Chapter 18
CASSIAN
The darkness is absolute.
The air in the hallway is instantly stagnant, the hum of the HVAC system dead, replaced by a silence that rings in my skull.
I hold Iris’s wrist in my left hand. Her pulse beats hard against my fingertips.
“Cassian,” she whispers. It’s barely a breath.
“Silence.”
I pull her tight against my back. The heat of her body burns through my shirt, the rapid rise and fall of her chest impossible to miss.
“Hand on my shoulder,” I command, my voice a vibration in my chest rather than a sound. “Step where I step. Don’t let go.”
She grips my shirt.
I raise the SIG P226. I keep it close to my body, ready to fire.
We move.
I know this house. Hell, I built it.
Twelve paces down this corridor, the floor transitions from tile to hardwood. Five paces after that, there’s a recessed alcove for a sculpture I never bought.
I move through the blackness, mapping the layout by memory.
The silence is the worst part.
If the alarm had tripped, sirens would be wailing. Strobes would be flashing. The house would be screaming.
But the silence means they killed the brain.
They bypassed the perimeter sensors. They cut the hardline. They jammed the wireless. And they physically severed the generator linkage.
This isn’t a gang hit. This is precision. It’s either Kirill or mercenaries hired by someone who knows what kind of fortress they’re walking into.
Crack.
A sound from the floor above.
It’s faint—the sound of a heavy boot stepping on a loose floorboard in the Great Hall.
They’re inside.
My earpiece crackles. A burst of white noise that makes me wince.
“...ssian... copy... Sector...”
The signal is weak, fighting through a localized jammer.
“Varro,” I whisper. “Status.”
Static. Then, a voice cutting through the interference, urgent and strained.
“Breach! North Gate! They blew the mag-locks. Multiple tangos. Heavy armor. They’re in the courtyard.”
“They’re in the house,” I correct him. “Ground floor.”
“Fuck. My boards are dead. I’m blind down here.”
“The jammer is close,” I say. “Probably portable. Deployed in the foyer.”
“The perimeter guards are pinned at the gates, so I’m moving Team 6 to intercept,” Varro says. “We’ll pinch them at the main staircase.”
“Negative,” I say instantly. “If they cut the power, they have night vision. If you engage in the open, they’ll slaughter you.”
Iris flinches behind me.
“Fall back to the study,” I order. “Create a fatal funnel. Make them come to you.”
“Copy. And you?”
“I’m in the basement corridor. Heading for the service stairs.”
“Get her out of there.” Varro’s voice is clipped. “They’re sweeping the grid.”
The line cuts.
I stand for a second in the dark, calculating.
The service stairs lead up to the kitchen pantry. From there, I can access the East Wing or the main corridor.
But if they’re running fusion—night vision with thermal overlay—they own the dark. I’m fighting blind against men who can read heat.
I reach down and touch the knife sheath strapped to Iris’s ankle.
“The knife,” I whisper. “Draw it.”
The rasp of steel slides free.
“Good girl. If we get separated, run for the boiler room. Lock the door, and don’t open it for anyone but me or Varro.”
“I’m not leaving you,” she whispers.
“If I go down,” I say, turning my head to speak directly into her ear, “you run. Don’t look back. Don’t try to help me. You survive. That’s the order.”
She doesn’t answer. Her grip on my shirt tightens.
I start moving again.
We reach the base of the service stairs. I pause, listening.
Above us, the house is alive. The distinct thump-thump of suppressed gunfire sounds, muffled, like books falling off a shelf.
It’s started.
I start up the stairs, keeping my weight on the edges of the treads to minimize the creak. Iris mimics me, her boots silent.
We reach the landing. The door to the pantry is closed.
I put my hand on the knob and turn it slowly.
It’s unlocked.
I crack it open an inch.
A beam of light slices through the gap. A flashlight, sweeping the kitchen.
I freeze.
He’s using white light. He isn’t trying to be stealthy. He’s trying to blind anyone hiding in the dark. It’s an aggressive, clearing tactic.
I see a slice of the kitchen island. Stainless steel appliances. The white marble countertops.
And a figure.
He wears full tactical black. Helmet. Body armor.
There’s a suppressed, short-barreled carbine in his hand. He turns toward the pantry door. He must not be able to see me through the wood, but if he has some kind of thermal overlay active, he might see the heat leaking through the crack.
I gently pull the door shut.
Pressing my back against the wall, I push Iris back into the shadows of the stairwell.
“One tango. Kitchen,” I breathe directly against her ear.
I reach down, my hand brushing hers. She has the knife in a reverse grip, exactly like I taught her.
I have a pistol. He has a rifle and thermal vision.
If I open the door and shoot, I reveal our position to the rest of the team. If I wait, he opens the door and finds us trapped in a stairwell.
I need to bring him close.
I slide my hand down the wooden banister, feeling for a loose bracket near the bottom tread.
I grip the rail and rattle it.
Clack. Clack.
It’s a tiny sound, but in the silence of the house, it’s a gunshot.
The footsteps in the kitchen stop.
Then, they start moving toward the pantry. Slow. Deliberate.
I press a hand to Iris’s shoulder, forcing her into a crouch. I step back, flattening myself into the corner behind the door hinges.
The knob turns, and the door opens inward.
The beam of the flashlight cuts into the stairwell.
He leads with the rifle barrel, sweeping left across the empty stairs before stepping fully onto the landing to check the drop.
I explode from the corner.
Before he can react, I grab the barrel of his rifle with my left hand, shoving it violently upward. With my right hand, I drive my combat knife up and under the bottom edge of his Kevlar vest, straight into the diaphragm, exactly where I taught Iris to aim.
The soldier’s eyes go wide behind his goggles. He gasps, a wet, choking sound, dropping the rifle to claw at my arm. I twist the blade, stepping into him, riding his weight down to the floor so his armor doesn’t clatter against the wood.
He twitches once, then goes limp.
I pull the blade free, breathing hard.
“Cassian!” Iris gasps, her voice a terrified thread in the dark.
“I’m okay,” I whisper. “Get his radio.”
I strip the quad-tubes and the thermal module off the dead man’s helmet, pulling the unit over my own head. The world explodes into green phosphor. But over the green, there’s an orange outline—the thermal overlay.
I can see. The body cooling on the floor. Iris burning bright against the walls.
She’s kneeling by the body, fumbling with the tactical vest. Her hands are shaking, but she unclips the radio.
“Take the earpiece,” I tell her. She hands it to me, and I shove it into my ear.
“Check in,” a voice says over the channel. “Echo Two, report.”
Russian. The accent is thick.
I press the transmit button. “Kitchen clear,” I grunt in fluent, breathless Russian.
There’s a pause.
“Copy,” the voice says. “Stack up on the main study. They have a barricade.”
They bought it. For now.
“We have the advantage,” I say, leading Iris forward. “They think we’re downstairs.”
“Where are we going?”
“The study. Varro is holding it. It’s the only defensible position left.”
I grab the dead man’s rifle. It’s an HK416, with the suppressor still tightly threaded on the barrel. Good weapon. On the side rail is a pressure switch for the weapon light.
I hand my pistol to Iris.
“Take this.”
She stares at it. “I have the knife.”
“A knife is for when you’re cornered. This is for keeping them away.” I point to the switch on the side of the pistol. “That’s the light. Don’t turn it on until you see a target. If you use it, you reveal yourself. Thumb the switch only when you mean to kill.”
She takes the gun. It’s huge in her hands.
“Okay,” she whispers.
“Stay close.”
I step over the body and move into the kitchen.
Through the NVGs, the house is a landscape of ghosts. Faint heat blooms on the door handles where the team passed through, the cold draft blowing in from the shattered French doors in the dining room.
We move through the kitchen and into the main hallway.
The Great Hall is a war zone.
The furniture is overturned. There are bullet holes in the plaster. The smell of cordite is thick.
I scan the upper balcony. Clear.
The same can’t be said about the front entrance. The front doors have been blown off their hinges, letting the storm pour into the foyer.
Two tangos are stacked by the study doors, trying to wedge a pry bar into the reinforced frame. They’re trying to flush Varro out.
“Down,” I hiss, pushing Iris behind a marble pillar.
I raise the captured rifle, keeping the laser off.
Thud-thud. The first man drops.
The second spins, raising his weapon.
Thud-thud. He falls just as fast.
“Move,” I command.
We sprint across the open floor. The marble tiles are slick with the rain blowing in from the shattered entrance, smeared with the blood of the men I just dropped. We slide to a halt at the study doors. They’re barricaded from the inside.
I bang on the wood. Three sharp knocks. One heavy. The code.
“Varro!” I shout. “Open up!”
“Clear!” Varro yells from inside.
The locks disengage. The door swings open.
Varro pulls us inside.
My hulking, heavily tattooed second-in-command looks like hell in the green glow of my optics. His thick jaw is bleeding from a cut above his eye. His tactical vest is scarred from a hit.
“You made it,” he sighs, relief flooding his voice. “We thought you were pinned in the basement.”
“We were. Who’s left?”
“Just me and two guys from Team 6,” he says. “The rest of the interior guard is down.”
“And the drive?” I ask.
“In my pouch,” he says. “Secured.”
Four men against a hit squad.
I look around the study. It’s a fortress of mahogany and leather. The windows are shuttered.
“Where’s Kirill?”
“He’s directing from the courtyard,” he says. “Waiting for us to bleed out.”
I check the magazine on the rifle. Half full.
“He won’t wait long. He heard the shots in the kitchen. He knows I’m active.”
I turn my attention to Iris. She’s crouched behind a leather sofa, holding the pistol with both hands, terrified. But she isn’t frozen. She’s scanning the door. She’s surviving.
“We hold here,” I command. “If they breach, we take as many as we can.”
“And then?” Varro asks.
“And then we die.”
Suddenly, the radio in my ear crackles.
The voice speaks in heavily accented English. It’s Kirill.
“I know you’re listening,” he hisses.
I hold up a hand, silencing the room.
“How astute,” I snarl back. “Speak.”
“Hand over whatever you took from Elias and the girl,” Kirill says. “I’ll give your surviving men a fast death.”
I glance back at Iris. She’s watching me.
“Why the girl?”
“The client was very specific,” Kirill explains. “No loose ends.”
The client.
It had to be someone with the money to hire a private army, someone worried about what Iris might have witnessed at the museum.
Only one name fits.
The Judge.
My jaw clenches, my grip tightening on the rifle until the plastic creaks.
“Come and get her,” I growl.
Ripping the earpiece out, I crush it under my boot.
“He’s coming,” I tell the room. “Get ready.”
I make my way over to Iris and kneel in front of her. “They’re going to breach. It’s going to get loud.”
She nods. “I understand.”
“If they get in, don’t let them take you.”
Her fingers tighten around the grip of the pistol. “I won’t.”
I give her a single, hard nod.
Outside in the hallway, heavy boots hit the marble. There’s the distinct sound of an adhesive charge being slapped against the exterior of the wood.
“Cover!” I roar, diving over the sofa and dragging Iris down with me.
BOOM.
The doors blow inward in a devastating shower of splintered mahogany and smoke.
And the wolves pour in.