Chapter 10 FLINT #2
I raise my weapon, sighting on the approaching vehicle.
Guardian operators open fire, controlled bursts aimed at the engine and tires.
The vehicle—a port authority utility truck—swerves violently but keeps coming.
The driver is committed and willing to take rounds to reach the terminal.
That level of dedication means true believer, fanatic, someone who'll die to complete Greer's plan.
The truck crashes through a chain-link fence, momentum carrying it into the terminal parking area. The driver's door opens before the vehicle fully stops, and a figure emerges firing a rifle. I return fire immediately, three controlled pairs center mass, and see the figure stumble but stay up.
Body armor, same as the shooters in the wilderness.
"Hostile in the terminal yard," I broadcast. "Armed and armored, moving toward the building."
I shift position to get a better angle, and something tears in my chest—not the ribs themselves but the soft tissue around them. Hot pain lances through me, but I keep firing. Two more rounds, and the hostile goes down.
This time, he goes down, rifle skittering across asphalt.
Movement to my left—a second figure, moving fast through the shadows. I track them, but my breathing is getting harder, each inhalation like knives in my chest. The compression wrap is helping but not enough. I squeeze the trigger, and the hostile drops.
They were in the truck too, using the driver as a distraction while they flanked around. Classic two-man assault, and I fell for it.
"Hostiles neutralized," I manage into the radio, though my voice sounds strained even to me. "Continuing security."
Carolina's voice cuts through the radio chatter, sharp with fear. "Flint—"
"I'm okay. Stay on the device. Don't look at me, don't stop working."
Operators flood into the terminal area, securing the fallen hostiles, checking for additional threats.
Carolina hasn't looked away from the device, hasn't let the firefight behind her break her concentration. That kind of focus is remarkable, the ability to maintain precision while chaos erupts around her.
But I can see the cost in the set of her shoulders, the too-fast rhythm of her breathing. She's running on adrenaline and determination, and both of those resources are finite.
"Talk to me, Carolina," I call, trying to keep my voice steady despite the increasing difficulty breathing. "Where are we?"
"Almost there." Her voice is tight. "I've bypassed the secondary circuits and disabled the remote trigger. Just the primary left, and it's..." She trails off, studying something intently. "It's different from the others. He's changed the configuration."
"Can you adapt?"
"I'm trying to." Her hands move, tracing wires, testing connections. "But there's something here I don't understand. A component that doesn't fit the pattern. It could be a decoy, or it could be the key to everything."
I watch her work, seeing the doubt creeping in.
She's been brilliant all night, outthinking Greer at every turn, but exhaustion and fear are eroding her confidence.
And Greer knows her well enough to exploit that—to plant doubt, to make her second-guess, to turn her greatest strength into a vulnerability.
"You're smarter than him," I say, pitching my voice to carry to her without being loud enough to startle. "You've always been smarter. That's why he resented you, why he's doing all this. Because he could never accept that you were better."
She glances back at me briefly, with fear in her eyes. "What if I'm not? What if he finally found my blind spot?"
"Then trust yourself anyway. Trust your training, your instincts, everything that makes you Carolina Sutton—the best EOD instructor the Army ever had, the woman who designed a system so good it took three years and obsessive planning to weaponize." I hold her gaze. "You've got this. I know you do."
She holds my eyes for a long moment, drawing strength from somewhere—my words, or her own reserves, or the simple fact that someone believes in her absolutely. Then she turns back to the device, and her shoulders settle. Her hands steady.
"Okay," she murmurs. "Okay. I see it now."
Her hands move with renewed confidence, choosing a path through the circuitry that looks random but must make sense to her understanding of Greer's psychology. She makes three cuts in rapid succession, each one deliberate, and then reaches for a bypass connection I don't understand.
"This is it," she says. "If I'm right, this disables the primary trigger. If I'm wrong..."
She doesn't finish the sentence. Doesn't need to. We both know what wrong means.
She makes the final connection, and for a heartbeat, nothing happens. Then the timer display flickers and goes dark. The device powers down, components going inert one by one, and Carolina sits back with a gasp that's half sob.
"It's done," she says, voice shaking. "It's done. Device Four is disarmed."
Relief crashes over me so intensely it's almost painful. She did it. We did it. Every device is neutralized, Greer's plan is defeated, and we're both still alive to see it.
FBI and bomb squad personnel flood into the terminal, but I only have eyes for Carolina, who's turned around and is crawling toward where I'm propped against a support pillar, her face wet with tears.
She reaches me and her hands go immediately to my chest, seeing the way I'm breathing, the sweat on my face. "Oh God, Flint. Your ribs—you're hurt worse. I should have—"
"I'm okay." I catch her hands. "You did it. It's over."
She's shaking, adrenaline crash hitting hard, and I wrap my arms around her as best I can with the pain in my chest. We stay like that, both of us breathing—her easily, me with increasing difficulty—both of us alive.
She pulls back just enough to look at me, her hands framing my face, thumbs brushing across my cheekbones.
Her eyes search mine—checking that I'm really here, really okay—and what I see in them makes my breath catch.
Fear, yes, and relief, but also something deeper.
Something that looks like what I'm feeling.
"I thought I lost you," she whispers, voice cracking.
"I'm here." I turn my head to press a kiss to her palm, then another to her wrist, feeling her pulse flutter against my lips. "I'm here, Carolina. We both are."
She makes a sound that's half laugh, half sob, and then she's kissing me. Not the desperate, hungry kiss from before—this one is softer, slower, thorough. Like she's trying to memorize the taste of me, the feel of my mouth against hers, proof that we're both alive and whole and together.
I kiss her back despite the pain, despite the blood loss trying to drag me under, despite the fact that we have an audience of FBI agents and Guardian operators.
None of it matters. All that matters is her mouth on mine, her hands gentle on my face, the way she's holding me like I'm something precious.
When she finally pulls back, we're both breathing hard. She rests her forehead against mine, and I can feel tears on her cheeks—or maybe they're mine. Hard to tell anymore.
"Don't do that to me again," she says fiercely. "Don't almost die on me. I can't... I can't lose anyone else."
"Not planning on it." My hand comes up to tangle in her hair, and I pull her down for one more kiss—brief but intense. "But Carolina? Worth it. You were worth it."
The thing we're going to figure out, after we survive.
“You did it,” I murmur, the words barely making it past the roughness in my throat.
Carolina’s eyes find mine, wide and shining in the dim light. Relief. Shock. Something else simmers beneath the surface—something that feels like gravity pulling us together.
“Flint,” she whispers, voice trembling.
The world tilts, the ache in my body drowned beneath a different kind of heat.
Our mouths meet—hard, hungry, every ounce of fear and relief and unspoken want igniting at once.
Her fingers clutch my vest, pulling me closer instead of pushing me away. She tastes like salt and tears and survival, the kiss rough-edged and breathless, desperate to make sure we’re still here, still real.
When it finally breaks, she’s still holding on, foreheads pressed together, breaths colliding in the space between us. The world is quiet except for our breathing and the echo of what just happened.
“I couldn’t have done this without you.” Her hand slips up to cup my face, thumb brushing the line of my cheek. Her voice shakes.
"Yes, you could have." But I turn my head to press a kiss to her palm. "But I'm glad you didn't have to.
Her breath hitches, and she's opening her mouth to respond when medical personnel with a stretcher arrive.
Medical personnel arrive with a stretcher. They check my vitals, and one of them—Jenkins—frowns at what he finds.
"Possible pneumothorax developing," he says to his partner. "We need to transport immediately."
They load me onto the stretcher despite my protests that I can walk. Carolina stays close, her hand finding mine, and that touch is the last thing I'm aware of before the pain medication they push pulls me under.