Chapter 25
Twenty-Five
Magnus took the coastal road too fast and nobody told him to slow down.
The Stryker SUV hugged the curves anyway, engine growling as jungle and black volcanic rock blurred past the windows.
Pacific sunlight flashed intermittently through gaps in the trees to their left while the mountain rose steep and green on the opposite side, thick with wet tropical growth still steaming under the morning heat.
The vehicle smelled like sweat, damp gear, and overheated electronics.
Weapons rested between knees and against doors. Extra packs and cases had been thrown into the second SUV before they left the extraction point, leaving this one packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people and screens and the kind of compressed focus that came after surviving something ugly together.
Magnus drove.
Gunnar sat beside him with one elbow braced against the door and his attention locked on the dashboard display where a blinking GPS marker hovered offshore over a small green island.
Grace.
The pin had stopped moving thirteen minutes ago.
“She’s stationary,” Bj?rn said from the middle row, eyes moving between the tablet balanced against his thigh and the mirrored display Rafe kept feeding onto the SUV’s dash screen. “No movement since arrival.”
Rafe’s voice crackled through the speakers immediately after. “That’s either good or very, very bad.”
“Helpful,” Astryde muttered.
“I try.”
The connection fuzzed briefly as the SUV rounded another cliffside curve. Magnus tightened one hand on the wheel while glancing quickly at the updated compound schematic spreading across the dashboard screen.
The island wasn’t large, but Lars had built vertically into the cliffs, layering structures into the terrain instead of clearing it. Magnus caught flashes of labeled buildings as Rafe manipulated the map remotely—residential wing, eastern service structures, marina access, security barracks.
More personnel dots appeared across the display than Magnus liked.
Actually, more than he liked by a lot.
“Grace’s files gave me partial internals.” The rapid clicking of keys sounded faintly beneath Rafe’s voice. “Some of the compound architecture doesn’t match satellite thermal scans, which means Lars either renovated recently or buried sections deeper into the rock than expected.”
“Translation?” Tiikaan asked from the back row.
“Translation: rich psychopath bunker.”
“That clears it up.”
The GPS pin pulsed again over the western side of the compound.
Magnus kept his eyes mostly on the road now, using glances to absorb what he could from the screen without putting the SUV through a guardrail. The roads here clung to the cliffs in narrow winding cuts with very little room for mistakes.
Ahead, another sharp curve opened briefly to a wide stretch of ocean glittering hard blue beneath the sun.
“Security?” Gunnar asked.
“Layered,” Rafe answered immediately. “Outer patrols, cameras, thermal coverage, motion sensors along the lower approaches, and more guards than most military bases.”
Bj?rn zoomed one section of the map inward and rotated the tablet slightly so the others could see it. “This route here. There’s a gap between the eastern terrace cameras.”
Astryde leaned forward from the middle row, studying the overlapping coverage cones on the screen. “Not a true blind spot. More like staggered sweep timing.”
Bj?rn adjusted the playback loop. Two camera arcs shifted past each other for a brief opening before reconnecting again.
“There,” he said. “About forty seconds before the overlap closes again.”
“Closer to forty-eight if the outer sweep stays delayed,” Astryde said.
Gunnar nodded once. “Enough.”
Magnus listened while driving, letting the conversation settle into shape around him.
Nobody was wasting words now. No theorizing for the sake of hearing themselves talk.
The team had moved past uncertainty somewhere during the exfil and into the cleaner mental space operators fell into once the objective became reachable.
Find Oliver.
Get out alive.
Everything else narrowed behind that.
Rafe highlighted two structures in red. “Okay. Most likely holding locations.”
The first section flashed over the residential wing. The second highlighted deeper in the compound, beneath the eastern side.
“Lars historically separates leverage from punishment,” Rafe said. “If Oliver’s being treated as controlled leverage, residential makes sense. Comfortable environment. Visible care. Psychological dependency.”
Magnus’s jaw tightened.
“And the second option?” Gunnar asked.
“Sublevel holding. Somewhere he takes enemies or people he wants broken.”
Nobody spoke for a second after that.
Traffic thinned as they pushed farther along the coast. Magnus took the next turn hard while the suspension absorbed the curve beneath them.
“We split,” Gunnar said.
Magnus nodded once. “Residential gets priority.”
“Magnus and Gunnar upstairs,” Davis said immediately, already working through it. “Fast clear through residential.”
“Tiikaan and I take sublevel,” he continued. “If our boy’s not upstairs, we move straight to holding.”
Tiikaan gave a single nod from the back row.
“Astryde and Bj?rn stay perimeter,” Magnus said. “Security suppression, exits, cleanup.”
“Glad to know we’re cleanup,” Bj?rn muttered.
“At least you complain less than Gunnar,” Astryde said.
“That’s objectively false.”
Gunnar ignored both of them, still staring at the map. “What’s Lars’s personal security detail look like?”
Rafe blew out a breath over comms. “Professional. Ex-military contractors mostly. Some private intelligence crossover. And before anybody asks, yes, they’re heavily armed.”
“Expected.”
“Also,” Rafe added, “there’s no indication Grace has moved since the tracker stopped.”
The SUV quieted slightly after that.
Not silence exactly. The engine still growled beneath them. Gears shifted softly with the motion of the vehicle. Tires hissed against pavement. But the energy changed.
Magnus kept his eyes on the road.
Grace had walked herself back into Lars’s hands, knowing this was where it ended.
He understood that now in a way he hadn’t fully let himself understand inside Patroclus.
She hadn’t been buying her own survival. She’d been buying Oliver’s.
The thought sat low and sharp beneath his ribs while another stretch of coastline opened ahead.
She knew we’d follow the tracker,’ Bj?rn said quietly after a while. Nobody answered, because they all knew he was right. Grace had been certain. That was the part that was starting to hurt.
The marina appeared ahead around the next bend, tucked into a protected cove beneath the cliffs. Fishing boats rocked gently against the docks while whitecaps rolled farther out beyond the breakwater, where open Pacific swells hit the coastline.
Cooper stood near the end of the pier beside a rigid inflatable with twin outboards mounted off the stern.
Even from the road, the boat looked fast.
“Finally,” Cooper said through comms the second the SUV turned into the gravel lot. “I was about to start charging you people by the hour.”
Magnus parked hard enough to send gravel scattering beneath the tires. Doors opened almost simultaneously.
Heat slammed into them outside the vehicle, thick with salt air and diesel exhaust from the marina. The team moved automatically, years of training and habit taking over without discussion as weapons were checked one final time and spare mags redistributed.
Bj?rn slung the tablet into a waterproof carrier while Astryde tightened her ponytail and checked the seating on her sidearm with practiced efficiency. Davis pulled open the rear hatch long enough to grab additional ammunition before shoving it closed again.
Nobody looked nervous. Magnus noticed that too. He’d seen this on fire crews about to walk into something they might not walk out of. The fear didn’t go anywhere. It just clarified.
“One more thing.” Rafe’s voice came back over comms as they headed down the dock.
Magnus stepped into the rigid inflatable and grabbed the side rail to steady it. “Go.”
“If Lars realizes Grace transmitted those files, her timeline gets significantly worse.” The words landed quietly.
Matter-of-fact.
Operational.
Grace had known that before she’d sent them the information. Maybe before she kissed him. He looked out toward the island sitting dark green against the horizon while Cooper climbed behind the controls.
The engines roared to life beneath them.
Around Magnus, the team settled into position with the same controlled readiness they’d carried into every dangerous situation he’d seen them survive together. They were ready.
That should have reassured him more than it did.
But somewhere ahead was Oliver.
And Grace.
And Magnus had no idea what shape either of them would be in when he reached them.