Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Zodiac’s close-quarters battle training facility was a maze of plywood walls and doorframes that got rebuilt every few weeks so nobody got comfortable with the layout.
Today’s CQB configuration was tight. Narrow hallways, blind corners, rooms that opened into each other through shared walls.
The kind of setup designed to punish hesitation and reward speed.
Isaac was already inside.
The first threat was waiting around the corner.
He knew it was there before he saw it. The geometry of the room demanded it.
He came through low, weapon up, and put two rounds center mass into the rubber-coated dummy before his next breath.
The reactive target rocked backward on its base and reset itself, already waiting for the next shooter.
He was already moving. Narrow corridor, blind left turn, the kind of hallway where hesitation got you killed. He didn’t hesitate. Cleared the turn, swept the next room, found the second dummy against the back wall. Two more rounds. Clean.
Ian was running the course with him, taking the left side while Isaac took the right. They’d done these enough times that the communication was shorthand. Ian’s voice came through his earpiece. “Left clear.”
Ian’s side was done. Isaac swept right. The last room was the worst kind of problem.
A half-wall blocked his sight line, which meant he had to step fully through the doorway and commit to the space before he could see what was in it.
No partial entry, no slicing the angle from the threshold. All or nothing.
He went all.
The threat was tucked tight against the wall at an angle that punished anyone who came through the door expecting center-room placement. Isaac adjusted, fired twice, and held his position until the silence confirmed he was done.
“Time,” Ian called.
Isaac lowered his weapon. His pulse was running hard, his breathing steady.
Sweat traced a line from his temple to his jaw.
Every nerve ending was still lit up, still scanning for the next corner, the next decision.
His whole body was tuned to a frequency that had nothing to do with the plywood walls and reactive targets around him and everything to do with the part of his brain that didn’t care about the difference between training and the real thing.
He didn’t want it to care. He wanted to run it again. Despite having run it twice already today.
He walked back through the course to the staging area where Ian and Ryder Sutton, who’d come onboard with Zodiac about eighteen months ago, were already reviewing the timer.
Ryder had his arms crossed, head tilted, studying the numbers with the expression of a man looking for something to argue about.
“Four seconds off your best,” Ryder said, like he was delivering bad news at a funeral.
Isaac waited a beat. “And two seconds off yours. So?”
“So I’m still faster.”
“On an easier lane.”
“Oh, it’s the lane’s fault now.” Ryder looked at Ian. “You hear this, boss? The lane was easier. The plywood was nicer to him. The targets liked him more. So much boo-hooing I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“Both lanes are the same difficulty,” Ian said without looking up from his clipboard.
Ryder spread his hands. “There you go. Same difficulty. I was just faster.”
Isaac rotated his shoulders. “Run my lane next round. We’ll see.”
“Can’t wait.”
Ian made a mark on the clipboard he still insisted on using despite the fact that every other person at Zodiac had moved to tablets years ago. “Both of you are fucking slow. Reset for round two. Isaac, you’re on Ryder’s lane. Ryder, take Isaac’s.”
“Happy to prove my point,” Ryder smirked.
“Happy to watch you try,” Isaac said. He liked Ryder, he really did. But he’d be happy to beat the pants off the other man.
Ian rolled his eyes. “Less talk, more both of you moving your asses.”
They swapped positions. Two other guys from the team, Micah Reeves and Burke Navarro, were already resetting the targets and adjusting the moveable walls for the next configuration.
The course was never the same. You didn’t get to memorize your way through a real building you’d never accessed, and you didn’t get to memorize your way through this one.
Isaac checked his magazine, reloaded, and settled into the ready position at the starting mark. He rolled his shoulders and let everything else fall away.
The buzzer sounded. He moved.
Ryder’s lane was tighter. The first corridor doglegged left, then immediately right, forcing a transition between shooting hand and support hand if he wanted clean angles.
Isaac made the switch without slowing. Two rounds on the move, then through the door into a room where the second target was mounted high and to the left, mimicking someone on a staircase.
He adjusted elevation mid-stride, fired twice, and pivoted toward the cutout in the shared wall. The third target was partially concealed behind it. Left shoulder and head visible. He took the head shot.
The last room had two targets. One obvious, one tucked behind a barricade that required him to drop to a knee to find the angle. He cleared the first standing, dropped, cleared the second, and was back on his feet before his knee finished registering the concrete.
“Time.”
He lowered his weapon. His heart was hammering, and he let it. Blood moving, lungs working, brain still running hot from a dozen decisions made in under a minute.
It felt fucking good.
He walked back to the staging area. Ryder was already there, leaning against the wall.
“Well?” Isaac said.
Ryder jerked his chin toward the timer board. One second faster than Ryder’s best on that lane. “Don’t even say anything.”
Isaac just grinned and high-fived the man when he held his hand out.
Ian came through from his own run, weapon at his side, barely winded. He checked the board, made two marks on the clipboard, and looked at both of them. His silence was its own kind of feedback.
Good. Not good enough. Keep going.
Ian DeRose had built Zodiac Tactical from the ground up and had demanded the very best from his operatives from day one. He didn’t do active missions much anymore, but he still trained as if he might be going out at any time. Everybody respected the hell out of him for it.
They ran two more rounds. By the third, Isaac’s shirt was soaked and his forearms burned from the sustained grip. Ryder had stopped talking between runs, which meant he was locked in. Micah nearly beat both of them on round four with a lane time that made Burke whistle from the reset station.
After the last round, Isaac sat on an overturned crate, forearms on his knees, water bottle half-finished beside him. His hands were steady. His body felt wrung out and perfectly calibrated at the same time.
Ryder dropped onto the crate next to him and tossed his gloves into his open gear bag. “Tied on round three. You got lucky on four.”
“That wasn’t luck. You overcommitted on the second room.”
“I cleared it faster.”
“You cleared it sloppy. You came through that cutout at full height with your weapon still transitioning. If there’d been a real shooter behind it, you’d have walked right into the line of fire.”
Ryder’s grin faded. He looked at the course, then back at Isaac. “Yeah. I felt it when I did it. Knew it was wrong the second I was past the wall.”
“So fix it next time.”
“Already fixed.” He knocked his knuckle against the side of his head. “Filed and corrected.”
Isaac believed him. That was what made Ryder good. He could take a hit to his ego, process it in real time, and move on. Some guys got defensive. Some guys got quiet and resentful. Ryder absorbed it and adapted.
Ian was across the staging area talking to Burke. Micah was breaking down his weapon at the cleaning station, headphones on—he wasn’t ever one to talk if he didn’t have to. The energy had shifted from competition to cooldown, and the ease between them settled in naturally.
Ryder took a long pull from his water bottle. “So how was the gala the other night?”
“Fine.”
“That’s all I get? Four hours in a tuxedo, and all I get is fine?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say something happened. A beautiful woman cornered you near the champagne. You had a torrid affair in the coat check. Something.”
“Nothing happened.”
“That’s tragic. If they sent me to those things—”
“You’d start a fight within the first hour.”
“I’d start a conversation within the first hour. The fight would come later.” Ryder leaned back, stretching his legs out. “Seriously, though. All those women in gowns, champagne flowing, nobody’s got anywhere to be. That’s prime real estate, Baxter.”
“It’s a job.”
“It’s a job with fringe benefits that you don’t take advantage of nearly enough.”
Isaac finished his water. Fallon’s face surfaced without permission.
The way she’d felt in his arms dancing. The way she’d read three strangers across a ballroom in the time it took to finish a song.
The way her maybe had been a no she’d dressed in silk so he wouldn’t feel the sting until she was gone.
He didn’t mention any of it.
“The fringe benefits are yours if you want them,” he said to Ryder instead. “I’ll put in a good word with Ian.”
“Nah, they don’t want me at those things. I’d eat everything at the buffet and tell someone’s wife her dress was ugly.”
“You would never tell a woman her dress was ugly.”
“No. But they don’t know that.” Ryder’s grin came back, easy and unbothered. “Besides, I’d rather be here getting my ass kicked by you than standing around pretending I know what a sommelier is.”
“You know what a sommelier is.”
“I know what a sommelier does. Doesn’t mean I want to hear about it for forty-five minutes while my drink gets warm.”
Ian came over and sat on one of the crates. “Isaac. Talk to me about the Ashford intake.”
Isaac sat up straighter.
“Graham Ashford. Mid-sixties, well-connected. His son Trent is the concern. He’s an influencer with ten million followers and a talent for pissing people off.
The threats have been escalating, and some of them are specific enough to take seriously.
References to Trent’s home address, his gym, events he’s attending. ”
“Did you meet the son himself?”
“Briefly. Didn’t introduce myself.” But considered punching him in the teeth.
“Twenty-three, entitled, aggressive. I watched him corner a woman at the bar because she was attractive and alone. When she tried to disengage, he closed the distance. According to Dad, Trent-y-poo doesn’t believe the threats are real. That could be an issue.”
“But the father believes they’re real.”
Isaac nodded. “Yes. He seems reasonable. Worried. Doing the right thing for his kid, even if his kid doesn’t see it that way.”
Ian sat with that for a moment. “What’s your recommendation?”
“Take the job. The threat profile is real, and Graham will hold up his end. But I told him if Trent fights the team, dodges his detail, or treats our people poorly, we walk. That has to be the deal, or it’s not worth putting anyone on this.”
“Agreed. Graham gets his son on board before we assign a team.” Ian paused. “You interested in running the detail?”
“Not in this lifetime or the next.” Fallon’s face floated to mind again but he pushed it away. “He’d be missing teeth by day three.”
Ian grinned. “I’ll call Graham this week.
Good work on the intake. Clean read, clear boundaries.
” He tucked the clipboard under his arm.
“Also, schedule for next week. You’ve got the Whitfield Foundation dinner Thursday and the arts council fundraiser Saturday.
Hartwell Insurance wants eyes at these events.
They’ve had a string of losses at high-end functions, and they want someone inside who doesn’t look like security. ”
Isaac forced a grin. “Good thing I look decent in a tux.”
Ian clapped Isaac on the shoulder on his way past and headed toward the equipment room.
The facility was winding down. Micah and Burke stacked the last of the targets against the far wall.
Ryder checked his weapon one more time before casing it.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, flat and industrial, stripping the space of anything that wasn’t concrete and plywood and spent brass.
Two events. Two nights of working a room full of people he’d spent his adult life putting distance between himself and them. Isaac knew exactly how those evenings would go. He’d done dozens of them. He was good at them. Ian needed him to be good at them.
Two hours of CQB, and now he was looking at a week of cocktail napkins and small talk. The tuxedo fit him perfectly. That was the problem.
And the one person who’d made the last event bearable wouldn’t be there.
He zipped his bag and stood. Ryder clapped him on the shoulder as he passed. “Don’t worry, Baxter. Maybe this time something will actually happen at one of these penguin-suit events.”
Isaac grabbed his jacket off the hook by the door.
Behind him, Micah killed the lights and the training floor went dark.
He could still feel the last four rounds in his hands, the clean snap of each decision, the way the course had narrowed his whole world down to angles and timing and the next right move.
Thursday, he’d be holding a glass he didn’t want, smiling at people he didn’t know, in a room that could run itself without him.
He pushed through the exit and let the door close behind him.