Chapter 29
Briar
The plane is a Craven Industries jet that smells like leather and money and dragon.
Merric sits across from me, reading mission files.
Rook is in the cockpit with the pilot, running approach routes.
Sienna is asleep, the trained habit of a fighter who knows to rest when rest is available.
Conner is at the back, staring out the window.
I’m in a window seat with my hand on my knee, my shoulders tense, and a low, sick feeling in my stomach that started an hour after Garrett was taken and hasn’t let up.
I know what the feeling is. I know where it’s coming from.
I don’t need to name it every thirty seconds. It’s there. I carry it. We move on.
What I’m thinking about is the van.
Loaded at the grain depot on County Road Eleven at approximately two o’clock yesterday.
Dawes confirmed the location by tracking Garrett’s phone.
The depot is sixty miles west of the Forrester compound, off a farm road, accessible from two county highways.
A van leaving that depot has a limited number of route options before it hits the interstate system, and once it hits the interstate, it becomes traceable.
That’s Mara’s job. And from what Nadia told us, Mara is very good at her job.
The jet puts us in Denver in under two hours. A black SUV is waiting on the tarmac. The driver is human — Craven Industries security — and doesn’t ask questions.
The staging house is a ranch property forty minutes south. A long, low building with multiple vehicles in the yard. The kind of place that looks like a corporate retreat and functions as something else entirely.
Caleb Craven meets us at the door.
I’ve never met him. The files don’t prepare you for the physical reality. Not just the size but the quality of attention behind his eyes. He takes in the five of us in a single sweep. Dragon eyes doing calculations the human face doesn’t show.
“Brenna’s team,” he says.
“Merric Rourke. Frostbourne.” Merric extends a hand. Caleb takes it. Two apex predators calibrating. “My mate Brenna Corvus. Ravenclaw.”
Brenna nods at him. Caleb nods back.
“Inside,” he says.
The main room has been converted into an operations center.
Screens on every surface — satellite imagery, traffic camera feeds, communications intercepts.
And in the middle of it, cross-legged in a chair too big for her, three laptops open, a bag of chips balanced on a stack of printouts, a woman who can only be Mara Jones.
“You must be Briar.” Green eyes, sharp face, a grin that doesn’t match the gravity of the room.
The tips of her dark hair are bright blue.
“I’m Mara. I’ve been stalking your boyfriend’s kidnappers through the Texas Department of Transportation traffic camera network for the last fourteen hours, and I have to say, the Syndicate’s operational security is embarrassing.
They drove a black van through three toll plazas without covering the plates.
Three. It’s like they’ve never heard of E-ZPass. ”
“Can you find him?”
“I can find the van. Which I have. It entered a private road system outside Laredo at approximately six p.m. yesterday, after which it vanished from public camera coverage because, shockingly, drug cartels and shadow organizations don’t install traffic cameras on their private roads.
” She crunches a chip. “But I cross-referenced the location against Syndicate facility records that Vanya very helpfully stole from the Ivory League before she quit, and guess what sits twelve miles outside Laredo on a private road system that matches the van’s last known trajectory. ”
“A facility.”
“A converted meatpacking plant that the Syndicate acquired through a shell company nine years ago. Twelve buildings on the county assessor’s records.
Utility consumption patterns consistent with a facility running full climate control and high-draw electrical equipment — which, in Syndicate terms, means detention and research.
” She spins a laptop toward me. Satellite image.
Low industrial buildings surrounded by fencing. “Meet your boyfriend’s new address.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“Right. He’s your… What’s the wolf term? Also mate, like the dragons use? The one who left that huge freaking mark on your neck? That guy?”
My fingers instinctively move to my neck, where I no longer bother to button my shirt.
Conner makes a sound behind me. Half cough, half something else.
“Mara.” Caleb’s voice. Mild.
“I’m being helpful. Information delivery is my love language.” She turns back to her screens. “Anyway. Facility confirmed. Vanya’s been marking up the blueprints.”
Vanya is at the table. Pale hair, pale eyes, the kind of beauty that cuts. She’s working through facility blueprints with a red pen, crossing out sections, circling others.
“Three buildings relevant to detention,” she says without looking up.
“The main processing plant houses the holding wing. Sub-level. Concrete construction, reinforced. The layout matches four other Syndicate facilities we have records of.” She circles something.
“Stairwell access here. Northeast corner.”
Jericho is at the far wall. Arms crossed. The stillness of a man who spent decades inside the organization he’s helping dismantle. Nadia beside him — not touching, but close. She nods at me. I nod back.
“Guard complement,” Merric says.
“Thirty to forty based on comms traffic,” Mara says. “I’ve been intercepting their shift-change communications. They use encrypted radios, which is adorable because the encryption is military-grade from 2019, and I cracked it on the plane ride here.”
“Against our team of twelve,” Rook says from the doorway, where he’s been listening.
“Thirteen.” Kael’s voice. He comes in through the back. He’s not what I expected. The stories say Dragon King. What I see is a man whose presence makes the air feel heavier, and who sits down at the table like he has to displace magic to do it.
Mara’s expression changes when he enters. The attention of a woman who loves someone powerful enough that his presence in an operation creates a specific kind of danger.
“Babe! You’re reserve,” she tells him. “We discussed this.”
“I’m here. If things go wrong, I’m available.”
“If things go wrong and the Syndicate gets their hands on you, Viktor will have my head. And then yours. And then probably mine again for good measure.”
“Viktor doesn’t have jurisdiction over my decisions.”
“Viktor has jurisdiction over everyone’s decisions. That’s literally his job description.” She turns to Caleb. “Tell him.”
“She’s right,” Caleb says. “You’re reserve. The Syndicate has been trying to acquire you since before you woke up. Walking into one of their facilities is exactly what they’d want.”
“Which is why I’m reserve and not point.” Kael settles into his chair. “But if your extraction team runs into something they can’t handle, having a four-hundred-year-old dragon sitting in a car a mile away is better than not having one.”
Nobody argues with that. Because he’s right, and because arguing with Kael when he’s decided something is apparently a universal experience that everyone in this room has already had and lost.
Dorian Craven arrives an hour later. Louder than his twin.
“Greetings, all. I’m here. Now the fun can begin.” He walks through the room, absorbs the setup, sits beside Caleb, and swings his boots up on the table. The brothers communicate in glances.
We plan.
Jericho walks us through the facility. Entry point — a drainage culvert running under the south perimeter.
He designed security protocols for three facilities with identical layouts.
The culvert is a known vulnerability that the Syndicate’s engineers flagged, but leadership never fixed because they think they’re untouchable.
“Their mistake. They should have learned by now that they’re not,” Jericho says. “A four-person team can enter through the culvert and reach the loading bay in under three minutes. From the loading bay to the detention sub-level is four doors. Two keycard, two manual.”
“Keycards,” Merric says.
Mara holds up a device the size of a phone. “Cloned from the comms intercepts. Their security badges transmit an RFID signal that I captured from the shift-change traffic. Two cards, loaded and ready.”
“And the manual locks?”
“Me,” Jericho says. “I know the lock type. Syndicate standard issue. Thirty seconds each.”
Conner leans forward. “Where would they hold him specifically?”
“Sub-level. The detention wing has individual cells and two interrogation rooms. High-value prisoners go in the cells closest to the interrogation rooms for convenience.” Jericho traces the route on the blueprint.
“Here. Three cells in a row. If he’s the only high-value intake, he’ll be in the first one. ”
“If he’s not the only one?” I ask.
Jericho looks at me. “There may be other prisoners. The Laredo facility has capacity for twenty to thirty.”
“Then we take them all,” Brenna interjects.
The room goes quiet.
“Viktor’s brief was specific,” Merric says carefully. “Extract Garrett. Get out clean.”
“Viktor’s brief didn’t account for us finding a facility full of magic-bloods and walking past them.”
“Brenna—”
“Every wolf in that facility comes out. All of them. Or I’m not coming out either.”
Merric heaves a breath. Rubs his face with one hand. “You’re right. It’s not negotiable.”
Caleb looks at Dorian. The silent conversation takes two seconds.
“We take them all,” Caleb says. “We’ll adjust the extraction plan. The loading bay can handle a larger group. The dragons provide enough cover for an extended evacuation window.”