Chapter One
Two Hours Earlier
Rena Calloway paused just inside the hangar doors, blinking against the wash of color and lights. She’d expected stark concrete and steel, maybe the cold smell of oil and gun cleaner.
Instead, the Crossfire Ops training bay looked as if someone had detonated a glitter bomb.
Pop music thumped from a portable speaker system near the front of the room.
Something bouncy and unapologetically teenaged.
She recognized the rhythm from the flight line gym, one of those songs with too much bass and not enough melody.
The kind of song that made eighteen-year-olds dance and thirty-somethings, like Rena, feel ancient.
Food tables lined the edge of the bay, a mix of military practicality and party excess.
Stainless trays held rows of sliders, pigs-in-blankets, and an absurdly neat tower of cupcakes frosted in pink camo swirls.
Someone had turned ammo crates into makeshift tables, draped with tulle and fairy lights.
Big tubs of ice held sodas and sparkling juice, and the air smelled of sugar and barbecue.
What had once been a training ground for tactical drills now looked like a carnival. The obstacle course—ropes, barrels, foam barricades—had been repurposed into a laser tag arena. The combat dummies wore party hats. Someone had even hung a disco ball from the rappel rig.
Rena caught herself smiling. It was ridiculous.
And kind of perfect.
The smile couldn’t cut through the dull throb behind Rena’s eyes though. The pain had settled into a steady drumbeat, warning her that a migraine might be waiting just around the corner.
Talk about lousy timing.
But then the migraines usually were.
She inhaled slowly through her nose, counting the breath the way the flight surgeon had taught her, and she prayed the pain would level out before even more lights and noise kicked in.
Rena pushed that thought aside, the way she’d learned to push aside a lot of things since the crash. Too bad the memories always made it through any pushing aside she did.
Always.
One second she’d been flying a routine training sortie, the next she was fighting a systems failure at thirty thousand feet and bailing out over the wrong damn stretch of desert in the Middle East. Endless sand, hostile airspace, and no one eager to help a downed American pilot.
Even though it’d scrambled her head for good, the ejection had saved her life. Not that of her Weapons Systems Officer. Not Mack’s life. But that was yet something else she’d have to try to shove aside for tonight.
Movement near one of the equipment bays caught her eye.
Ruby Maverick, head of Maverick Ops, stood with her husband, Owen Striker, and Noah Riggs, Rena’s boss and the man who’d taken a chance on her.
Private security royalty, all three of them with Ruby head of Maverick Ops.
Owen, top dog at Strike Force. And Noah in charge of Crossfire Ops, Rena’s soon-to-be unit.
Well, hopefully her soon-to-be unit anyway.
Making it in Crossfire Ops was a lot like any special forces training. Grueling tests of a person’s limits, weaknesses, and strengths. Rena was still weeks away from finishing.
Ruby, Owen, and Noah were huddled around a section of the hangar cordoned off with hazard tape and a row of heavy-duty tables.
Even from a distance, Rena recognized some of the hardware.
Next-gen simulation rigs, sleek black consoles threaded with fiber optics and cooling tubes.
Prototype drone controllers. A neural-feedback harness that looked like something out of a sci-fi movie.
Experimental gear that wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near civilians, much less a birthday cake.
Apparently, Noah had decided his niece’s party was the perfect excuse to show off. Word around the compound was that she’d insisted on a bash that her friends would never forget. Judging by the look of the equipment and the fact that it was all powered up, Rena had no doubt she’d get her wish.
Footsteps echoed behind her, quick and sure against the polished concrete. Rena turned toward the corridor that connected the hangar to the main Crossfire Ops headquarters building and caught sight of Gage Kellan striding toward her.
He looked as if he’d just stepped off a mission instead of into a party.
Olive tee stretched across his shoulders, camo pants tucked into combat boots, sidearm riding his hip like it belonged there.
The short hair, the steady gait, all screamed Air Force PJ, a pararescuer.
The kind of man built to jump out of perfectly good planes and run straight into hell.
Like her, he was still in training gear.
Noah had told them both to stay that way.
When she’d asked if she should change into something less…
tactical, he’d just smiled and said his niece wanted an authentic training experience.
Apparently, having two real operatives, even untested ones, wandering around in uniform added to the effect.
So, here she was with sidearm, tac pants, and a pulse that hadn’t decided if it was excited or just on edge. Her eyes had opted for both of those particular sensations with the added edge of seeing a really hot guy walking toward her.
Seeing Gage hit hard, like always when she saw him. Because that other stuff—the excitement, on edge, reaction to a hot guy—came with the added bonus of the flashback. Just a flicker at first. Smoke. Heat.
The gut-deep panic of freefall and fire.
Gage had been the one who’d pulled her out of that hell. The extraction that wasn’t supposed to go sideways but had anyway. Mercy, had it. He’d gotten to her before the second blast tore through what was left of the crash site, half-dragging, half-carrying her to the evac chopper.
She could still see the burst of metal when shrapnel ripped through the side, could still hear him curse when a chunk of flying debris shredded his shoulder. Could feel the sickening dread when she’d realized Mack had been more than just injured.
In her case, the hit hadn’t been visible.
The medics had called it a mild traumatic brain injury.
She’d recovered enough to walk, train, function.
Enough to look as if she were whole. But the migraines had stayed, a cruel souvenir that reminded her she wasn’t the same woman who’d climbed into that jet.
Thankfully, Crossfire Ops didn’t expect perfection. Just grit. It was a place built for wounded warriors like her and Gage. Former military who weren’t ready to quit, no matter what was broken.
Gage stepped up beside her, his gaze sweeping the hangar as if he was cataloging every shadow and exit point. The movement was instinct, muscle memory from too many deployments and not enough peace.
He looked good, of course. That was his automatic default. Short black hair, olive skin, broad shoulders under that tee. Every line of him built for endurance and trouble. Even standing still, he radiated readiness, the kind that made her pulse skip for reasons that had nothing to do with danger.
The chemistry between them had been simmering for years, starting long before Crossfire Ops. They’d crossed paths on and off during joint operations, two ghosts passing through overlapping war zones.
But chemistry had never met opportunity.
There’d always been another mission, another firefight, another near miss that left them both too bruised, physically and otherwise, to test the pull between them.
And then there was the flashback shit.
Seeing him could spark a jolt of lust strong enough to make her forget her own name.
Or it could yank her straight back into that nightmare extraction, the smell of burning metal and blood thick in her throat.
Those fifty-fifty odds were the only thing that’d kept her out of his arms, and probably out of his bed, during the three months they’d been training together at Crossfire Ops.
“Well,” he said, his voice warm and amused. “If this doesn’t scream tactical readiness, I don’t know what does.”
Rena side-eyed him. “You mocking the boss’s family?”
“Not mocking,” he said, grin tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Appreciating the chaos. Five adults, sixteen teenagers, and enough sugar to power a small army. What could possibly go wrong?”
“Plenty,” she muttered.
He chuckled, low, easy, the kind of sound that didn’t belong in a place built for war games. Gage had always had that infuriating calm about him, as if the world could tilt and he’d just find a new footing.
Sunshine to her storm cloud.
Across the hangar, Noah, Ruby, and Owen were now gathered around another line of sleek, black equipment. Rena recognized the gear. Drone-control rigs, feedback vests, laser tag sensors wired into actual training consoles.
“Guess that’s the big draw,” Gage said, nodding toward the trio. “Looks like the brass is making sure the birthday girl gets a live-fire fantasy without the bullets.”
Rena’s jaw tightened. “Let’s just hope no one gets concussed on the obstacle course.”
“Hey,” he said as if that had reminded him of something. “You okay about earlier?”
She blew out a short breath. He no doubt meant the training mission she’d botched. “I’ve been better,” she settled for saying.
“Rena,” he murmured, his tone shifting from teasing to serious, “you can’t take all the blame for that one. That sim was designed to fail. It’s meant to show us pressure points.”
Rena could feel herself bristling. “Pressure points don’t usually explode because I misread terrain telemetry.”
“Telemetry was glitching,” he countered. “We all saw it.”
She didn’t answer. Because she had seen it, and she should’ve adjusted faster. Should’ve remembered what every flight instructor had drilled into her skull. Trust your instincts, not only your instruments.
But she hadn’t, and her team had virtually “died” in the sim.
Now she had six weeks left to prove she belonged here. Six weeks to prove that one crash hadn’t defined her.