Chapter 18
STONE
Stone held Frankie tight against his chest, but his eyes were locked on the bastard barking orders to the men in the server farm below.
Nick O’Halloran.
The name hit him like a fist to the gut.
He couldn’t believe Nick was the one calling the shots.
He’d treated that son of a bitch like a brother.
They’d bled together. Fought shoulder to shoulder through three missions that never made it into the official reports. Stone had trusted him with his life.
And now Nick was involved in whatever the hell had gotten Dane killed.
Stone’s pulse hammered in his neck. His jaw locked so tight it felt like bone grinding bone. He clenched his fists until tendons strained against skin.
He wanted to wrap his hands around O’Halloran’s throat and squeeze until the goddamn light died in his eyes.
No last words. No mercy.
Just pure, justifiable revenge.
Frankie trembled against him, but not from fear. From fury.
Her breath was ragged, and her body vibrated against him with her own rage. Her hands were fists, pressed against his chest, stiff and shaking. Her jaw was tight, and she looked angry enough to rip off Alan Vincent’s head.
On the monitor, the air in the server room shimmered with heat distortion.
Red strobes pulsed like a heartbeat. Steam hissed from vents in violent bursts, and the rows of racks glowed a bright orange as their internal temperatures reached critical levels.
One of the techs jabbed buttons on an emergency panel.
Another slammed his fist against a console.
Sparks burst from a nearby cable bank, showering two more men in white-hot embers.
O’Halloran stood in the middle of it all, shouting orders, pointing fingers, rage turning his ugly fucking face red. Frankie’s chemical sabotage had the server farm eating itself alive, and it was impossible to know if any of them had figured out what was going on.
Alan Vincent came back into view, and Frankie sucked in a breath like she’d been punched.
Her fists clenched tighter against Stone’s chest. “I’m going to kick the life out of that bastard.”
She wanted to kill Alan Vincent, and God help him, part of Stone wanted to let her. The bastard deserved worse than a bullet. He deserved to feel every ounce of what he’d taken from her.
But he couldn’t let her kill him.
She was tough, but taking a life carved a piece out of a person. A vital piece. One that never came back. Stone carried a scar for every soul he'd sent to the dirt, and some nights, those scars ached like hell.
He could shoulder that weight. He did it every damn day.
But he wouldn’t let her carry a mental scar like that.
He would kill for her. Hell, he would burn this whole fucking rig to the seabed if it meant keeping her pure soul intact.
His mind snapped back to their time in his cabin, before his team had arrived, when they’d been planning this sabotage together.
Frankie had studied her father’s notes, tracing each line of the schematic. She’d memorized every flaw, every choke point, every weakness in the veins of Blackwater Deep.
She hadn’t cried. Not once.
There had been fire in her eyes. Not grief, not rage, but resolve.
She didn’t just want revenge. She wanted to finish what her father had started. For him. For herself. And for every man and woman who’d lost their careers and their sense of purpose when this rig was decommissioned.
Stone looked down at her, and taking in her trembling and seething, he said, “You’re not going to kill that bastard.”
She jerked back, eyes snapping to his. “He could be the reason my dad was killed.”
“I know.”
“He ruined lives,” she snarled. “Hundreds of them. And he pretended to be our friend. He even went to dad’s funeral. Don’t you dare—”
“Frankie.” He seized her hands in his. “I know.”
“Then let me—”
“No,” he growled with a voice as hard as poured concrete. “If you kill him, he wins. His murder will stain you like you’ll never comprehend. You don’t come back from that. Trust me.”
“I don’t give a shit,” she snapped. “He deserves to die. And I need to kill him. For Dad, for me, for everyone who lost everything when that bastard stole Blackwater Deep from us.”
“No,” Stone said again, quieter, but with steel behind it. “You’re better than that.”
Frankie’s jaw locked tight. Her fists trembled, and she looked ready to scream, or punch, or run, or rip something to shreds with her bare hands, but Stone held her firm.
Fighting him would be pointless, but he wasn’t trying to control her. He was trying to protect what was still good in her.
Slowly, painfully, her body softened, and her shoulders dropped just a fraction. It was enough.
“I want him to suffer,” she whispered. “And the bastards who took over my rig. I want them to feel what they did to us.”
“They will,” Stone said. “Every last one.”
She looked up at him, eyes glassy, not from grief, but from rage held so tight it was starting to crack.
They’d only done step one of her father’s plan: cripple the server farm.
But with Vincent alive and Nick O’Halloran barking orders, and his team still under attack, crippling the system wasn’t enough. Not anymore.
Blackwater Deep had to be paralyzed. Permanently.
“What about Nick O’Halloran?” she said. “Don’t you want to kill him?”
Stone’s scalp bristled. “You bet your fucking life I do.”
Her breath hitched. “See?”
“We’re going to kill every last one of them, Frankie.” He stepped closer. “But we’re doing it your father’s way. The way Digger planned.”
Her breath caught, and her eyes lit with a fire far hotter than tears: determination.
“You ready to take this sabotage to the next level?” he said.
She leaned into him. “Absolutely.”
Stone crushed her in a fierce hug and whispered, “I never believed in much until I met you. Let’s finish your dad’s plan.”
She sucked in air, like no words could convey what she was thinking.
He wrapped his arms around her as if he could shield her from every rotten thing that had happened and any that were yet to come.
God help him, he hoped this was the right plan.
He turned back to the monitor. The server room was chaos: racks buckling, sparks flying, fire suppression systems failing. One of the cabinets blew out in a burst of flame and smoke.
Three men stood at the exit, frantically jabbing at the control panel, but the door refused to open.
That exit was jammed shut by a system override or warped by the heat.
Panic twisted their faces as they pounded the buttons.
There was no way out of there, unless they found the manual override .
. . before the rig plunged into the ocean, that was.
Stone tapped his earpiece. “Patch. McGuire. Cross. Sound off.”
“Still holding,” Patch barked, followed by a burst of gunfire.
“We’re outnumbered and running low,” McGuire said. “Not sure how much longer we can keep this up.”
“I second that,” Cross hollered. “Hurry the fuck up.”
Stone’s jaw tightened. “We’ve crippled the server room.”
“Then let’s get the fuck out of here,” Patch snapped.
“I know who’s behind this fucking security breach.” Stone’s body vibrated with anger.
“Who?” McGuire demanded.
“Nick O’Halloran.”
Silence hit the channel like a gunshot.
“You’re shitting me,” Patch said.
“Seeing him with my own eyes,” Stone replied. “Looks like he’s taken over from Langley.”
“Son of a bitch!” Cross hissed.
“You need to kill that fucker,” McGuire growled.
Stone’s grip tightened on the edge of the console. “That’s the plan. Now that we’ve crippled the server farm, we’re gonna drop this whole goddamn rig into the ocean.”
“Hell yes,” Patch said. “What do you need from us?”
“Get your asses back to the chopper pad. You know the way?”
“We’re good.”
“Then make sure Booker’s ready for fast evac.”
“Roger that,” Patch said. “What about you two?”
Stone eased back from Frankie, locking eyes with her like nothing else existed.
“Don’t worry about us,” he said into the comms. “Frankie knows the way out.”
Her eyes burned with fierce defiance as she nodded.
“Copy that,” Patch said. “Watch your six, brother.”
“You too. Over and out.” Stone ended the comms.
“Thank you.” Frankie grabbed his face with both hands, pulled him down, and kissed him.
He kissed her back, crushing his mouth to hers. Hard. Fierce. Fucking incredible.
When he pulled back, he gave her ass a quick squeeze. “Grab the gear. We gotta move.”
Frankie snatched up her welding torch and mask. “Let’s go blow a hole in this place,” she said, voice steady, eyes blazing.
Stone turned back to the monitor one last time. The server room looked like hell on the verge of collapse. He nodded to Frankie. “Lead the way.”
She took off down a narrow maintenance corridor, boots pounding against metal, and he followed close behind with his rifle ready and adrenaline pumping. The deeper they went, the darker it became. Pipes rattled. Steam hissed from cracked vents. The rig groaned like it was dying.
She led him to a storage room tucked behind a bulkhead, kicked the door open, and stepped inside like she’d done that dozens of times.
She grabbed two of everything she needed: pressure jacks, expanding foam, and canisters of accelerant.
“These go in the weak points, and split the frame open,” she said, as they divided the gear between them.
“What about the oil? The collapsing rig will have an environmental impact.”
“The pipe was capped when the rig was decommissioned.”
“Okay, so we’re good.”
“Yep. Blackwater Deep’s about to become one hell of a fish playground.”
She took off again, moving fast. He ran beside her, scanning every shadow for movement, gun raised and ready.
“Dad’s schematic identified the core supports to target. We apply heat and jacks to force mechanical stress, and the load redistributes. Once misaligned, the rig will buckle and there’s no stopping it,” she said. “This rig was built to survive anything, except itself.”