Chapter 6 MAGGIE
SIX
MAGGIE
The Glock feels like coming home.
I chamber a round with muscle memory so deep it's automatic, check the mag even though I watched Frost load it twenty seconds ago, test the weight in my hand. Fifteen rounds plus one in the chamber. Not enough for six trained enforcers, but it's what I have.
Product. That's what I am to my brother. To the cartel. Not Maggie Brooks, combat medic, sister, person. Just inventory with a fifty-thousand-dollar price tag. Or two-hundred and twenty, if you’re my brother.
The thought should terrify me. Maybe it will later. Right now, it just makes me angry.
Frost is at the window, night vision down, counting. "Six tangos. Two vehicles. Heavily armed. May be more. Can’t be certain. Probably no more than eight." His voice is steady, clinical. Combat mode. "They're staging at the road junction. Half a click out."
Half a kilometer. Close enough to be a problem. Far enough that we have time.
"Why are they waiting?" I move to the window beside him, staying low, weapon ready.
"Assessing the location. Planning their approach." He glances at me, and I catch something in his expression I can't quite read. "Professional. They're not rushing in like the warehouse crew."
"Because they know you're here now. They know what you can do."
"They know what we can do." The correction is subtle but deliberate. "You dropped those vehicles. They'll factor that in."
The we hits different than it should. Like we're a team. Like we’re something other than a combat medic and a rogue operator trapped in an abandoned ranch with six killers closing in.
"How long do we have?" I ask.
"Ten minutes. Maybe fifteen." He pulls back from the window and starts checking weapons in the locker with efficient, practiced movements. "They'll send someone to scout first. Test our defenses. Once they know what they're dealing with, they'll commit."
"So we have time to prepare?"
"Some." He pulls out an AR-15, checks it, and then hands it to me along with three magazines.
I take it, check the action, sight down the barrel.
Something shifts in his expression. Respect, maybe. Or something darker. Are you scared?"
"I'm not scared." It's mostly true. The fear is there, cold and heavy in my stomach, but it's buried under something sharper. Fury. At Tyler. At the cartel. At every man who ever looked at a woman and saw dollar signs instead of a person. "I'm angry."
"Angry works." He moves to the table and starts laying out ammunition, weapons, and supplies with the precision of someone who's done this countless times. "Channel it. Use it. Don't let it make you reckless."
"I've been in firefights before. I know how to operate under pressure."
"Combat medic firefights are different than this."
"How?"
He looks at me, and there's something raw in his eyes. "Because this time you're the target. You’re shooting to kill. You’re not the one patching up the casualties. That changes things."
He's not wrong. Every firefight I've been in, I was behind the lines. Waiting for the wounded. Trying to put people back together after violence tore them apart. I've never been the one actively trying to kill another human being.
The distinction matters more than I want to admit.
"So what's the play?" I move to the table and start loading magazines. My hands are surprisingly steady. "They come in hard, we defend?"
"We make them pay for every inch." He's moving furniture now, creating barriers, setting up fields of fire. "Windows are our advantage. We can see them coming. Pick them off before they breach."
"And if they get inside?"
"They won't." He says it with absolute certainty, but I hear what he's not saying. If they get inside, we're done.
I help him fortify, moving the couch to block the front door, stacking the chairs to create cover near the windows. My head is throbbing where they hit me three days ago, and my wrists ache from the zip ties, but the adrenaline is pushing through it.
Combat focus, narrowing everything down to movement and tactics, and staying alive.
Outside, I hear engines. The sound is closer now. They're moving up.
Frost positions me at the east window, checks the AR-15, and hands me extra mags.
"Stay low." His gaze is locked on mine. "Pick your shots. They want you alive, which means they'll try to suppress rather than kill. That gives us an edge. Oh, and Magnolia?"
"What?" I whisper back, my breath hitching sharply.
"Aim to kill."
The words drop flat, no trace of drama, just cold fact amid the thunder's rumble—and it hits like a spark to dry tinder.
My lips twitch and quiver as I bite down hard on the inside of my cheek. A choked snort escapes before I clamp it down, and my eyes water with effort as a near-hysterical giggle claws up from the stress-knotted core inside of me.
Oblivious to my attempts not to snort, he takes the west window, and we wait.
The storm has passed, leaving the desert air clean and cold. Through the window, stars scatter across the sky, beautiful and indifferent. The kind of night that would be peaceful if six men, maybe eight, maybe more, weren't coming to drag me back to a cartel that sees me as merchandise.
Tyler helped them. While I was here in this abandoned ranch, learning the truth about what he'd done, he was in Phoenix making new deals. Helping them track me. Selling me again.
My hands tighten on the rifle.
"Maggie." Frost's voice cuts through my spiral. "Stay present. Stay focused."
"I'm focused."
"You're thinking about your brother."
"How do you—"
"Because I know that look. I've worn it." He shifts position, checking sight lines. "And thinking about him right now gets you killed."
He's right. I force Tyler out of my head, focus on the window, on the darkness outside, on the sound of engines getting closer, then stopping.
Silence.
"They’re here." Frost’s voice is glacial cold.
My heart is pounding, but my breathing stays controlled. Four count in. Four count out. Combat breathing. The thing they teach you in basic that actually works when everything's going to hell.
"Contact," Frost says softly. "Single tango. Fifty meters. Moving toward the barn."
I see him through my window—shadow against shadows. A scout. Testing our response.
"Do we engage?" I ask.
"Not yet. Let him get closer. Make the shot count."
The scout moves forward. Forty meters. Thirty. He's using cover well, moving from scrub brush to rock outcropping, weapon up and ready.
Twenty meters.
"Wait for it," Frost murmurs.
Fifteen meters.
The scout stops. Scans the building. I can see his night vision sweeping across the windows, and I hold perfectly still.
Ten meters.
"Now."
Frost's shot is nearly silent—a suppressed round that drops the scout like someone cut his strings. The man falls without a sound, and Frost is already shifting position.
"That tells them we're here and we're awake," he says. "They'll reassess. Commit to a full assault."
"How long?"
"Minutes." He glances at me. "You good?"
"Yeah." My hands are steady on the rifle. "I'm good."
But I'm not good. I'm watching a dead man bleed out in the dirt, and my brother helped put him there. Helped put me here. Sold me for two hundred and twenty thousand dollars and his freedom from a debt he created.
"Maggie." Frost's voice again, pulling me back. "Look at me."
I turn my head, meet his eyes in the darkness.
"You're not alone in this," he says. "Whatever happens. You're not alone."
"I've been alone since my mother died." The words come out before I can stop them. "Ten years of being the strong one. The responsible one. The one who holds everything together while everyone else falls apart."
"Not tonight. Tonight you've got me."
"One operator against six enforcers. That's not exactly good odds."
"I've fought worse." He shifts position, checks the perimeter again. "And I have you."
"Me? I don’t know how much that helps things."
"You can shoot. You can move. You can think under pressure. That's more than most people I've served with."
I’m an asset. Not a product. Not inventory. An asset in the military sense—someone valuable, capable, worth protecting.
The distinction shouldn't matter, but it does.
"They're moving," Frost says, and I snap back to the window.
This isn't going to be easy.
Frost drops the second one with a headshot. The third with a double-tap to the center mass.
Those that remain scatter, taking better cover, returning suppressing fire. Rounds punch through the wall above my head, and I duck instinctively.
"You hit?" Frost's voice is sharp.
"No. I'm good." I rise, sight through the window, and squeeze the trigger. The AR-15 kicks against my shoulder, familiar and solid. My target drops—clean torso shot.
One left.
Except, I count two shadows.
"Frost…"
"I see them."
These two are smart. They've identified our positions, and they're flanking—one moves toward Frost's window, one toward mine.
"Switching positions," Frost says, already moving. "Cover me."
I lay down fire toward the tango on my side, forcing him to take cover, while Frost relocates to the north window. Better angle. Better sight lines.
His shot drops one of the shadows.
One left.
Maybe.
But this one has had enough. There’s silence for what feels like an eternity. An engine roars to life and headlights swing around. He's running.
Frost's shot takes out the driver’s side tire, and the vehicle lurches to the side. The last tango abandons it, disappears into the darkness.
Silence.
Six tangos down. One fled.
I'm breathing hard now, adrenaline crashing, and my hands are starting to shake.
"Stay sharp," Frost says. "Could be a feint. Could be waiting for backup."
"Or he's running back to report."
"Yeah." He moves through the ranch, checking angles, securing the perimeter. "Which gives us maybe an hour before more arrive."
"An hour." I lower the rifle, feel the tremor in my arms. "So what do we do?"