Chapter 23 Knox
Knox
The war room feels smaller tonight.
Too many bodies, not enough air. A map of the docks is spread across the table with pins, notes, and red circles where bad shit lives. Malachi is at the head, palms braced on the wood, eyes darker than usual.
Victor taps the shipyard schematic with a pen. "Source says Pier Four. Container marked with Vassallo Foundation's logo. We've got confirmation girls are being moved out tonight. They hit international waters, they're gone."
A low curse rolls around the table. Mine's one of them.
Nash crosses his arms beside me, shoulder brushing mine.
James leans back like he's at some casual staff meeting, but his jaw's tight.
East is stone-still, eyes on the map like he can will the whole place to burn.
His knuckles are still raw from last week.
Trent Moreland got discharged from the hospital on a Tuesday and never made it to his car.
East was waiting in the parking garage, alone, and whatever happened between the elevator and the concrete took less than three minutes. Nobody asked for details.
Malachi's voice is calm. Too calm. "We keep it clean. We get them out. We don't engage Donovan if he shows his face, not unless there's no other option. The girls are the objective."
He looks around the table, making sure that lands. It does. It also hurts.
"That container's a magnet," James adds quietly. "If he's there, he wants you to shoot at him and not at the locks."
I glance past them toward the back wall.
The women stand together; Maggie, Sloane, Ruby, Frankie, Candace, Darla. Off to the side, quiet and watchful, ready to step in the second they're needed.
Sloane's got her hair twisted up, stray pieces falling around her face, hoodie sleeves shoved to her elbows. Stethoscope around her neck, pen tucked behind one ear. She looks like she's about to walk into a hospital shift, not a war.
Malachi gives the logistics: teams, timing, routes. East and Nash on breach. Me and James on secondary perimeter and transport. Victor running comms with Rider on overwatch. James and I break from the table first, heading straight toward Maggie and Sloane.
"We need you two here," I tell them, voice low but leaving no space for argument. "If this goes sideways, those girls are gonna need a medic and a safe place to land. Set up triage in the back. Blankets, fluids, whatever you can scrounge."
Maggie nods, already mentally rearranging half the clubhouse.
Sloane straightens, hands sliding into her hoodie pocket like she's checking what she has to work with. "I'll set up in the common room. We'll need fluids, blankets, anything high-calorie. And quiet. They're going to be terrified." The word we hits harder than it should. It feels like a promise.
East turns to the other four. "Ruby, Candace, Frankie, Darla—you're the diversion. You take Ruby's obnoxiously expensive sports car and hit the main access road. Four rich girls—drunk, lost, loud—arguing with the guards."
Ruby grins as if she's been waiting her whole life for this.
"The second you hear my signal," he continues, "you get the hell out. No questions. No hero shit."
Candace lifts her chin. Frankie nods once. Darla cracks her knuckles.
"We can do that," Darla promises.
"We move in forty," Malachi says. "Gear up."
Chairs scrape. Voices rise. The room breaks into motion.
I hang back long enough to track Sloane as she peels off toward the kitchen, already walking through her checklist. Problem is, the world keeps reaching further into ours every time we think we've drawn a line.
The docks smell like rust and old water and bad intentions.
We cut the engines half a mile out, coasting the last stretch in a rolling hush. The shipyard rises ahead. Towers of containers are stacked like Tetris blocks, cranes frozen mid-reach. Floodlights paint everything in harsh white.
My boots hit asphalt, body slotting into mission mode without asking permission. James at my shoulder. Victor ahead. Nash and East slip off toward the far side, shadows swallowing them.
Rider's voice crackles in my ear. "Overwatch set. Eight visible bogeys, two possibles in the blind spot on the far side of the target container."
Another voice, smooth, controlled, familiar. "Leo here. Eyes on the north access. Two more tangos, heavily armed. Arden's moving to intercept." Victor's guys. Of course he brought them.
I shift position, scanning my sector. The movement to my left is Nash sliding into cover. On my right, East is already lining up his approach. A flicker near the container stack. Too fast. Too silent. Arden.
He drops one guard before the guy knows he's there. Silent. Efficient. Then he's gone again, melting into shadow like he was never solid.
"North clear," Leo reports. Steady. Professional. The same easy tone he uses joking with Frankie at the bar, now dialed into pure focus. "Moving to secondary position." The precision is impressive. Victor doesn't hire amateurs. Guns are checked. Positions taken. The quiet before the storm.
All I can think about is the clubhouse, a few miles away.
Common room cleared out. Tables shoved aside.
Sloane's hands moving fast, prepping IV lines and scissors, muttering as she inventories supplies.
Her brow furrowing when something's missing.
Maggie already bossing prospects into hauling blankets.
Two years ago, before Sloane crashed into my life in that freezing Chicago parking lot, all I cared about in ops like this was keeping my brothers breathing. But things changed the night she flinched when I touched her shoulder… and let me touch her anyway.
Now the mantra is different. Don't let this world touch her again. Don't bring home ghosts she can't outrun. Don't make her watch another girl bleed.
It's been that way since the day I married her for protection and ended up loving her by accident. Malachi's voice comes low over comms. Orders. Counts. Then everything snaps.
Shouts. Footfalls. The scrape of metal. My body moves without waiting for my brain, sweeping the right flank with James. A guard cuts around the corner of the stacked containers, gun half-raised, too slow. I put him down.
For a second, the container yard flickers. Sand. Heat shimmer. Burning fuel instead of salt water. A different container. Different country. A different mistake.
Kandahar. The compound. The interpreter's daughter—pigtails, eight years old. His family held in a back room while command used him as leverage. I wanted to go in. They said stand down. I stood down.
I blink hard. Mississippi. Docks. Not Kandahar. My hands are steady on the gun, but my pulse slams in my throat.
James' voice cuts through. "Knox. With me."
I move. Muscle memory overrides the flashback. But it sits there, heavy and wrong. These girls. That man. All the times I stood down.
Three minutes of movement and noise. Then five. Then ten. Angles, signals, the steady pound of my pulse. A door breached. Cries from inside the container.
We hear Victor through the comms. "We've got them. Repeat, we've got them."
My lungs finally let the air out. We funnel them out in a fragile line. Girls. Teens, maybe one or two early twenties. They never should've seen the inside of that steel box. Filthy, shaking, wrapped in thin T-shirts.
Leo appears at the perimeter, hands up and visible, voice low and soothing as he guides the first girl toward the transport van. "You're okay. You're out. Keep your eyes on me, okay? That's it."
One of the girls flinches when he moves. He stops immediately, gives her space, and adjusts his position so she can see both his hands.
"I'm not gonna touch you. Just here to make sure you get to the van safely. See that guy over there?" He nods toward James. "He's gonna get you inside and keep you safe. I promise."
The girl takes a shaky step forward.
"That's it," he murmurs. "You're doing great." He's good at this. Not just the violence. But what comes after.
He guides her without touching, voice steady, presence calm. Repeats the process with the next girl, then the next, patient every time. Arden materializes beside him, silent, face expressionless, but his position is intentional. Watching Leo's back. Watching the shadows.
"Clear on the east perimeter," Arden reports, voice flat.
But his eyes stay on Leo. The way he tracks Leo's movements is subtle and constant. The kind of quiet coverage you only see between people who have worked together a long time. Like he trusts Leo to handle what's in front of him.
Leo keeps shepherding girls toward the van, talking low, hands up where they can see them.
I fall in beside him, helping guide the next group.
One flinches when my hand brushes her shoulder, and something inside me goes cold.
I shift back half a step, giving her space, letting Maggie's voice in my head remind me every inch of my frame is a weapon to someone who's spent months being hurt.
Donovan's shadow hangs over the place like smoke. East caught sight of him earlier, but we didn't take the shot. The girls came first. I keep counting as they move past me. One, two, eight, ten, twelve. Twelve who made it out. I hang onto that.
The clubhouse doesn't smell like stale beer and burgers tonight. The air reeks of antiseptic and metal, sharp with fear.
The common room's transformed. Couches pushed to walls. Cots in rows. Prospects moving like quiet ghosts, carrying water and blankets. Maggie floats between beds, voice low and soothing, comfort wrapped in human form.
Sloane is the eye of the storm. She moves from girl to girl, latex gloves snapping, hair escaping her knot in wild curls.
Blue scrubs already splashed with someone else's blood and iodine, pockets stuffed with gauze and scissors.
She grabs a clipboard from the supply table and tucks it under her arm, hands busy.