Chapter 88 Raine
Raine
The air inside the SUV was hot and close, my pulse hammering loud enough that I swore the others could hear it. Adam’s order—Let’s go hunting—still echoed in my ears as the doors opened one by one.
My boots hit the asphalt, knees bent, shoulders tight. Every sense sharpened. The faint hum of traffic in the distance. The whir of an air-conditioning unit behind the lab. The buzz of a streetlight flickering overhead. Ordinary sounds, but tonight they pressed against me like alarms.
The facility loomed across the street, glass panels gleaming under the sun, sterile and quiet. Too quiet.
Adam moved ahead of me, broad shoulders cutting a path through the shadows.
His gray-blue eyes scanned everything—every corner, every camera, every line of sight.
The commander in him was all steel, but when he glanced back at me, just once, it was the man who had held me through the night. My anchor.
I tightened my grip on the pistol. I wasn’t just here as the woman who loved him. I was here as Captain Raine Carter. And I had a war to fight.
“Cameras,” Russ whispered over comms. “Three on the north side, rotating every eight seconds. Blind spot on the southwest corner.”
“Copy,” Adam answered. “Blade, Hawk, move on the blind side. Raine, you’re with me.”
We slid along the alley wall, every step deliberate. My ribs ached with each breath, but I forced myself to ignore it. Fear clawed at the edges of my mind, whispering of cold trucks and blinking red lights, but I buried it under steel.
Ahead, Blade ghosted across the corner, a shadow in motion. Hawk covered him, rifle up. Russ’s updates came soft in our ears, a lifeline in the silence.
I pressed my back to the cool glass, Adam’s presence solid beside me. The faint brush of his arm against mine steadied me more than any order ever could.
“On my count,” he murmured, his voice so low only I could hear.
My pulse spiked.
Three.
Two.
One.
We moved.