Buck
“They’ll expect us to hit the main loading bays,” Reaper said.
“You thinking about her again?” Ghost asked quietly.
“She’ll fight them,” Ghost said softly.
Reaper frowned, looking at the blueprint. “Too exposed.”
“No,” Ghost interrupted suddenly. “He’s right.
” Buck glanced over at him. Ghost tapped the map thoughtfully.
“Old depots always have emergency exits along western walls for fuel fires.” His pale eyes lifted slowly.
“If I were holding hostages, I wouldn’t expect anyone to hit that side during a blizzard.
” Buck’s pulse kicked slightly because that was the first sign of hope they had had since Wren was taken.
“What about the watch towers?” Reaper asked.
Buck looked toward the eastern ridge line marked on the map.
“We position shooters here and here.” His finger moved sharply across the paper.
“Nobody leaves alive if they touched her.” The room went silent because everybody heard it.
He didn’t say if they hurt her. He said if they touched her, and he meant it too.
Ghost leaned back against the table, watching him carefully.
“You love her,” he said. He sounded as though he was accusing Buck of something.
Buck froze, and Reaper immediately found another part of the room interesting.
Buck slowly looked over at Ghost, and for the first time all night, the man didn’t smirk.
He wasn’t joking. He just stood there waiting with the question hanging heavy in the room.
Buck exhaled slowly. “Yeah,” he admitted quietly.
The truth settled into his chest with surprising clarity because he did love her.
Somehow, he developed feelings for Wren impossibly fast. He loved her stubborn mouth and furious heart.
He loved the way she looked at wolves like they were sacred.
And he loved how she touched both him and Ghost like they deserved gentleness.
But now she was trapped because of him, and he planned on changing that.
Ghost’s expression softened almost painfully.
“Yeah,” he murmured. “Me too.” Buck looked at him, and Ghost shrugged.
“I wasn’t planning on it.” His mouth twisted faintly.
“Kind of happened anyway.” Emotion hit Buck hard enough to make his throat tight.
Ghost loved her, and he loved him too. Somehow, none of it felt wrong—just terrifying.
Reaper cleared his throat awkwardly. “I’m gonna check weapons.”
He escaped the room immediately, and Ghost snorted softly once the door shut. “Pretty sure we emotionally traumatized him.” Buck barked out a rough laugh despite himself.
“What if we’re too late?” he asked quietly. Ghost went still, and Buck stared down at the map. “What if she thinks we abandoned her?”
“That’s not possible,” Ghost insisted.
“You don’t know that,” Buck whispered.
Ghost crossed the room and stopped directly in front of him.
“Buck.” Buck forced himself to look up. Ghost’s pale eyes held his steadily.
“That woman looked at us like we hung the damn moon after one night.” His voice roughened slightly.
“She knows we’re coming for her, and then I plan to make her ours.
None of that is going to change because we’re going to find her—alive.
” Buck swallowed hard because deep down, he believed that too.
Ghost reached out suddenly and gripped the back of Buck’s neck firmly, grounding him. “We get her back,” Ghost said quietly. “Then we figure the rest out after.” This impossible thing growing between all three of them might be the death of him, but if it were, he’d die a happy man.
Buck covered Ghost’s wrist with his hand. “You really okay with this?”
Ghost’s mouth curved faintly. “Brother, I kissed you in front of Reaper.” He grinned slightly. “Pretty sure we crossed the okay line already.” Buck huffed out another rough laugh as the war room door burst open hard enough to slam against the wall.
Mason stumbled inside, breathing hard. “VP,” he said roughly. “We intercepted a transmission.”
Every muscle in Buck’s body tightened instantly. “What kind of transmission?”
Mason swallowed visibly. “From Blackwater Ridge.” Hope and dread collided violently inside Buck’s chest, and he was finding it hard to talk.
Ghost straightened beside him immediately. “Play it.” Mason held up the radio receiver with shaking hands as static crackled through the room, and then Wren’s voice filled the speakers. She was breathing hard and sounded terrified, but she was alive.
“Buck—” Her voice shook slightly before steadying. “It’s a trap.”
The second Wren’s voice came through the speakers; Buck stopped breathing.
Static crackled violently around her words.
“Buck—” She sounded terrified and breathless.
“It’s a trap.” Every man in the room froze.
Buck crossed the distance to the radio so fast that the chair behind him crashed onto the floor.
“Wren,” he shouted.
The radio was silent at first, but then her breathing came back through the static.
“Don’t come through the loading bays,” she whispered quickly.
“They’re wired—” A loud crash cut her off, followed by men shouting.
Wren’s gasp was the last thing he heard before Eli’s voice exploded over the transmission.
“Well, look who got out of her cage,” he drawled mockingly. “That’s disappointing.”
Buck’s vision went red instantly. “You touch her, and I’ll skin you alive,” Buck growled into the receiver.
Eli’s laughter filled the room. “See, this is exactly why she’s useful.
” Ghost moved beside Buck immediately, one hand settling hard on his shoulder like he already knew Buck was seconds from snapping.
“You got balls threatening me when I’m standing in a warehouse full of explosives,” Eli continued casually.
“Especially considering your girl’s sitting right in the middle of them.
” Buck’s heart slammed violently against his ribs.
The fucking warehouse was full of explosives.
Ghost heard it too, and their eyes locked instantly.
She was sitting in the middle of the fuel depot.
“Listen carefully,” Eli said. “Tomorrow night, you need to come to Blackwater Ridge. Bring the route maps you have with you.” He paused.
“And Buck?” Buck gripped the radio tighter.
“If I see even one sniper on those hills,” Eli said softly, “Ghost gets to watch me put a bullet in her head first, and then I’ll finish you.
” The line went dead, and silence crashed over the war room.
Buck stood perfectly still, and Ghost recognized the danger radiating off him immediately. “Brother.” Buck turned slowly, and Ghost actually took a step back because he looked lethal now. He was past angry.
“You heard her,” Buck said quietly. “Loading bays are rigged.”
Ghost nodded carefully. “Yeah.”
“She risked herself to warn us,” Buck said, almost choking on the words as he said them. The rough emotion buried beneath the words punched Buck straight through the chest. Because even trapped and terrified, Wren’s first instinct had been to protect them.
Buck laughed without humor. “Jesus Christ.”
Ghost moved closer again, slowly. “We’ll figure this out. We’re going to get our girl back,” he promised.
“No.” Buck’s voice dropped lower. “We’ll do more than get Wren back. We are going to end Eli and the Vultures.” The promise in his tone silenced the room.
Reaper shifted uneasily near the wall. “If the place is wired, we can’t go in blind.
” Buck looked toward the map again, and something clicked.
They could use the emergency exits in the western corridor.
Wren had given them enough intel to know where not to go, but the western corridor would be the perfect entry point.
“She found us a way in,” Buck muttered suddenly.
Ghost frowned. “What?”
Buck pointed hard at the western side of the warehouse sketch. “She warned us about the loading bays specifically.”
Understanding dawned instantly on Ghost’s face. “She’s steering us somewhere else.”
“Yes, and I think she wants us to go here,” Buck said, pointing to the western corridor. Hope hit Buck like a punch to the ribs. Wren was still fighting and still thinking of ways for them to get to her. She was trusting them to understand her.
Ghost grinned suddenly despite the tension. “Smart little thing.” Buck’s chest tightened painfully. The possessive thoughts came faster now and felt easier. Like his brain had finally stopped trying to deny what Wren had become to both of them. She belonged to them both now.
Ghost caught the look on his face and softened slightly. “We’re getting her back.”
Buck looked at him, and all he could see was the man who’d stood beside him through every ugly part of his life.
The man who somehow understood him without words half the time.
The man who loved Wren, too. Buck stepped closer without thinking about what he was about to do. Ghost’s eyes darkened instantly.
“We bring her home,” Buck said quietly.
“Together,” Ghost answered immediately. Emotion lodged hard in Buck’s throat.
Reaper cleared his throat awkwardly from across the room. “I’m real happy you boys are emotionally developing, but we still got traffickers to kill.” Ghost barked out a laugh, and Buck actually smirked faintly.
The war room door opened again. Hulk stepped inside with a woman who looked pale and exhausted. “We’ve got something,” Hulk said.
“Who’s that?” Buck asked, nodding to the woman standing next to Hulk.
“I’m Leah Sinclair,” she said. “I work with Wren at the Northern office when she comes up here to track the wolves. I’d like to help find her. She’s more than just a co-worker; she’s my friend. I think I found something that might help.”
Buck straightened instantly. “What do you have?” he asked.
Hulk dropped a stack of printed satellite images onto the table, and Leah thanked him.
If Buck wasn’t mistaken, the big guy actually blushed.
“I rerouted through old conservation scans.” Her finger traced a narrow section along the western side of Blackwater Ridge.
“There’s an underground drainage tunnel beneath the warehouse. ”
Ghost’s grin turned downright feral. “We have a way in.” Buck stared at the maps—at the tunnel and the hidden access points. It was a way inside without touching the explosives. Hope flared viciously inside him.
Leah looked between the two men nervously. “If you go through there, you’ll bypass most of the main security.” Buck’s mind already raced ahead.
Ghost leaned over the table beside him. “We take two teams. Reaper can create noise at the front of the warehouse while we slip through the tunnels.”
Buck nodded. “We find Wren first, and then we’ll blow the entire fucking operation down.”
Leah swallowed visibly. “There are other girls in there,” she breathed.
Buck looked at her. “Then we bring everybody out,” he said immediately.
Leah exhaled shakily. “Then you need to move before dawn.” She looked at Buck carefully.
“If they are preparing transports, they’ll relocate everyone by morning.
” He wasn’t going to let that happen. Buck grabbed his gun from the table and checked the magazine with steady hands.
The room felt as though it shifted instantly around him as the Kings loaded their weapons and started moving, all because Buck had made a decision.
Ghost watched him carefully as the VP slid another knife into his kutte and holstered a second handgun at his back. “You got that look again,” Ghost murmured.
Buck glanced over at him. “The one that says somebody’s about to die.”
Buck’s expression turned ice-cold. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “A lot of somebodies.”