Chapter Twenty-One #2
The war room is last. It’s the one place Kimber can never wander into, not because we don’t trust her, but because she deserves the peace we can’t give her if she knows what’s stored there.
I power down the monitors, switch the feeds to external view only, and lock both the steel door and the hidden latch.
No passwords left visible, no photos she might stumble across. The less she knows, the better.
By the time we finish, dusk has deepened outside, shadows stretching across the walls.
Emerson gives the final system check, confirming the house lockdown and perimeter motion grid, his calm voice steady in the low light.
Ronan slips the EMP jammer into the van.
Rowan seals the case of flash charges and stows them beside the rest of the gear, everything placed exactly where it belongs.
When we finally step outside, the house sits silent behind us—secure, fortified, and holding the one person we have left to protect.
Once we reach the drop point, we peel out of the van and form up. The moon hangs thin and sharp above us, the air heavy with river damp and machine oil. I lay out the plan carefully, step by step—because this hinges on timing and coordination more than raw force.
Ronan is assigned the north approach to the loading dock, where he’ll place the first charges along the primary support beams. I’ll handle the interior, setting the secondary charges along the central loadout corridors—enough to give way beneath their own weight and cripple the operation at its core.
Rowan and Emerson are tasked with the records vault and executive offices.
If there’s data, backups, or anything meant to preserve what they’ve built, their job is to wipe it clean.
Nothing in this place is meant to survive the night. There will be no recovery, no loose ends—and no one worth sparing.
“Timing,” Rowan says as he clicks on the radio. “Three minutes between cuts. One chance at the manual override. If the cameras loop, we stay invisible. If they don’t, we shift to Plan B.”
His gaze moves over each of us, deliberate, like he’s measuring more than bodies. This isn’t just about getting out alive—it’s about closing the door on what’s been hunting us.
The plan is clean. Precise. Get in, strike hard, and disappear.
Ronan tosses me a spare mic and a look that’s part warning and part worship. “If anyone moves wrong, we pull. No heroics.” His voice is soft but iron underneath.
I nod. “We pull out if we’re compromised. We hit hard if it isn’t.” My words are flint; they make the circle snap tight.
Emerson checks the timers once more, his breathing even. “We trigger on my mark,” he says. “Everyone clears to extraction point Alpha within sixty seconds.”
His eyes lock on mine, and the understanding passes between all of us at once—this works only if every step lands exactly where it’s meant to.
We move in like ghosts; the dock stretches before us like a maw.
The plan is carved into our bones. I keep my head down, watch the shadows, and keep one pulse tuned to the feed in my pocket, where Dahlia’s bug blinks like a heartbeat.
Everything hums in my ears: the wind, the soft creak of ropes, the distant thud of an engine.
Somewhere in the quiet of that motion I feel the old fear flare and then die, replaced by something sharper—purpose.
The warehouse breathes around me—cold metal and oil, a dust smell that tastes like rust. I move through it the way I move through code and crowds: quiet, precise, every step measured, so it leaves nothing behind.
Shadows are my ally; I keep to the racks, my shoulders brushing crates, so my silhouette never shows against the floodlights.
My boot heels kiss the concrete and lift, soft as a whisper, and even my breath feels too loud until I convince it to steady.
The first charge goes exactly where it should.
My fingers work without thinking, sticky pads slapping to hot steel, the timer set and tucked where it’s protected.
I barely touch the comm, voice a whisper because a shout would be an invitation.
“First one is set,” I say. Ronan’s answer is a soft click, then Rowan, then Emerson.
The cadence of their confirmations is the only thing that eases the jittering at the back of my skull.
I slip deeper between the pallets, scanning fast—angles, support beams, camera arcs.
Night gives you only silhouettes and the suggestion of movement, which makes it easier to mistake stillness for safety.
That’s why the second beam stops me cold.
It shouldn’t be there. A hunched shadow of wiring and a cheap casing—someone beat us to the job, and they did it badly enough that any trained eye would see the difference.
My pulse doubles. My fingers go to the comm so fast I almost miss the static. “Guys, I’ve got—” The signal coughs, cuts. For a second I catch Ronan’s voice, ragged and panicked, “Berk—get—” then nothing but the hiss of broken channels. My mouth tastes like metal, and my hands go cold.
I don’t make a sound, letting the worry settle; panic makes noise, and noise will kill us.
I press my back flat against a crate and let my eyes re-tune to the dark.
The warehouse hums faintly—an HVAC in the distance, a forklift idling like a sleeping animal—and I use that to mask the small sounds of my movement.
I trace the edge of a shadow to the left, drop onto a knee, and duck my head so only the crown of it shows.
I can feel the old training—balance, the way you distribute weight so you can move or run without making a sound—as I slide along the bottom of the racks like a cat.
My phone vibrates against my leg, frantic and foreign to the quiet.
I pull it out with the same no-fuss motion I used to remove a wire from a circuit board and check the screen.
An unknown number. Video calls piling up.
Between them, missed attempts from the guys.
The screen pulses in a rhythm that almost mimics a heartbeat.
The rational part of my brain wants to burn the whole place down and run, but another part—the part that likes to know the mechanics before it acts—twists, sharp and impatient.
I answer.
The image jolts to life, unfocused and chaotic.
At first all I can make out are colors—gray, black, the flash of movement against a concrete wall.
My first thought is Dahlia, maybe checking in with a poor signal, her usual grin breaking through the static to tease me for worrying.
But then the feed steadies, and every trace of air leaves my lungs.
It isn’t her calling.
I angle the phone down just enough that the glow doesn’t touch my face, my heart hammering against my ribs. The screen flickers again, pulling the scene into clearer view, and the shape that fills it makes my blood run cold.
Bryce.
He’s in a storage room—bare walls streaked with rust, a single bulb swaying overhead. The harsh light casts sharp shadows across his face, carving the fury deeper into every line. He paces back and forth, hands cutting through the air, the camera shaking like he can’t stay still.
Then the frame shifts, just enough to show what’s behind him.
Dahlia.
She’s slumped in a metal chair, her wrists tied to the arms, her face bloodied and bruised. Her hair is matted, one eye swollen nearly shut. The sound that escapes me is more breath than voice, a small, raw noise that disappears into the cavernous quiet of the surrounding warehouse.
Bryce’s voice fills the feed, jagged and furious.
“Who the fuck is this?” he yells, glaring straight into the camera.
“You think you can screw with me? You think I don’t know what’s going on?
” His words are ragged, the edges of panic showing beneath the rage.
He grabs the gun sitting on the table beside him and waves it toward Dahlia, the metal glinting as the camera adjusts.
“You better come clean,” he snarls. “Now. Or she dies.”
Dahlia stirs, her head lolling to the side as she tries to lift it. When she speaks, her voice is weak but still defiant. “Don’t—don’t tell him anything,” she slurs. “He doesn’t know. I didn’t—”
Her sentence ends with a sharp crack. The gun whips across her face, sending her head snapping sideways. I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek to keep from crying out. The sound echoes through the phone, metallic and final.
Bryce grabs her by the hair, jerking her upright, his face close to hers, his eyes wild and glassy. “Who bugged my phone?” he screams. “Tell me who’s been in my system!”
He never points the finger at the guys—not once. That’s when it settles in. He doesn’t know. He’s spiraling, sensing the walls closing but still blind to who’s responsible.
The realization steadies my grip, sharpens my focus.
I glance at the secondary tracker running in the corner of my screen. The signal from his phone pings steady—same location, right near the water behind the warehouse.
He’s here.
The decision comes as instinct. My thumb moves before I can think better of it, cutting the call mid-scream.
Bryce’s red, furious face freezes for a fraction of a second before disappearing into black.
I’m left staring at my faint reflection on the dark screen, my pulse so loud it drowns out the distant hum of machinery.
I take one slow, deliberate breath and slide the phone back into my pocket. Every sense sharpens. The air smells of oil and cold metal. The warehouse hums faintly in the distance, pretending it’s asleep. I crouch lower, adjusting the straps on my pack.