Chapter 30
Mason looked at Kayla.
She was on the floor. Shivering. Her lip swollen. Blood caked at her hairline. She should be scared as hell. Instead, she was looking at him with belief shining in her eyes. Somehow, some way, his daughter was positive he would get her out of this.
“I have thought about this moment for twelve years, Mason. I have imagined your face.” Ibrahim paused. Savored it. “I think I am going to enjoy it very much. Killing your daughter in front of you.”
Mason held her gaze for just a moment. Just long enough to say what he couldn't say out loud.
I've got you, sweetheart. I'm here. It's almost over.
He felt everything at once—the anguish of seeing her like this, the fear the moment he’d heard Sophia tell him that Kayla had been taken and the absolute bedrock certainty that he would burn down the world before he would allow Ibrahim to kill her.
Thirty years of training and every one of them had been pointing at this moment, this room, this choice.
He was ready.
Then he heard it. A mechanical groan. It was the loading dock door beginning to roll open, distant and unmistakable, coming up through the stone floor. Every head in the room turned toward it.
Every head but his.
Mason lunged at Ibrahim, got one arm locked across his throat, then spun him around so he was between Mason and his men. Ibrahim made a sound that was pure surprise before it became pain, and then Mason cranked the pressure.
Ibrahim screamed.
“Drop them,” Mason yelled. “Drop the weapons or I snap his neck right now.”
The three bodyguards and Ibrahim’s assistant looked at each other, then at Ibrahim. One of them started to lower his weapon.
The door at the top of the stairs blew open.
Drake came through first, weapon up, and Jack right behind him, and then Rylie, and then—
Sophia.
Mason saw her scan the room. Her eyes clocked him, but kept moving. She spotted Kayla in the corner, and she ran like nothing else in the room existed or mattered.
Two shots.
The sound in the stone room was enormous, concussive, and Mason felt his heart stop completely because Kayla was in that corner and he wasn’t sure where the shots were going.
Please, God. Not Sophia. Not Kayla.
He saw one of the bodyguards slump to the ground, Aiden standing over him, kicking the gun from his hand.
“Nice shot, Angie,” Aiden called over his shoulder.
Drake had the second bodyguard on the ground and Jack had the third face-first against the stone wall. Chidi, Ibrahim's notepad man, had both hands in the air and was making a sound that wasn't quite words.
Mason still had Ibrahim.
He looked at Sophia. She’d reached Kayla. She had her arms around her and Kayla's face was buried in her mother's neck and Sophia's eyes were closed and she was holding on like she was never letting go.
He looked at that for exactly one second.
Then he looked at the men around the room. Drake. Jack. Aiden. Rylie. Dare. Angie, still with her weapon up, professional and steady.
“Where’s Finn?” he asked Drake.
“Taking care of a loose thread.”
It was done.
Mason loosened his grip on Ibrahim's throat just enough to let him breathe properly. He felt the man sag slightly, recalibrating, and then felt him begin to straighten. Not with relief. It was almost as if he thought he was taking control of something.
“It's over,” Mason whispered in his ear. “You're done.”
Ibrahim said nothing for a moment. Then, quietly, “Never.”
“I know so.”
Drake was already on his phone. Mason could hear him—FBI, location, multiple hostiles down. The machinery of the aftermath began to grind into motion.
Mason thought about what came next. The FBI.
The diplomats. The lawyers Ibrahim could afford and the immunity he carried and the twelve years of clean money that would bury everything they tried to make stick.
He thought about the call they'd get in six months telling them Ibrahim Sula had been released, or transferred, or quietly repatriated.
He thought about looking at Sophia and Kayla and telling them that.
He felt Ibrahim's hand move.
Slow. Deliberate. Reaching toward the waistband at his lower back.
Mason felt it, went still, and waited.
He let him get his hand on it. He let him pull it free—a knife, fixed blade, the kind of thing a man carried when he wanted to feel prepared for anything.
Mason smiled. This was an ending he could approve of. Mason stepped back and let him go.
Ibrahim turned, holding his knife and looking at Mason. “We finish this now.”
All eyes fell on the two men.
Mason looked over at Drake for just a moment. Drake nodded, saying nothing. He reached to his ankle, pulled the knife from the sheath there, and threw it.
Mason caught it.
Ibrahim came at him fast, the knife slashing in a wide arc that Mason stepped around without effort, letting the blade pass close enough to feel the air move.
He circled, unhurried, watching Ibrahim reset, watching as the knife in his hand trembled because of the rage and adrenaline that coursed through his body.
Mason knew that this was it for Ibrahim. There was no coming back from this. He had played the long game, and lost, and this was his last play.
Ibrahim lunged again, lower this time. Mason deflected the knife arm outward with his forearm, stepped inside, and hit him once, hard enough to send him back two steps, just to let him feel it.
Ibrahim wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked at the blood there and something in his eyes went from fury to calculation.
He knew he was going to lose, now he just wanted to score a point.
Ibrahim came at Mason and Mason let him close the distance, let the knife come up toward his ribs, and then turned his body so the blade skated off nothing. And there it was. Ibrahim’s last opportunity, and now Mason was done.
He looked at the man who had threatened his wife, kidnapped his daughter and felt a sense of cold satisfaction when he thrust his blade upward into Ibrahim’s sternum.
It held. Mason pushed it a little deeper.
Ibrahim’s eyes widened. Not with shock. He’d known he was going to lose.
No, it was the satisfied look of a martyr.
“Now your daughter sees,” he rasped out. “You are a butcher.”
Ibrahim crumpled to the floor.
Mason became aware of Kayla's voice.
“Dad.”
Mason turned.
Sophia had gotten the zip ties off her wrists, he didn't know when, and Kayla was on her feet, unsteady, her mother's arm around her waist holding her up. She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his life.
He crossed the room in four strides. Mason got his arms around both of them, and Sophia made a sound against his shoulder and Kayla said “Daddy.” A name she hadn’t used in almost a decade.
“I've got you,” he said. “I've got you both.”
He held on.
Around them, the barrel room was awash with activity. There would be so much more when the Feds got here. Fine. He didn’t care. He was done.
He pressed his face into Sophia's hair and held his daughter close.
This was his last mission.