Chapter Seventeen
Rena yanked the mask from her vest pouch, coughing hard as her eyes burned and watered. The gas was thick, choking, turning the air to fog. She fumbled to secure the straps, blinking through the sting that made her vision swim.
Then darkness. The overhead lights went out in an instant, plunging them into black.
Rena dropped low, using her shoulder to guide herself behind a stack of crates. Gage’s silhouette was beside her, solid and steady even through the swirling haze.
Her pulse hammered. Every sound—every scuff of a boot, every breath through the mask filter—felt magnified.
“Everyone check in,” Cal’s voice came through the comm, quiet but firm. One by one, they answered. All accounted for.
Rena wiped at her eyes beneath the mask, trying to force her focus through the tears. “Can anyone see movement?” she whispered.
“Negative,” Garrett said. “But it’s thick. Can’t see more than a few feet.”
Cal’s voice came back on, this time lower, more controlled. “Isla, Noah, we’ve got tear gas deployed inside the hangar. Unknown source. Could’ve been triggered automatically or launched manually. No visuals yet.”
Static crackled faintly through the comm before Isla’s strained whisper came back. “Copy that. Drone feed’s blind, can’t see through the roof. You’re on your own for now.”
Rena glanced at Gage, her heartbeat drumming in her ears. His eyes met hers through the mask—steady, sharp, promising they’d hold the line.
Then another sound. Soft, deliberate. Footsteps somewhere beyond the fog. Whoever was out there wasn’t running. They were stalking.
Gunfire ripped through the haze, sharp, deafening cracks that echoed off the metal walls. Bullets pinged against crates and steel racks, ricocheting with bone-rattling force.
Rena dropped flat, her heart slamming against her ribs. Through the thick tear gas, she could barely make out shapes, blurred, shifting shadows moving fast.
“Contact—multiple,” Cal hissed over comms.
“Got eyes,” Garrett answered, his voice clipped, urgent. “Thermal scanner’s reading heat signatures under us. There’s a false floor. They’re coming up through it.”
Rena’s stomach dropped. That’s why we didn’t see them before. The bastards had been hiding right beneath them.
More shots tore through the smoke. Rena ducked as a round hit the crate above her, the impact raining metal fragments down on her shoulder. She swallowed a curse, fighting to steady her breathing through the mask.
“They’ve got night-vision,” she blurted into comms. “Can’t see a damn thing in this gas unless they’re geared for it.”
“Agreed,” Gage’s voice came back, low and tense from somewhere to her left.
A burst of gunfire answered him, cutting close. Too close. The sound was muffled but lethal, the air thick with chemical burn and adrenaline.
Cal’s voice came back through the comm. “Hold your positions. Return fire if you’ve got a clean shot. We’re not losing anyone tonight.”
Rena pressed her back to the crate, weapon ready, her vision blurred but her aim locked on instinct. Somewhere in the fog ahead, the enemy was advancing.
Cal’s voice cut through the comm again. “Smoke out. Flashbang following. I’m aiming right for that false floor where the assholes are coming out.”
A second later, he tossed the canisters.
The pop of the smoke bomb was immediate, filling the hangar with another choking layer that blurred everything into a white-gray blur.
Then came the flashbang, an explosion of light and sound so violent that Rena’s vision went white and her ears filled with a high-pitched ringing that drowned out everything else.
She dropped low, blinking hard behind her mask, disoriented. Even through her closed eyes, she could still see the afterimage, a burst of blinding light imprinted behind her lids.
The gunfire stopped.
“Move,” Cal whispered through the comm, barely audible through the ringing. “Find them. Take them out if you have to.”
Rena forced herself up, her legs shaky but steadying fast. The air was a swirl of chemicals and haze, disorienting in every direction.
She glanced to her right and saw Gage’s outline, broad shoulders, weapon ready.
Sheriff Chase was just behind them, her stance sharp and sure despite the sensory chaos.
Rena gave Gage a quick hand signal, together, and he nodded, the faint gleam of his eyes through the mask locking on hers. They started forward, staying low, careful. Every footstep crunched over debris. The sound felt magnified, swallowed by the dense fog.
Somewhere to the left, Cal and Garrett peeled off, slipping into the deeper shadows of the hangar.
Rena could still feel the echo of the flashbang vibrating through her skull. Her pulse was thunder in her ears. Every instinct screamed that someone was waiting for them in the smoke. Watching, waiting for their next move.
Shapes emerged through the haze. Solid, fast, armed.
Two men, full tactical gear. Gas masks. Night-vision goggles. Just like she’d guessed. They moved like soldiers, disciplined, confident in the dark.
Rena didn’t hesitate. The first muzzle flash split the fog, a round zipping past her shoulder. She dropped to one knee, returning fire. Her shot hit center mass.
One down.
The second thug pivoted toward her, rifle raised, and then Sheriff Chase fired, dropping him before he could pull the trigger. The echo of gunfire ricocheted off the metal walls, swallowed in smoke and chaos.
“Keep moving.” Cal’s voice crackled in her ear, barely audible over the static and ringing.
Rena and Gage swept forward, backs to each other. Every shadow looked like a threat, every sound too close. Then movement. Two more figures breaking through the fog, advancing fast.
One went for Gage, tackling him hard. The other aimed straight for Sheriff Chase.
Rena fired before the man could, the blast so close it jolted through her arm. The man went down hard, weapon clattering across the concrete.
She spun back just in time to see Gage locked in close combat with the other attacker. Fists and elbows slammed, grunts, the metallic rasp of armor. Gage’s movements were brutal, efficient. He got an arm around the man’s neck, twisted, and dropped him to the floor.
The thug didn’t get back up.
“Clear,” Gage rasped, catching his breath.
But the victory was short-lived. From the other side of the hangar came the sound of more gunfire. Short, rapid bursts followed by the unmistakable thud of hand-to-hand fighting.
“Cal, Garrett, report,” Sheriff Chase barked into the comm.
Static. Then Cal’s strained voice, “We’re engaged, north wall. At least three hostiles.”
Rena’s pulse kicked harder. They weren’t alone in this smoke-filled tomb. The hangar was crawling with enemies, trained, organized, and ready to die before giving up whoever sent them.
The comm hissed with static before Noah’s voice cut through, steady but edged with urgency. “Status?”
Cal’s reply came fast, sharp. “Multiple hostiles, at least a dozen still active. We’re boxed in. Can you give us a diversion?”
“On it,” Noah said.
A heartbeat later, the world outside exploded in light and noise.
Searchlights from the helicopter blazed through the night, slicing across the windows and seams of the hangar like white fire.
The rhythmic roar of the chopper blades shook the metal walls, and then came the gunfire, controlled bursts from above, slamming into the tree line just beyond the structure.
The entire building shuddered.
The thugs hesitated. Rena felt it, saw it in the way one of them faltered mid-step, torn between fighting and fleeing.
The mix of sound and motion disoriented them, the vibrations rattling through the floor, through her bones. It was chaos, bright, deafening, calculated chaos.
“Move,” Cal shouted through the comm. “Use the distraction, neutralize them.”
Rena darted from cover, gun raised, Gage at her side. The haze still burned her throat, but she ignored it, using the blinding pulse of the chopper’s lights to mask her movement.
A thug appeared from the false floor. Too slow. Rena fired, the recoil jolting her arm. Another man broke from the shadows, and Gage dropped him with two quick shots.
The hangar rattled again under the helicopter’s downwash, a rain of dust and smoke falling from the ceiling.
Gunfire cracked again—sharp bursts echoing through the haze—then, abruptly, silence. Not the calm kind. The kind that meant something was about to happen.
Rena froze, heart pounding against her ribs. The air inside the hangar was thick with smoke, sweat, and adrenaline. Then came a new sound. Harsh, angry voices cutting through the static of the comms.
“… you said it wouldn’t fucking go down like this,” one man snarled, his voice muffled but distinct through the mask. “You said they wouldn’t be expecting us.”
Another voice snapped back, lower, furious. “Shut up and keep firing before they—”
He didn’t finish. Somewhere metal clanged, someone moving fast.
Rena met Gage’s gaze through the haze. He nodded, silent understanding passing between them. Sheriff Chase motioned left, her weapon raised, and they started toward the sound, taking slow, deliberate steps through the maze of stacked crates and weapon boxes.
They crept closer, inching around a stack of crates taller than a truck. Rena edged closer, the smoke shifting just enough to give her a glimpse. Two figures ahead, both in full tactical gear. One of them was pacing, agitated. His voice carried low and angry through the gas masks.
“Fuck you,” he was snarling. “Fuck this.”
The other raised his weapon. One clean, controlled shot.
The first man dropped where he stood. Rena flinched. The sound echoed through the hangar, followed by a horrible silence.
“Go,” Gage whispered.
They moved, a swift, tight formation, with Rena on point, Gage covering her six, Sheriff Chase flanking wide. Her pulse was a pounding drumbeat in her ears. Every instinct screamed trap, but they had to close the distance while the smoke still gave them cover.
Then, movement. Four more shapes emerged from the shadows, forming a perimeter around the shooter. Guarding them. Protecting them.
The shooter turned toward the faint light filtering from the chopper’s beam outside. The voice that came through the gas mask froze Rena in place.
Cold. Familiar.
“Find them, kill them,” the figure ordered, the voice unmistakable even distorted by the mask.
Rena’s blood went cold.
Corrine.
For a split second, disbelief rooted her to the spot. Corrine Astor, here, armored up, surrounded by mercenaries, standing over a corpse she’d just created. She wasn’t just pulling strings from the shadows. She was leading them.
Everything they’d theorized, every manipulation, every smug denial, culminating in this. Corrine wasn’t a suspect anymore. She was standing in the middle of a battlefield she’d built herself.
Rena’s breath caught, the name tearing from her throat before she could stop it. “It’s Corrine,” she whispered into the comm.
For a heartbeat, there was silence on the line. “You’re sure?” Cal asked.
“Positive,” Rena hissed. “She’s here.”
Outside, Noah must have caught every word because the helicopter thundered lower, its lights slicing across the compound in a renewed surge of chaos. The distraction roared back to life, blades hammering the air, spotlights flashing through the smoke, but the noise couldn’t mask what happened next.
Movement. Fast. Wrong.
Rena felt it before she saw it. An instinct, a flicker in her periphery. She spun, but not fast enough.
The gunshot was deafening in the enclosed space. Sheriff Chase jerked backward, the impact throwing her hard to the concrete.
“Sheriff down,” Gage barked, already pivoting, weapon up.
Rena dropped beside the sheriff, heart pounding, her vision narrowing. Blood pooled fast under the older woman’s vest. No time to check how bad. It was bad enough.
“The vest will compress to slow down the bleeding,” Noah let them know through the comm. But he sounded worried. And pissed off.
More shots erupted, echoing through the hangar. Muzzle flashes strobed through the haze, Corrine and her guards taking cover behind stacked crates, firing toward them in short, brutal bursts.
Rena returned fire, ducking low, the acrid tang of gunpowder thick in her throat. Gage shifted beside her, covering the opposite angle, his precision lethal even in the chaos.
A round slammed into a crate inches from Rena’s head, splintering wood. She cursed under her breath and leaned out just far enough to squeeze off two rounds.
Through the haze, she caught sight of Corrine ducking behind some supply shelves, barking orders.
The woman wasn’t running.
She was commanding.
Gage’s shout ripped through the smoke, raw and hard. “Corrine!” he yelled, voice carrying like a blow. “We know it was you. You tried to kill a hangar full of kids.”
For a beat she didn’t answer. Then the mask of composure cracked into something colder. The voice that came back was flat, venomous.
“Collateral damage,” Corrine sneered, every syllable a deliberate knife. “They weren’t the target.”
Rena felt the words like a slap. “Collateral?” she spat out. “You used children as collateral.”
“Crossfire Ops is bigger than any one man,” Corrine snarled back, her voice cold as steel. “Bigger than your little compound. Bury it, and you bury him. I’m not talking small moves…” Her eyes glinted through the haze. “I have a team on the way.”