Chapter Thirteen
The gym was empty except for the thud of a medicine ball and the pen in Dale’s hand.
He’d spread three lesson plans across the whiteboard—room entries for beginners, a partner-cover drill, and a condensed, “what to do when everything goes sideways” block he could run in under an hour.
Lines and arrows. Notes to himself in block caps.
Breathe. Check Hands. Say The Quiet Part Out Loud.
The quiet part cut through anyway. Flashes of the night before slid in under the door.
The hiss of comms, the mirror, the single word that let the shot break clean.
Oren’s laughter in the heart of his suite after.
Ty’s palm on his back, steadying him when the adrenaline wore off.
It all lived on the same page in his head—apology, timing, the sound a man makes when the world finally let’s go of his throat.
He tried to lock back onto the plan, but he had to admit, it was harder than he would have thought.
The door opened. Marsh came in with a clipboard under his arm and a coffee that smelled like heaven.
“You look like you’re planning a war and a class schedule at the same time,” Marsh said, taking in the board.
“And doing both poorly,” Dale said. He capped the pen. “Talk to me about drones.”
Marsh set the clipboard on a bench. “We’ve scrubbed footage from midnight to sunup. It’s the same drones and I would bet my left testicle that it is also the same pilot. Whoever flew them knows what they’re doing, but this does not scream Kavaci to me.”
“Carson was his own mess,” Dale said. “This isn’t him.”
“Agreed,” Marsh said with a nod. “Which means we have a third player gunning for us. And considering how many crime organizations and governments we have pissed off over the years, there are bound to be more than that.”
Dale leaned a shoulder into the weights rack and waited. He could see that Marsh was deep in his problem-solving persona.
“Kavaci boys are smash-and-profit,” Marsh went on. “Fast hits, confidence in their hardware. They pay for military toys or steal them and make it worse. These birds? Slower. Purposeful. Whoever’s on the stick is running patience, not bravado.”
“Fits,” Dale said. “This definitely feels different. Personal.”
Marsh nodded. “And Kavaci don’t brood. They burn.” He flipped a page. “Pattern says our visitor wants to be sure we see him, then see him again. He lingers. Circles. Comes back. That’s not business. That’s hate.”
Dale rolled his jaw. “Any signature?”
“Nothing I can pin to a name.” Marsh tilted the cup toward the fence line drawn in tape across a wall map.
Marsh watched him like he had something to say. Turns out he did. “I’m glad you’ve got your two,” he said, casual as a trip wire.
Dale gave him a look. “You going all romantic and soft on me, Marsh?”
“Please.” Marsh snorted. “I just sleep better knowing our resident golden retriever finally caught the other two lovesick idiots he’s been chasing for a while now.
It was getting boring watching Ty pretend not to be in love with Oren and you, and Oren was getting weird trying to carry an extra hundred pounds of silence. ”
Dale couldn’t help it, his mouth moved. “That your way of saying ‘good job, son’?”
“My way of saying don’t screw it up,” Marsh said. “You are all good for each other. Also, you look less likely to bite people this morning. That’s progress.”
Dale said. “Give me a minute.”
Marsh’s grin crooked. The grin faded as he tapped the map again. “We’ll keep pressure on the drone thread, but my money’s on a separate grudge. One thing, though, when you are on watch, the hesitation at the fence is longer, like it is looking directly at you, and wants you to see it there.”
“So, it’s someone who thinks I’m good looking?” Dale said. “Could be anyone.”
“True,” Marsh said as he drained his coffee and threw the cup away as he moved to the door. “You are too damn good looking for your own good, said no one ever.”
Dale barked a laugh and shot his friend the finger.
“Tell your architect to give me a wish list for interior cams,” Marsh said.
“We need to harden inside the fence. Better motion.” He paused, then added, offhand, “He definitely wants you in particular to see him, almost like he is daring you to know who he is. Like he’s sending you a sign or a message of some kind. ”
The line snagged on a memory. Not an answer yet—just the edge of one.
Marsh clocked it. “You just went somewhere.”
“Maybe,” Dale said. He shook his head, trying to catch the frayed end. “It’s nothing yet.”
“Let me know if turns into something,” Marsh said then opened the door to leave.
Dale nodded. “I will. And Marsh—thanks.”
“For what?”
“For the retriever line,” Dale said dryly. “Haven’t been insulted so sweetly in a while.”
“Anytime,” Marsh said then he left.
Silence came back. Dale stared at the board.
The little flash kept trying to resolve.
Sending a sign, or a message. Someone who wanted to be seen.
Not Kavaci. Slower, angrier, more personal.
He put the pen down and reached for the speaker on the shelf instead.
If he couldn’t think it loose, he’d sweat it loose.
He cued a playlist and let the first track hit. Bass rolled the room. He wrapped his hands, chalked the bar, and set for pulls. Five clean, then rest. He kept his eyes on the floor and let the count wash the static out of his head.
On the third set, the shape in his mind sharpened. Not last night. Before. Outside, under an open sky in another country. What was his mind trying to tell him.
He turned—half a second too slow because the music was up and his head was already down the rabbit hole of the thought—and something heavy came in from his blind side.
The world snapped white. A hot, bright edge of pain lit the back of his skull. Rubber floor. Metal smell. The music kept going without him. He had just enough space to think Ty. Oren. Don’t— before the dark rose up and took the rest.
****
Ty liked the office because the door shut and he could lock himself inside with just his designs and an engineer he loved more than life. Oren sat across from him with a coffee and the build packet spread between them—Ty’s sketches, Oren’s notes in neat block print.
“I’ve been thinking about what we are going to do once this build is finished,” Ty said. “Where are we going to live and how we are going to run the business, that sort of thing.”
Oren hummed. “I’ve been thinking that, too. I’m thinking this is as good a place to run the business from as any. We can travel when we need to or rely on the design and build teams we have working for us on remote jobs.”
Ty looked up from the plan to Oren’s face because that’s what he did now—checked, confirmed. The glue line at Oren’s brow held, the wrist wrap was snug. “You still feeling okay to work? No pain?”
“No pain,” Oren said. The corner of his mouth moved. “But I have to admit I love the fact that you worry about it.”
Ty smiled. “That’s never going to change. And imagine how Dale’s feeling about it. At least I am sitting here with you, and can see how you are doing for myself. It must be driving him crazy.”
Oren laughed, holding up his phone. “Yep, he’s messaged me about thirty times already this morning.”
The door opened without a knock. Bateman stepped in, taking the whole room in one pass—wrap, glue, posture, whiteboard.
“Status?” he asked Oren with a pointed look at his wrapped wrist.
“Functional,” Oren said lifting his hand and wiggling his fingers
“And the three of you?” Bateman asked as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You guys get your heads out of your asses and admit that there is a future for you all?”
Ty and Oren shared a look. “Well, I am not going to give you all the details,” Ty drawled, “but yes. Each of us had a conversation with a member of the triad from Bravo. Dev sent them over, and I have to say, they talked sense into each of us. Apparently, it was Dev’s idea, and you need to tell him thanks. ”
Bateman rolled his eyes. “I am not telling Dev anything that will make him insufferable.” He was half a smile in when something in his face went tight. The three of them heard it at the same time: a thin, electric whine threading the drywall.
Bateman didn’t look out the window. He just said, “With me,” and they were already moving.
They hit the steps hard and broke into the open apron in front of the comms building. The morning had been clean. Now it had a shadow.
The drone hung above the comms roof like a patient mosquito—quieter than the ones they’d been chasing, more deliberate. First time inside their air space.
“Ricky,” Bateman said knowing their comms would now be live, calm like a clock. “You got eyes?”
“Copy that,” came Ricky’s reply from somewhere above.
“Drop it,” Bateman said.
A breath. Then a crack from the roofline. The drone hiccuped, pitched, and lost the argument with gravity. It hit the asphalt in three sad pieces and spun out its last breath.
Oren exhaled. “That’s new.”
“Inside the fence,” Ty said. He felt the hair on his arms shift.
Bateman nodded once, already scanning the tree line, the buildings, the faces. “We pull the card and the log,” he said. “Sam, Nick—perimeter for ten. Ezra, Ricky, roof sweep now.”
Bateman’s phone buzzed on the hip, and he checked his screen, frowned, and answered. “Bateman.” He listened, then glanced at Ty and Oren. “Hold up. I’m putting you on speaker.” He thumbed it over and held the phone out. “You good?”
Hogan’s voice came thin but clear over the speaker, wind in it. “I’m good. No direct contact with Kai yet. He’s still gone dark. But I got a ping back through the old channel—brief, dirty. Enough.”
Oren leaned in. “Enough for what?”
“For Kai to tell us our drone problem isn’t Kavaci,” Hogan said.
“It’s personal and from Chechnya against Dale.
A father. He watched his son die at Dale’s hands, and he wants to restore their family’s honor or some such shit, through killing Dale.
” A beat. “He’s not alone. He brought brothers. Four of them”
Ty felt the ground tilt, just a degree. “How confident are you on this intel?”
“100 percent,” Hogan said. “Kai’s patterning tells me the handle belongs to someone tied to that op. The phrasing matches. He wanted you to know it wasn’t Kavaci.”
Bateman’s jaw worked once. “Copy that.”
Ty looked at the downed drone and then at Oren. The same thought landed in both their expressions almost simultaneously. “Distraction,” they said at the same time.
“Gym,” Ty said. “If Dale’s building lesson plans, he’s in the gym.”
Bateman didn’t argue. “Move.” He killed the call with a two-finger tap. He pocketed the phone and took off at a sprint. Ty and Oren matched his stride.
They cut through the breezeway and shouldered the gym door. Music hit them like a wall—bass up, vocals flattened by volume. The room was empty of people and full of noise.
“Dale!” Ty shouted, already moving left. Nothing answered but a chorus.
Oren swept right, fast scan—racks, mats, mirrors. “Weights,” he said, pointing.
On the far side, a barbell sat loaded and chalked just as if someone was resting between sets. No one would leave these weights out, that was not the protocol here.
Ty’s stomach dropped as they moved closer. He pointed at the rubber tile by the rack. “There.”
Oren crouched. The smear was small, then more. A dark line dragged toward the service door—no puddle, just the kind of mark that meant someone cared enough to keep the mess tidy as they went.
“Blood,” Oren said, no drama.
All three men pulled a weapon they carried and moved toward the service door.
Bateman ordered as he moved. “Lockdown matrix Alpha. Marsh, interior cams now. Ezra, Rick, feed me exterior eyes. Find me a vehicle signature leaving the service road in the last ten minutes, and someone fucking find where they have taken Dale!”
Ty moved to the door and checked the latch. No damage. No sign of a struggle past the meticulous smear. It was careful in a way that made him angry.
“Ty, you’re with me,” Bateman said as they went through the door and into the hallway that led to the trainee barracks and mess hall.
“Oren, stay back with Marsh. We track, we don’t guess.
” He looked between them, the weight of command and something heavier right behind his eyes. “We bring him home.”
“Copy that,” he said. He met Oren’s gaze and saw the same promise there he felt in his own chest. “We bring him home.”