Chapter 25
HALLIE MAE
T he clock beside the bed said it was nearly two in the morning.
I hadn’t slept.
Not really.
I’d dozed a little right after Noah left, wrapped in one of his shirts and curled into the corner of the mattress where his scent still clung to the sheets.
But the quiet here—it wasn’t like the quiet back home at my apartment.
It hummed with electricity. With motion.
With worry. The kind of silence that made you think the walls were listening.
And every time I closed my eyes, I saw him—jaw tight, eyes burning, gun strapped to his thigh.
“ Come back to me ,” I’d whispered.
But what if he couldn’t?
What if I never saw him again?
I sat up, pushed the covers off, and swung my legs to the floor. The air was cool against my skin, and I reached for the bag I’d packed. Just a few essentials—clothes, toiletries, the old worn Bible I couldn’t bring myself to open.
I pulled on a pair of soft cotton leggings and slipped a sweatshirt over my sleep shirt, tugging the hem down to cover me proper. I didn’t bother with shoes. Just padded barefoot across the hardwood, one quiet step at a time.
I didn’t know where I was going—only that I couldn’t lie in that bed a second longer, not while the man I loved was out there, chasing ghosts in the dark.
The hallway was dim, low lights flickering every few feet. Somewhere down the corridor, I heard a door close. A laugh, muffled. Dominion Hall never really slept.
I wandered without direction, barefoot on the cool floors, passing empty rooms and closed doors. I didn’t know where I was going—only that I had to go somewhere.
Eventually, two flights of stairs lower, I saw the light.
Soft and blue, it spilled out from the edges of a cracked door, brighter than anything else in this part of the compound. Something buzzed faintly from inside—electronic and steady. Not the kind of buzz you got from lights or generators. This was information. Movement. A heartbeat made of code.
I hesitated.
Then knocked.
A voice—low and distracted—called out, “Yeah, come in.”
I pushed the door open slowly.
It was a large room—half bunker, half mission control.
Monitors covered one wall, all glowing with maps, video feeds, and endless streams of numbers I couldn’t make sense of.
A half-empty energy drink sat on the desk beside a row of keyboards and comm units.
And sitting in front of them, backlit by a half-dozen screens, was a man.
Blond.
Very tall.
Leaning back in a worn black chair like he’d been parked there for hours.
He glanced over his shoulder as I stepped inside, and something in his expression softened.
“You’re Noah’s girl.”
I froze. “You know who I am?”
He gave me a lopsided grin and swiveled his chair toward me. “Pretty sure everyone here does at this point.”
I crossed my arms, suddenly aware that I hadn’t bothered to put on a bra. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“It’s okay.” He stood, then paused like he was debating. After a second, he offered a hand. “Elias.”
I blinked. Elias. One of the Dane brothers. One that Noah hadn’t mentioned much—at least not yet.
I took his hand, surprised by how warm it was. “I’m?—”
“Hallie Mae,” he finished for me. “Yeah. I know. Sorry for your loss, by the way. Your dad … that was some messed up shit.”
The words caught me off guard—not just because of their bluntness, but because of the way he said them. Like he’d actually felt it. Like it wasn’t just something someone said to be polite.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Elias sat back down, fingers already flying over the keys again. “I’d love to offer you coffee or some of Marcus’s whiskey, but I’ve got about ten different windows open and two satellites I’m trying to bounce between, so … raincheck?”
A breath of laughter escaped me. “You’re … not what I expected.”
He smirked. “Because I don’t have the mean mug required to bench press motorcycles?”
I tilted my head. “Exactly.”
He gestured toward his head, then his broad chest. “Nerd of the family. Atlas, too—though he hides it behind that whole ‘silent and terrifying’ vibe. I just lean in. Hacking, code, surveillance—I run ops from keyboards, not carbines. And yeah, Marcus and I got the recessive genes. Blond, sarcastic, prone to sunburn. Everyone else looks like they were engineered in a lab called ‘Project Hemsworth.’”
That made me laugh, which I hadn’t done in quite a while.
Elias glanced up at me, the humor fading slightly as he studied my face. “You’re not sleeping.”
I shrugged. “Neither are you.”
“Yeah, but I’m not in love with someone currently storming a bad guy stronghold,” he said, then added, “Though, I’m not exactly sleeping easy either.
Those guys drive me crazy half the time, but they’re my blood.
If one of them doesn’t come home tonight …
” He trailed off, fingers still moving across the keys.
I looked down.
That word— love —landed differently when someone else said it.
“I don’t know what I was hoping to find,” I said quietly, stepping further into the room. “I just … I needed to know he’s okay.”
Elias hesitated.
Then he reached over and flipped a small switch on one of the radios. Static popped, then softened into a low hum of voices—coded words, military brevity, nothing I could fully track.
Elias turned a knob, adjusting the volume. “I’m not supposed to let anyone listen in. But …” He sighed. “Noah would probably want you to hear this.”
My chest cracked open.
“Thank you.”
He waved a hand. “Don’t mention it. Literally. Ryker would have my ass.”
I hovered beside him, eyes scanning the screens. I didn’t understand most of what I was seeing—drone feeds, heat signatures, data overlays—but I understood the tone in those voices. I understood what was at stake.
Elias’s hands never stopped moving. “We’ve got eyes from above, radio chatter, sat ping, local surveillance. It’s a goddamn orchestra and I’m the guy holding the baton.”
“You’re the hacker.”
He flashed a grin. “And proud of it. I may not clear a room with a twelve-gauge as quick as Marcus, but I can shut down a power grid and hijack a drone from two continents away.”
I smiled, but it didn’t quite reach my eyes. “You don’t ever wish you were out there with them?”
He didn’t look away from the screen. “Not even a little. I’ve done my time in the field. But now that I’m older and wiser, I know where I’m most useful. In here I can save lots of lives. And out there?” His voice dipped. “Out there’s a meat grinder.”
We stood in silence for a few moments, the radio chatter filling the air between us.
Then Elias spoke again, softer this time. “He’s good, you know. Noah. If anyone can come out of this in one piece, it’s him. We Danes are made of sturdy stock.”
I swallowed hard. “He promised me he’d be back in time.”
Elias glanced at me, brow furrowing. “In time for what?”
“My daddy’s funeral.”
His fingers stilled on the keyboard.
Then, gently, he said, “Then we’ll make damn sure he is.”
He said it like it was fact. Like there was no room for doubt.
Maybe I needed to believe it the way he said it—quiet but sure. Like a thread holding me together.
The comms crackled again, drawing both our gazes back to the wall of screens. I heard Ryker’s voice—tight, breathless.
“Contact—four down, more coming.”
Elias leaned in, fingers flying as he typed a command into the keyboard.
On the main monitor, one of the drone feeds zoomed in, tiling open to show an infrared view of what I recognized—barely—as the Kiawah River.
Three boats moved up a narrow inlet, and then a sprawl of property bloomed onto the screen—dark structures, movement like fireflies scattering in the heat.
“There,” he muttered, highlighting one shape on the map. “That’s Ryker. They’ve already breached the first house. But …”
“But what?” I asked, voice tight.
He zoomed out. “Too many red dots.”
I squinted. “Red means …”
“Enemies. Department 77. Or whoever the hell they hired to die for them.” He didn’t look at me as he spoke—just kept adjusting the feeds, muttering under his breath. “Something’s wrong. That many reinforcements? They knew we were coming.”
My hands curled around the back of the chair, gripping hard. “You think it’s a trap?”
“I think,” he said slowly, “they’ve been waiting for this. Ryker’s pinned. Atlas is on the move. But this isn’t a clean sweep anymore—it’s survival.”
The next voice on the comms made me go still.
Noah.
“RPG spotted. Atlas, shift your angle. They’re coming up behind you, east side.”
His voice was calm. Sharp. I could hear the calculation in it, the split-second decisions. But I could also hear the strain.
“He’s got eyes on the whole team,” Elias murmured. “He’s in overwatch. It means he’s not in the thick of it, but close enough to keep them all alive.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It’s all dangerous.” He pulled up another window, typing fast. “But Noah’s got a gift. He’ll pick them off one by one as best he can.”
Another voice cut in—not Noah. Atlas, maybe?
“Thirty seconds out. Coming in from the road.”
It sounded like they were talking about what television show to watch next. The calm. The steadiness.
Gunfire rattled in the background. Not fake. Not like the movies. I could feel it—those concussive thuds, the way someone’s breath hitched just slightly between rounds.
I dropped into the chair beside Elias, one hand covering my mouth.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I just … I need to hear him.”
Elias didn’t say anything—just reached over, lowered the volume a notch, but didn’t turn it off .
“I can’t imagine this,” I said after a moment, staring at the infrared images, the movement of tiny, glowing blips like some tragic video game. “How do you do it? Sit here and listen, not knowing if they’ll all make it back?”
His hands paused. Then he glanced at me. “You don’t really learn how. You just get used to the weight of it.”
I turned to him, the air thick. “I don’t want to get used to it.”
“I know.” He said it gently, without judgment. “You’re not supposed to. That’s how you know you still feel.”
A long moment passed. The comms erupted again—another burst of gunfire, Ryker’s voice gritted and sharp.
Elias typed something rapid-fire, then flicked to a second monitor.
A white thermal outline of bodies clustered behind a barricade—one, two, three .
.. maybe four heat signatures moving erratically.
“Come on, come on,” Elias muttered. “Where the hell’s Marcus?—”
As if on cue, a new voice broke in, calm and cool:
“Touchdown in thirty. Coming in hot.”
“Marcus,” Elias said, lips twitching. “So fucking dramatic.”
I stared at the screen as a new dot descended from above. A slow grin tugged at Elias’s mouth. “You’re about to see something wild.”
“Wild how?”
“Drop team parachuting onto a peninsula surrounded by water and trees, with no room for error and a wind shear that would make most guys piss themselves.”
My chest tightened again. “And they’re still doing it?”
“Oh, yeah. They’re nuts. And loyal to the bone. ”
The feed shifted again. Noah’s voice rang out—sharp and deadly:
“Target with rocket spotted—taking the shot.”
A pause.
Then a pop, followed by a grunt on comms. Another pause.
“Target down.”
I closed my eyes, the relief hitting so hard my chest shook.
Elias didn’t speak.
He just leaned back and watched, his face bathed in blue light, like he was used to moments like this. Used to being the one who listened. Who watched. Who waited.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I whispered.
He looked at me. “Sit. Breathe. And let him do what he does best.”
I nodded. Swallowed hard.
Then whispered the words only I could give.
“Come back to me, Noah. Just come back.”
Elias didn’t ask me to repeat it. He just turned the volume up by a hair, and kept the line open.
The radio crackled again—faint, a whisper under the static—and for a beat, everything on screen stilled. No chatter. No movement.
Then chaos.
“Shit—RPG inbound,” a voice barked—Atlas, I thought. Then another voice overlapped, sharp with urgency.
“Boat alarm’s gone hot—overwatch compromised!”
My blood turned cold. I looked at Elias, whose fingers were already flying.
“What does that mean?” I asked, barely able to get the words out.
He didn’t answer right away. Just toggled to a new drone feed—night vision blurring across the water, where one of the boats rocked sharply, a flare of light streaking through the sky like a comet.
My heart stopped.
A moment later, Noah’s voice crackled in—but it was fast, panicked, distorted by the sudden onslaught of sound behind him.
“Incoming—everybody off the boat, I —”
Then silence.
Not the regular kind. Not the radio-quiet kind.
This was dead silence.
The kind that meant something had gone wrong.
Something had gone .
“Noah?” I whispered.
Nothing.
Elias leaned forward, muttering something under his breath. “No, no, no—don’t do this—come on—where the hell is his signal?”
He clicked through feeds, hands flying, breath short now.
I reached for the desk to steady myself. “Elias.”
He didn’t look at me. “His signal’s down. Either the equipment got hit or?—”
“Or what?”
He stopped typing.
And that scared me more than anything else.
“Maybe you should go.”
My knees buckled. I gripped the chair with both hands, heart pounding so loud I could barely hear the static anymore.
“I need—” My voice cracked. “I need to hear him.”
Elias shook his head, jaw clenched. “I’m trying.”
The radio popped.
Once .
Then silence again.
I stared at the screen—at the boats, the red dots still moving, still closing in. But the one dot that mattered most?
Gone.
Elias sat back slowly, his eyes scanning every corner of the display. Searching. Willing a signal to return. But none did.
I pressed a trembling hand to my mouth.
No.
No, no, no.
“He promised,” I whispered, tears already sliding hot down my cheeks. “He said he’d come back.”
Elias didn’t speak. He just kept working, expression grim, the war room now lit only by the blue flicker of bad news.