Chapter 35 Calder
CALDER
I’ve built mission packets before, but never like this.
Back then, there’d been layers behind the work. Analysts, secure channels, formal intel packages assembled by men far from the noise and blood of the actual fight. My specialty had been taking that information, finding the patterns, and turning it into something our team could use.
Now, it’s just me in Buck’s office at the station after midnight, with a laptop and a legal pad, finding the kind of answers I’d hoped not to find.
Buck went to the kitchen for a coffee refill twenty minutes ago. Weston is out doing another perimeter check. I stare at the message thread, reading the same lines over again.
Anton Kozlov had been asking favors from men who owed debts going back years. He was connected to a support network made up of old VDV and Spetsnaz ties providing access to military-grade gear and usable intel.
Not a lone wolf. Not a vandal with a gas can or a grieving brother lashing out blindly, but a trained operator with enough help to stay dangerous.
It’s a revenge mission with resources.
The office door opens, and both Buck and Weston come in holding three coffee mugs between them.
Weston clocks my expression immediately. “That bad?”
“Worse than I wanted.” I turn the laptop so they can see the messages.
Buck’s jaw tightens as he reads. “Former contacts.”
Weston leans in closer. “How many guys are we talking?”
“He doesn’t know for sure. Might be Kozlov doing the field work himself and using others for supplies and information. Might be one or two more hands in the background.” I pause. “Nobody’s saying he brought a whole team here, but it doesn’t have to be a whole team to ruin us.”
I push away from the desk, get to my feet, and cross the space, but the room isn’t big enough for the kind of movement I need.
“Your contact offer anything besides bad news?” Buck asks.
I bark out a laugh. “Yeah. Extraction.”
His face doesn’t change, but his eyes do. “Federal?”
“Through a friend of a friend, with enough pull to make it happen if we say yes,” I say. “Temporary first. Full relocation if it goes that way. New names, new place, new school for T.J., a new job and cover for Elena. A clean split from Moon Ridge.”
Neither of them responds, but I know what they’re thinking. We fit here. More than anywhere else we’ve been, and more than any place I’d ever called home.
To walk away would be survival, and to stay might be a death sentence.
Weston lets out a long, heavy breath. “Shit. Witness protection?”
“Potentially,” I say. “If it comes to that.”
“We all leave,” Weston says flatly.
“We run.”
Buck settles into the chair again, slow and deliberate, but the movement reads more like containment than calm. “It’ll keep them alive.”
I turn on him. “What do you think I’m trying to do?”
“Same thing I am,” Buck says evenly.
I stare at him. “It sounds a lot like you’ve already decided.”
“It sounds like I’m considering every option.”
“Every option except the one where we don’t tear apart their lives?”
Buck sets his mug down with deliberate care. “You think getting stalked and burned out of her home and school isn’t tearing apart her life?”
Weston moves to the side of the desk, effectively coming between us in his subtle way. The move should cool the room, but it only makes me more aware of how tight my body has gone, like I’m braced for impact.
I should back off. I know that, and I know the heat in my chest isn’t all anger. There’s panic there, too, and the sick feeling that comes when there are too many variables and no clean solutions.
But once the pressure finds a crack, it keeps going.
“She won’t thank us for dragging her into some federal hole in the ground,” I say. “Pulling T.J. out of school, taking them both away from friends. It makes them pay for our past all over again.”
Buck’s eyes flash as he gets back to his feet. “Our past is already on her doorstep.”
“If we go, we’re not keeping this thing together, are we?” I gesture around at the three of us, meaning to include Elena, too.
He doesn’t have a comeback for that. Neither of them does. It’s what’s under the argument. The thing I’ve been trying not to say, because saying it makes it real.
“Calder—” Buck’s tone is lower now, but I cut him off with a rough laugh.
“Let’s say it. Extraction sounds real clean when you don’t talk about the rest of it.
Elena and T.J. can disappear. Maybe one of us goes with them.
Maybe two, if we’re lucky. Maybe the rest stay behind to deal with Kozlov, or keep the trail muddy, or do whatever ugly work needs doing.
” I look between them. “And if that happens, we know exactly who gets left behind.”