Chapter 73 Ethan
Ethan
The helicopter cuts through the morning like a blade.
Inside, everything is noise.
Rotors.
Weapons checks.
Comms.
The low, steady hum of men preparing to kill.
Ava sits across from me in black tactical gear that should make her look like just another operator on this bird.
It doesn’t.
Nothing about her feels ordinary.
Not with the bruise shadowing one side of her face.
Not with the fresh bandage hidden beneath the vest.
Not with the fire in her eyes that says she would crawl through broken glass before she let Hayes slip through her fingers again.
Jonah is beside her, tablet in hand, feeding updates straight from the thermal scans and archived schematics he pieced together.
Ronan sits near the open side door, calm as hell and unreadable as ever.
Aaron and Cal are across from me checking rifles one more time, all of us locked into that familiar, ruthless silence that comes before impact.
I should be focused only on the target.
On the plan.
On the variables.
Instead, my gaze keeps going back to her.
Ava catches me staring.
Raises one brow.
Even now.
Even here.
I lean toward her, voice pitched low so it doesn’t carry over the headset traffic. “You still have time to tell me you’re staying on the bird.”
She gives me a look that could level buildings. “You still have time to accept reality.”
Aaron, hearing enough to be entertained, smirks without looking up. “I’d pay money to see either of you win one of these arguments.”
“You’d lose your money,” Jonah mutters, eyes on the screen. “Neither of them ever wins. They just glare until someone starts shooting.”
Ava’s mouth almost twitches.
Mine nearly does too.
Then the pilot’s voice cuts over comms. “Target zone in four minutes.”
Every trace of humor disappears.
Jonah angles the tablet so the secondary team can see. “Thermal sweep confirms movement in the hangar and below ground. At least twelve heat signatures on the upper level. More interference below. Hard to tell exact count.”
“Hayes?” Ronan asks.
Jonah zooms in. “No visual confirmation yet.”
Ava leans closer, studying the layout. “If he thinks the site is compromised, he won’t stay in the open. He’ll move lower. He always kept his exit routes buried beneath the obvious ones.”
I look at the schematic. “Service access?”
Jonah taps the east side. “Narrow corridor here. Could connect to an emergency stairwell or maintenance shaft. I’m still not sure.”
Ava points. “That’s it.”
All eyes go to her.
She keeps staring at the map. “I remember the angle. Not clearly, but enough. There was a stairwell that smelled like salt and machine oil. He used it when he didn’t want cameras catching him moving between levels.”
Ronan nods once. “Then we split exactly as planned.”
I don’t like split operations when Ava is involved.
I like them even less when the man we’re hunting has already proven he’s willing to burn everything around him to stay in control.
But there’s no better option.
The bird banks.
Below us, the coastline comes into view—jagged rock, dark pines, white spray slamming against the cliffs. Farther inland, hidden in the trees, the old airstrip appears. Weathered runway. Cracked tarmac. Dead hangar skeleton.
At first glance, abandoned.
At second glance, not even close.
A black SUV tears across the edge of the property.
Two men move crates toward the hangar entrance.
And there—farther back near the utility block—a side door opens and shuts fast enough most people would miss it.
Ava sees it too.
“That one.”
I nod.
The pilot brings us in low and hard behind the tree line.
The second the skids kiss ground, we move.
Ronan and Aaron are out first, Cal right behind them. I jump down and turn, grabbing Ava’s arm as she lands. She jerks free on instinct, then immediately looks guilty.
I ignore it.
No time.
We hit the trees at a run, branches snapping against gear, boots pounding through damp earth. Jonah stays tight with Ava while I take point with Cal for the secondary push. Ronan and Aaron peel off toward the hangar with the main breach team, disappearing into the brush like ghosts with rifles.
Comms crackle in my ear. “Primary in position,” Ronan says.
I raise a fist, halting our line behind a rock embankment with clear sight to the east wall of the compound. The utility structure is half-hidden by brush and rusted fencing, exactly the kind of access point a paranoid bastard would think no one else would notice.
Jonah crouches beside me, breath controlled despite the pace. “Mag lock on the side door. I can loop it if I get five seconds.”
“You’ll get three,” I say.
Ava looks past me toward the building, her face gone cold.
Not afraid.
Not fragile.
Cold.
Like the girl Hayes tried to break died somewhere in one of his underground cages and the woman left behind is something far more dangerous.
“Two guards rotating,” she murmurs. “One near the fuel drums. One inside the corner shadow.”
I narrow my eyes.
There.
Movement.
Barely visible.
How the hell did she spot that so fast?
Because she lived through his systems.
Because she learned to survive them.
Rage slides under my skin.
I tap my comm. “Secondary sees two outside. Quiet takedown.”
Cal shifts left with me. At Ronan’s soft “Execute,” the whole world explodes into motion.
The hangar erupts first—suppressed shots, shattering glass, a shouted warning cut short.
At the same time, Cal drops the outside guard near the drums and I put one through the shadowed figure inside the doorway before he can raise his weapon.
“Move,” I snap.
Jonah sprints to the door panel, plugs in a device, fingers flying.
Inside the compound, alarms try to come alive and die halfway through.
“Looped,” Jonah says. “You’ve got a short window.”
I wrench the door open.
Concrete stairs.
Narrow.
Steep.
Salt and machine oil.
Ava goes still beside me.
“It’s the one,” she says.
I look at her once. “Stay on me.”
Then we descend.
The stairwell is dim and close, the air colder the farther down we go. Metal pipes run along one wall, vibrating faintly. Somewhere below, voices echo. Boots. A slammed door. Shouted orders.
They know.
Not who yet.
But they know.
At the base of the stairs the corridor splits.
Jonah checks his tablet. “Main sublevel runs west. Secondary service tunnel east. Signal interference is heavier that way.”
Ava points east immediately. “Hayes.”
I don’t ask how she knows.
I trust the certainty in her tone more than I trust the map.
We move east.
The corridor is tighter here, unfinished in places, with exposed concrete and old conduit. One flickering strip light buzzes overhead. Another is dead completely, leaving patches of black between washed-out pools of gray light.
A body lies crumpled halfway down the hall.
One of Hayes’s men.
Not ours.
Gunshot wound to the throat.
Fresh.
Aaron’s voice breaks over comms from the upper level. “Primary has resistance in the hangar and sublevel one. He’s moving assets.”
“He’s below us,” I answer. “We’re tracking.”
Ava’s breathing changes.
Just slightly.
I glance back.
Her face has gone pale again, but her eyes are locked ahead.
“What?”
She shakes her head once. “Nothing.”
“Ava.”
“This hall.” Her voice is tight. “He brought me through here once.”
Cold fury grips me by the spine.
I reach back and catch her hand just long enough to ground her. “You’re not that girl anymore.”
Her fingers close around mine for one brief second.
“No,” she says. “I’m not.”
Then gunfire erupts ahead.
We take the wall instantly.
Two men come around the far bend firing blind. Cal drops one. I take the other. The shots are deafening in the confined space, the air instantly sharp with cordite and dust.
Jonah ducks, clutching the tablet to his chest. “Okay, now they definitely know we’re here.”
“No kidding,” Cal mutters.
Ronan’s voice cuts over comms. “Upper level secured. We’re pushing down.”
“Negative,” I say. “Too slow. He’s moving.”
Ava rounds the bend before I can stop her.
“Dammit—”
I follow fast, catching up just as she stops at a reinforced steel door half-hidden behind an open maintenance cage.
There’s blood on the keypad.
Fresh.
“He went through here,” she says.
Jonah is already kneeling at the lock. “Electronic override. Give me ten.”
“Take five,” I say.
Ava stares at the blood. “He’s hurt.”
I look at the smear, the uneven hand drag across the metal. She’s right.
Not enough to slow him much.
Enough to make him angry.
And a wounded man like Hayes?
More dangerous than ever.
The lock clicks.
Door open.
Beyond it, another stairwell drops even lower.
Not in the plans.
Not on any record Jonah found.
A hidden third level.
Of course.
Aaron swears softly over comms. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No,” Ava says, already moving. “This is where he goes when he thinks the world is closing in.”
I catch her arm before she can descend. “Behind me.”
She looks like she wants to fight me on it.
Then something in my face must tell her this is not that moment, because she nods once.
We go down.
The air changes.
No ocean salt now.
No machine oil.
Just stale concrete and something older.
Something rotten.
At the bottom, the stairwell opens into a wide underground corridor lined with glass-fronted rooms.
Some empty.
Some destroyed.
Some still holding restraints bolted to steel chairs.
Ava stops dead.
I stop with her.
For one long second, no one moves.
No one breathes.
Jonah’s voice is barely audible. “Jesus.”
The place feels haunted.
Like pain soaked into the walls and never left.
My vision tunnels red.
This is where he hid her.
Where he rewired her.
Where he turned a living woman into a project.
I touch Ava’s back very lightly.
She flinches.
Then steadies.
Her voice comes out thin but controlled. “He’ll be at the command room. End of the corridor. Left side.”
I want to tell her to stay back.
I want to drag her upstairs and put six armed men between her and this place.
But she’s here now.
And I know—deep in the bone—this ends cleaner if she faces him.
Not alone.
Never alone.
But here.
With me.
Ronan and Aaron reach us from behind, both taking in the corridor with expressions that promise death.
Ronan’s voice is ice. “We finish it.”
I nod once.
Then the blast door at the end of the hall starts to shut.
“Move!” I roar.
We run.
Hayes is not escaping this time.