Chapter 15
FRANKIE
The chopper blades thrummed like war drums overhead, rattling through Frankie’s chest as she sat wedged between two men who looked like they’d been carved from stone and dipped in gunpowder.
McGuire sat to her left, arms crossed, eyes hidden behind mirrored lenses that somehow still made a statement in the dark. Patch was on her right, checking his rifle like he was tuning a guitar. Across from her, Cross leaned forward, elbows on his knees, silent and watching. Judging.
They hadn’t said a word in ten minutes.
Their silence was thick with unspoken judgment. The unspoken what the hell is she doing here?
She was used to that shit. She would show them.
Booker, the pilot, sat up front, eyes focused ahead. He’d given her a cursory hello when she’d climbed in, but that was it.
Frankie adjusted her headset and stared straight ahead, spine straight, jaw set. The chopper’s interior was bathed in a green hue from the instrument lights, casting the team in an eerie glow.
Stone sat beside Booker, and his voice crackled in her ears. “Our understanding is the server farm has been attached to the northern leg, and they’re running cooling loops through the substructure. They’re using the rig as one massive antenna to move data in real time.”
He turned slightly, nodding toward her. “Frankie’s gonna lead us to the access points, so we can sabotage the data center from the inside.”
Patch raised an eyebrow. McGuire’s jaw flexed. Cross didn’t move, but he didn’t need to. Between the three of them, their doubt about her was thick enough to breathe.
The moon was hidden behind dark clouds blooming on the horizon, and the black water below blurred into the sky, seamless and endless.
It was 3 o’clock in the morning. The hour when normal people were tucked up in bed, dreaming.
She’d never thought of herself as normal.
Neither was Stone.
He was relentless. He’d already pulled her from a wreckage, saved her from gunfire, and treated her wounds with steady, yet gentle hands. He had done things to her body that no man ever had. Now he was putting his body on the line to finish what her father started, as if it mattered to him too.
Stone turned to glance at her, like he’d known she was looking at him, and her breath hitched.
He always looked at her like she mattered. Like he saw her, really saw her, and knew everything she was capable of. Yet they barely knew each other.
He turned toward the front.
Through the windshield, barely visible against the darkness, loomed the silhouette of Blackwater Deep.
As its shadowed shape emerged from the gloom, a wave of unexpected grief swept through her.
She’d worked hundreds of night shifts on that rig, but it had never looked like this.
Back then, the rig was bright and seemed alive. It was always visible from miles out.
Now it sagged under the weight of how much they’d broken it, like someone had gutted it and stitched it back up all wrong. The whole damn place seemed to beg for the end to come.
Frankie leaned forward, sweeping her gaze over the men in the chopper.
She knew that look. The flickers of—She’s too small. She’s just a girl. She’ll slow us down—didn’t matter and they never had.
She wasn’t about to let their doubts crawl under her skin now.
Time to show these bastards exactly what she was made of.
The chopper dropped fast. Wind howled through the open side, like the rig itself was screaming at them to turn back.
Her stomach pitched, and as she braced her boots on the floor, she clenched her jaw against the pain ripping up her ankle. The bruise hurt like hell with her boot on, but she would chew through steel before she would reveal her weakness.
The landing pad came into view, but there were no lights, not even the red beacon every offshore rig was supposed to flare up at night. The one that warned low-flying aircraft not to slam into a goddamn wall of steel.
What the hell?
She had never seen the rig so dark, not even during blackout drills.
This mission just got a whole lot harder. No safety lighting meant no visibility.
No one with half a brain turned off safety systems unless they wanted someone to get hurt.
Or dead.
Maybe that’s the plan.
The second she and Stone had climbed into the chopper, he’d had her go over the plan. Or more specifically, her dad’s plan that was detailed in his secret notebook. She knew the way in. Knew the secret routes and hidden hatches. She understood how her dad had planned to sabotage the server farm.
It was so simple it was ridiculous.
She could picture the schematics in her head. Every tunnel, every exit door, every ladder that would get them there. It was up to her to lead these men through it.
They were counting on her to get it right.
She was counting on them to keep the gunmen off her ass.
She’d already escaped a hail of bullets last time she was here. No way in hell she wanted a repeat of that.
The men around her were quiet, focused. Like they were already flipping the switch in their heads and getting ready to shoot the bastards who’d taken over her rig.
They had a special kind of ease between them. Like they’d done this before, had been through the worst and come out the other side.
Which they had. These were Stone’s teammates who had been ambushed and had barely gotten out alive. They had lost a man in the process.
Stone had been hollowed out by his grief over Dane’s death.
She knew the depth of that sorrow. She’d been trying to claw above it since her father was murdered.
Seated opposite her, Cross punched the magazine into his rifle. McGuire was chewing gum and staring dead ahead, looking at something only he could see. Patch sat stiff, arms folded, jaw clenched like he was ready to tear someone apart barehanded.
Between the four of them, they had enough guns to take on a small army.
Yet it still didn’t feel like enough.
Before they'd left the cabin, Stone had fitted a Kevlar vest to her that was way too big. He'd also strapped his gun holster to her thigh, and as he'd shown her how to unclip it, each brush of his fingers ignited a heat inside her.
Yet his silence had said all she needed to know.
You’re armed now, but if anyone lays a hand on you, I’ll put them in the ground.
She knew without a doubt that he would die for her, and she didn’t know what the hell to do with that.
Another thought hit her like a flame.
What if one of them got hurt, or fucking died because I screwed up?
She couldn’t live with herself if that happened.
She’d been all gung-ho earlier, acting confident as they’d laid out the plan: quick touchdown, jump out, chopper lifts off, and the four men follow her through the maintenance hatch and deep into the rig’s belly.
She knew the way.
The problem was, it was the longest damn route on the whole rig.
And with no lights, it was going to feel ten times longer.
The chopper’s skids slammed down onto the steel with a hard shudder.
In a whirl of chaos, they snapped off their belts and jumped out.
With their rifles ready, they hit the grating, and metal clanged underfoot as they sprinted off the helipad.
The chopper lifted behind them, and the blast from the rotors whipped her hair across her face, stinging her cheeks.
Stone ran beside her, rifle across his chest, scanning every shadow.
Booker banked the chopper hard, and it disappeared over the edge.
Now it was just the five of them, and her rig.
“Over to you, Frankie,” Stone said.
“Got it.” She took off toward the hatch.
The men crouched as they moved, low and ready, like they were already being hunted. She did the same. The grating beneath her boots was slick, like the sea had climbed up and tried to take it back. The whole structure groaned under their weight, but it was the only sound.
No floodlights. No clunking equipment. Just wind, and the whole damn place groaning like Blackwater Deep had a massive belly ache.
God, it was eerie.
Stone had made it clear that they couldn’t take the usual entry point from the helipad. He’d said stick to the shadows and use the routes no one else thought to watch.
She could do that. She’d been slipping through this rig’s forgotten spaces since she was seven.
The hatch she led them to was wedged beneath a rusted loading deck. Half the crew never knew it existed. She dropped to one knee and rattled the padlock. Locked.
“Fuck,” someone muttered behind her.
Not Stone.
She reached behind the support column, fingers finding her tool, right where she’d stashed it years ago. She pulled out the bolt cutters, crusted with salt and rust.
“Padlocks never stopped me before,” she said, grinning.
Stone stepped up and took the cutters from her. Normally, she would snap at a man for that, but Stone didn’t move like he was trying to prove anything. He was just getting shit done.
One clean cut, and the lock hit the grating. He tossed the cutters aside, yanked the hatch open, and stepped through, rifle up.
She followed, and a rancid stink hit her: old oil, salt, and another foul stench. Rot maybe. Or dead rats. Maybe worse.
The others filed in behind.
“Which way?” Stone asked, voice gravelly.
She pointed to the ladder bolted to the wall like a rusted spine. “This drops us into the service corridor. It’s a tight fit, so watch your heads.”
She climbed down first and landed on a narrow ledge of grated steel one level below that was lit up by emergency solar-charged green strip lights running along the floor. One by one, the others followed, boots clanging behind her.
“Straight through this shaft,” she said, sprinting away. “Then the maintenance crawl. After that, we hit the lower levels. Server room’s positioned under the turbine housing.”
“How far down?” Patch asked.
“All the way to the bottom of the damn rig,” she said. “Unfortunately.”
Stone pushed in front of her, rifle up, scanning ahead, and putting his body on the line for her as she guided them through the tight corridors.
Pipes crisscrossed the ceiling, and thick cables drooped like vines.
The air felt heavier down here, like the rig had lost the ability to filter stale air.
Frankie moved fast, ducking under a low beam. Somehow, wind swept through the steel bones, and the place felt colder than she remembered. Like it was hollowed out.
She led them across the grating toward another hatch. Her heart pounded hard, and every step seemed to echo a warning. She ducked under a low cable. A thundercrack split the air.
A bullet slammed into the wall beside her. Sparks exploded as she screamed and ducked.
Stone grabbed her arm and yanked her behind him as more shots tore through the air.
“Shit! We’re blown!” Cross shouted from the rear.
Gunfire blasted from every direction, echoing off the steel. Bullets pinged off pipes. The air filled with sparks, smoke, and noise.
Stone opened fire in tight, controlled bursts.
“They saw us land,” McGuire growled. “It’s a goddamn ambush.”
Fear clawed at her throat.
She’d brought these men here. They trusted her. If any of them died because of her—
“Frankie, move!” Stone reached back and pulled her down a side passage.
“Eyes on the catwalk,” Patch barked, firing his rifle. “Twelve o’clock!”
“We have to get outta here!” Cross called.
“Frankie! Which way?” Stone shouted over the chaos.
“This way!” She pushed off his waist to move, but he caught her hand.
“Stay behind me.”
Moving fast with Stone shielding her, she crawled toward the next junction. As her boots slipped on the grating, Stone protected her with his body. The others followed tight behind, returning fire as they went.
Gunfire thundered behind them in bursts. Bullets pinged off metal rails. A lightbulb shattered above her, raining shards onto her shoulders, and screaming, she ducked.
The floor shook with every shot and every footfall.
A spray of bullets hit the wall ahead of her. “Shit, they’re in front of us.”
Stone jumped in front of her, firing into the darkness ahead.
Bullets slammed into the walls, sparking off steel.
“We’re fucking trapped,” one of his men cried.
The bullets kept coming.
Oh God. We’re all going to die.