripping the cigar from my mouth and flinging it across the room. It bounces off her desk and lands with a dull, defeated roll, coming to rest near the leg of her chair. A sad little symbol of control I no longer have.
“He stays here. This is yours, King,” Larkin orders. “No exceptions.”
I fight against the pressure in my chest, the adrenaline spiking hard enough to make my vision tunnel. I can feel my pulse in my fingertips, in my throat, in the bruise forming under King’s grip.
“The hell I do,” I bite out. “You can’t keep me off this.”
“I’m not keeping you off,” she says, jaw set. “You’re in his ear. You don’t leave this base.”
I whirl on her, every muscle in my body ready to throw something—preferably this entire fucking situation out the nearest window. “Bullshit!”
“You’re too attached,” she says. “And you know it.”
She doesn’t raise her voice. She doesn’t flinch. But it hits me harder than if she’d screamed. That kind of honesty—the kind that only comes from someone who’s seen you at your lowest and stayed anyway—it cuts cleaner than any blade.
Too attached.
Like there’s a version of this where I’m not. Like there’s a universe where she’s taken and I don’t feel like I’m about to tear through concrete with my bare hands to get her back.
My fists clench, shaking slightly from the restraint it takes not to slam something into a wall. I want to fight her. God, I want to scream and break protocol and flip every table in this room. I want to tell her she doesn’t get to make this call. That no one does but me.
But instead, I force the breath back into my lungs, one ragged pull at a time. In. Out. In. Out. The sound is harsh in the quiet, like gasps dragged over gravel.
We lock eyes. No words. No apologies. Just understanding.
And I hate it.
“Dismissed,” she says quietly.
I nod once. It’s stiff. Final. The kind of nod that feels like the end of something. The end of pretending I’m anything other than exactly what she just accused me of being.
Then I walk out, the echo of Delilah’s voice still rattling around in my skull like a ticking bomb, and no way to shut it off.