Chapter Eleven #3
And she wouldn’t. Two Crossfire Ops sentries had already stepped forward. They were wearing full gear, stances wide and firm, rifles ready but lowered. They didn’t move as Corrine shouted something inaudible from the camera feed, her hands slicing through the air in furious gestures.
Noah reopened the comms, his face appearing on the small screen by the gate. “What do you want, Dr. Astor?” His tone was flat, controlled, but with an edge that said his patience was hanging by a thread.
Corrine stepped closer to the camera, her expression snapping from anger to something else. Fear maybe. “Someone’s trying to kill me,” she said, her voice breaking just enough to sound real. “My car blew up. Right after I got home from the interview with the sheriff.”
The room went still.
Noah didn’t react immediately, but his eyes flicked toward Isla, who was already typing furiously on one of her consoles. “Check it,” he said.
“Already on it,” Isla murmured, her fingers flying across the keys. The monitors reflected lines of scrolling data, security feeds, and law enforcement dispatches. Then she froze, eyes widening a little.
“Uh… yeah,” Isla said, her voice low. “Report’s just now being filed. Vehicle explosion at Dr. Corrine Astor’s listed residence. No casualties reported yet, but the car’s totaled.”
Corrine was still talking through the comms, her voice rising. “Noah, you know I wouldn’t make this up. They think I know something, something they don’t want me to say.”
“They?” Noah questioned.
“The people who tried to kill you in the siege.” Corrine’s voice crackled through the comms, high and brittle at the edges.
“It’s a miracle I wasn’t killed,” she said, stepping even closer to the gate.
The guards shifted, subtly closing the distance between her and the fence line.
“I’d just gotten out of my car, just. Went inside to get my mail, and then, boom.
” She threw up her hands, the motion jerky.
“Another second or two and I would’ve been scattered across my driveway. ”
Rena didn’t miss the tremor in her voice. Whether it was fear or performance, it rang loud enough to echo through the room.
Noah’s expression didn’t change. “Lucky timing,” he said, his voice flat.
Corrine’s composure cracked even more. “Lucky?” she snapped. “Damn you, Noah, I’m not making this up. You think I wanted any of this?”
“Depends what this is,” Noah countered, still calm, still immovable.
Corrine took a deep breath, visibly struggling to reel herself back in. When she spoke again, her tone was lower, colder. “I don’t want to be dragged into your war, Noah. I don’t want to become collateral damage because someone out there is trying to get back at you or your precious Crossfire Ops.”
She leaned closer to the camera, her face filling the monitor, eyes flashing with equal parts fury and fear. “If this is about revenge,” she added, “then maybe you should give them what they want.”
Rena frowned. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” she muttered.
Corrine’s answer came a beat later. “Step down, Noah,” she said simply. “Resign. Walk away before more people die. Maybe that’ll sate whoever’s behind this.”
Noah didn’t even blink. “You honestly think that’s how this works?”
Corrine’s mouth curved into a thin, bitter smile. “I think you’ve made a career out of creating enemies. Maybe one of them finally decided you weren’t untouchable after all.”
The woman didn’t stop there. She started pacing, continuing her rant. Then Rena saw it. A flicker of motion at the far edge of the screen.
“Hold up,” Isla murmured, already swiveling to another console. Her fingers flew over the keys, pulling up the secondary security feed from the outer perimeter. “We’ve got something.”
Corrine was still talking, oblivious, pacing near her car as the guards watched her every move. But on Isla’s monitor, the image sharpened, zooming in on the long dirt road that led toward the main highway.
Rena leaned closer. “There,” she said, pointing.
A lone figure stood half-hidden near a mesquite tree at the curve of the road. No vehicle. No movement, just a man, steady and deliberate, lifting binoculars to his face.
Rhett Danner.
“Son of a bitch,” Isla whispered. “That’s him.”
Noah’s jaw locked. “Where’s his car?”
“Not in range,” Isla said, adjusting the zoom. “He must’ve parked off-road.”
Corrine might have sensed it, might have seen some flicker of movement on the edge of her vision, because she froze mid-rant. Her head snapped toward the road, eyes narrowing.
Rena saw the exact moment she spotted Rhett. Corrine’s body went rigid, her expression tightening before she turned and sprinted for her car. She jumped in and sped away.
Isla switched as Corrine’s car kicked up dust and tore down the narrow stretch of road. Within seconds, she reached Rhett, jerking the wheel to stop in front of him. The door flew open, and she stormed out, shouting, her gestures sharp and wild.
Rhett shouted back, just as furious. His stance was coiled, dangerous.
“There’s no sound this far from the gate,” Rena said, frustration biting through her tone.
“I can fix that.” Isla’s fingers blurred over the keyboard. “I’ll run it through the lip-reading program. Give me a sec.”
On the big monitor, the footage stuttered and processed, text beginning to crawl across the bottom of the screen in jagged bursts. The software couldn’t capture everything, but fragments began to appear.
Rhett: … you sold me out…
Corrine: I didn’t—
Rhett: You went to them.
Corrine: I told them what they needed to hear—
Rhett: You threw me under the bus.
Isla’s eyes flicked toward Noah. “That one’s clear. He’s pissed that she turned on him.”
On the feed, Corrine shoved a finger into Rhett’s chest. He caught her wrist, his grip visibly hard even from this distance. She tried to jerk free, shouting something that didn’t register before shoving at him again.
Corrine spun around, yanked open her car door, and slid behind the wheel. The tires spat gravel as she tore away from Rhett, speeding back down the road toward the main highway.
Rena’s eyes flicked to the monitor. Isla had already switched feeds, following the car until it disappeared in a blur of dust and heat shimmer. Rhett didn’t move. He just stood there, a dark silhouette against the pale stretch of road, shoulders squared, staring directly at the nearest camera.
“He knows we’re watching,” Rena murmured.
“Yeah,” Isla agreed.
Rhett’s lips started to move. Isla didn’t even wait for Noah’s nod. She threw the feed into the lip-reading program again. Within seconds, jagged text appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Rhett: I’m not behind this. But I hope whoever is… finishes the job. I hope they kill Noah. All of you.
Then he smiled—cold, deliberate—and turned his back on the camera.
“Hell,” Rena whispered.
Noah’s face was unreadable, his gaze locked on the monitor.
Rhett strode off the edge of the feed, vanishing into the tree line. Isla scrambled to another camera, then another, until she caught him again.
“There,” she said. “North approach. Got him.”
The new angle showed him emerging from the trees, crossing to a dirt turnoff. A dark pickup was parked just out of view from the main road, half-hidden behind scrub. Rhett climbed in, started the engine, and he drove off, the truck disappearing into the hills.
For a few long seconds, no one spoke. The only sound came from the low hum of the monitors and the faint tapping of Isla’s keyboard as she froze the last frame of Rhett’s truck disappearing into the trees.
Rena’s pulse was still thudding from what they’d seen. “So… either Rhett’s lying,” she said quietly, “or he’s warning us that someone else is pulling the strings.”
“Or both,” Noah muttered, still staring at the screen. His voice was tight, clipped. “He’s smart enough to play the victim if he thinks it’ll throw us off.”
Before Noah could add anything else, one of the other techs hurried over from the side console, holding a tablet. “Sir, you need to see this.”
Rena’s gaze followed as the tech handed it to Noah. He scanned the screen, his jaw tightening.
“Lab just finished running the DNA samples from the bleached training facility,” Noah explained. “And they got a hit. Rhett Danner,” he said. “It’s a match.”