Chapter 15 Crewe
FIFTEEN
CREWE
The wind up here is mean.
It bites through my gloves and tries to shove me sideways even before I step to the edge of the ramp.
Below us, the mountains are a jagged black mouth full of snow and shadow.
Somewhere in that darkness, Riley is tied up and scared and trying to stay awake while men who don’t deserve her air are getting ready to use her work to hurt people.
I don’t feel fear.
I feel focus.
And something hotter underneath it—something that has a name now, whether I want it to or not.
Love.
“Two minutes,” the loadmaster calls over the roar of the aircraft, and my team checks each other’s straps like we’ve done a hundred times. Their faces are set. Calm. Ready.
Major Chen’s voice comes through my earpiece, steady as stone. “We’ve got eyes on the compound. We’re tracking drone activity. Hammond and Stanton are inside. They’re prepping a launch.”
“Copy,” I say. My voice doesn’t shake. It never does when it matters.
The light turns green.
The world narrows to a clean decision.
I jump.
Cold air slams into me. The kind of cold that steals breath and tries to make you forget your own name. I drop fast, the storm clawing at my gear, but my body knows this dance. I keep myself steady, falling through darkness and snow like I belong to it.
A few seconds later, I pull.
The chute snaps open, the jolt shooting through my shoulders, and the chaos becomes quiet—just wind and the soft hiss of snow. Below, a scattered cluster of buildings comes into view, half-buried in drifts. Old training land. Old structures. A small outpost that looks abandoned from a distance.
My team drifts down around me, dark shapes against darker ground. We land in staggered silence, cutting chutes, moving fast, going low.
I hit the snow hard, knees flexing, boots sinking deep. I’m already scanning.
Fence line. Outbuilding. Main structure with light bleeding through a cracked window. A tower in the distance with a weak red blink.
I taste adrenaline like iron.
“Stack,” I murmur into comms, and my team shifts into place without talking. We move like we’ve trained together for years, because we have. Everything in us is built for this: bad terrain, bad visibility, a bad guy holding something precious.
But this time the “something precious” has a laugh that lives in my ribs now.
Chen’s voice crackles. “Crewe, drone activity is spiking. They’re minutes out.”
“Understood,” I say. “We’re going in.”
We reach the main building—an old operations shack retrofitted into something more. There’s a keypad on the door. A camera above it.
I point. My teammate takes it out clean and quiet. The light on the camera dies.
We breach.
The door gives with a controlled shove. Warm air spills out, thick with electronics and stale coffee and the faint chemical sting of disinfectant. My vision adjusts to dim interior light—screens glowing, wires snaking, equipment stacked too neatly for a place that’s supposed to be dead.
The room is split. There’s an outer space that looks like a makeshift command center, and a closed door deeper in. Voices leak through that door.
A man’s voice. It’s smooth and confident. Stanton.
Another voice. It’s lower and tighter. Hammond.
My jaw locks.
I signal my team. They fan out like silent shadows.
“On three,” I breathe.
One.
Two.
Three.
We hit the door.
It swings open hard.
For one suspended second, everything freezes—the men inside staring, their hands half-raised, their faces caught between shock and calculation.
Then everything moves.
Hammond is at a console, fingers hovering over keys like he can still fix this with a few clicks. Stanton stands near another screen, suit jacket off, sleeves rolled up like he thinks he’s a soldier instead of a parasite.
And Riley—
She’s in a chair near the far wall, wrists bound, cheeks pale, hair mussed, eyes wide and furious.
Her gaze locks on mine.
Relief hits her face so fast it almost breaks me.
My chest tightens so hard it hurts. “Riley,” I breathe.
She tries to stand. The ties hold her back.
Stanton recovers first. “You’re too late—”
I don’t let him finish.
“Hands,” I snap, voice like a gunshot.
My team moves in. Weapons trained. Orders sharp.
Hammond’s eyes flick to Riley, then to me. His face twists like he wants to explain, to justify, to crawl back into the role of mentor. His hands shake.
Stanton’s expression turns cold. “This operation is sanctioned—”
“Sure,” I cut in. “By who? Your ego?”
He reaches toward a device near the console.
I move.
Fast.
I close the distance in two strides, slam his wrist down onto the table hard enough to make him grunt, and wrench his arm behind his back. He gasps, stumbling.
“Try it,” I murmur in his ear, low enough only he hears. “And I’ll make sure you never sign your name again.”
He freezes.
My team cuffs him.
Hammond lifts his hands, palms out. “Riley—wait—”
“You don’t say her name,” I snarl.
He flinches.
Because he knows what I am now—what I’m willing to do.
Chen’s voice crackles in my ear. “Hawthorne—launch sequence just went active. Two drones in the air.”
My blood goes ice-cold.
I swing toward the main screen and see it—live feed. Two drones lifting from somewhere out of sight, their cameras sweeping the night. A map overlay. A route marked toward a populated area.
A target.
Stanton smiles like he thinks he already won. “Even if you arrest us, it’s already in motion.”
Riley’s voice cuts through the room—raw, steady, and brave. “Crewe. The power.”
I look at her.
Her eyes blaze. “They’re running everything through the tower and the main inverter. Kill it. Now.”
“Copy,” I say.
I jerk my head at my team. “Cut power. Now.”
One of my guys moves toward the back panel. Hammond lurches forward. “If you cut it, you’ll crash them—”
“You mean stop them,” Riley snaps, voice sharp with fury.
Hammond’s face collapses. “It wasn’t personal—”
“It obviously was,” Riley spits. “You put your hands on me. You drugged me. You stole my work. You destroyed my lab. Don’t stand there and pretend you’re still the good guy.”
The words land like punches.
I see Hammond’s shame.
“Power!” I bark again.
My teammate rips the panel open and yanks the main feed.
The lights flicker.
The screens stutter.
The hum of the room drops to a dying whine.
Outside, through a narrow window, I see the distant tower blink… then go dark.
In my earpiece, Chen’s voice is immediate. “Signal dropped. Drones are drifting—”
Riley’s eyes lock on mine. “They’ll fail safe,” she says fast. “They’ll auto-land if they lose the control channel. They’re programmed to—”
“Because you built them right,” I murmur.
Her throat tightens. She blinks hard, like she’s fighting tears.
Chen’s voice returns, clipped and relieved. “Confirmed—both drones are descending. No impact. No casualties. Attack stopped.”
A breath I didn’t realize I’d been holding tears out of me. I turn back to Stanton. “You’re done.”
His face twists. “You have no idea who you’re dealing with—”
I lean in close. “Oh, I do.” Then I step back and nod to my team. They drag him toward the door.
Hammond stands frozen, eyes darting from Riley to me like he’s looking for a way out of the wreckage he made.
“Dr. Hammond,” Riley says, voice trembling with betrayed grief. “Why?”
He swallows hard. “They offered funding. Influence. A seat at the table. Your program… your program was going to be swallowed by bureaucracy and buried. I—”
“You sold me,” she says, quiet and deadly. “You didn’t save me.”
His shoulders slump.
And I feel nothing for him.
Not anger. Not satisfaction.
Just emptiness, because whatever he used to be in her life, he chose to become a threat.
I step toward Riley. My hands shake when I reach for the ties at her wrists—not from fear, but from the force of holding myself together. “You hurt?” I ask, voice rough.
She shakes her head quickly. “Just… groggy.”
“Look at me,” I say, and she does instantly.
Her eyes are wet. Furious. Alive.
“You’re safe,” I tell her.
Her breath breaks. “I knew you’d come.”
That nearly drops me to my knees.
I cut the ties, then slide my hands to her face, thumbs brushing her cheeks.
“You don’t get to scare me like that,” I murmur.
She lets out a shaky laugh that turns into a sob she tries to swallow. “I didn’t exactly schedule it.”
“I’m serious,” I say, forehead pressing to hers for one brief second. “I thought—”
Her fingers latch onto my shirt like she’s anchoring herself. “I’m here.”
I wrap my arms around her, pulling her against my chest, feeling her heartbeat slam into mine. She clings, and I don’t care who sees it. I don’t care that we’re in a hostile room with cuffs and radios and the stink of betrayal.
All I care about is that she’s breathing.
My team clears the rest of the building. Hammond is cuffed. Stanton is hauled out. Evidence bagged. Chen’s voice confirms units are converging from below.
And still, I keep my arms around Riley like letting go might invite the universe to try again.
She presses her face into my throat and whispers, “I’m so mad at him.”
“I know.”
“I trusted him.”
“I know.”
“And I—” Her voice catches. “I was so scared, Crewe. I was so scared you wouldn’t—”
I hold her tighter. “Never. Not you.”
She lifts her head, eyes glossy. “You’re shaking.”
“Yeah,” I admit. “Because I love you.”
The words come out before I can stop them.
No strategy. No plan.
Just truth.
Riley goes completely still.
Then her expression softens in a way that makes my chest ache. Her hand rises to cup my cheek, gentle like she’s touching something fragile in me.
“You… love me?” she whispers.
“I do,” I say, voice rough. “I’m done pretending it’s just adrenaline. I’m done pretending you’re just a mission. You’re not.”
Her throat bobs. A tear slips free. She wipes it angrily. “I’m not good at… fast feelings,” she whispers.
“I’m not asking for fast,” I say. “I’m asking for real.”
Riley’s lips part. She stares at me like she’s seeing through every layer I built to keep the world out. Then she nods once. “Okay,” she whispers. “Real.”
I kiss her.
Right there. Under the ugly hum of emergency lights. Under the weight of everything we survived.
It’s not careful.
It’s not polite.
It’s relief and promise and heat all at once, my mouth finding hers like it’s been searching for home for years. She kisses me back like she’s choosing me on purpose. When we pull apart, she rests her forehead against mine, breath trembling.
“Still hate cheddar?” I murmur.
She lets out a watery laugh. “With my whole soul.”
“Good,” I say. “Because I’m taking you someplace safe, and I’m stocking that fridge myself.”
She smiles—small, bright, real. “You’re ridiculous.”
“I’m in love,” I correct.
Her eyes soften even more. “That too.”
Hours later, Ridgeway is a blur of reports and debriefs and Major Chen’s steel-eyed stare that says don’t you dare die on my watch. Stanton is in custody. Hammond is in custody. Stanton Dynamics’ involvement cracks open into a messy paper trail that will bury a lot of powerful people.
But none of that matters as much as the fact that Riley is sitting on the edge of the med bay cot, wrapped in a blanket, sipping water while I stand in front of her like a guard dog who won’t let anyone near her.
Chen clears her throat from the doorway. “Hawthorne.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She glances at Riley, then back at me. “Good work.”
“Copy.”
Chen’s mouth twitches. “Take her home.”
Riley raises an eyebrow. “Home?”
I look at her and feel my chest tighten in the best way. “If you want,” I say quietly. “Your house. Or my place. Or wherever you say. I’ll follow.”
Her lips curve. “Bossy.”
“Yeah.”
She stands slowly, testing her legs. Then she steps into me, wraps her arms around my waist, and presses her cheek to my chest like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
“I want your house,” she says softly. “I want quiet. I want… you.”
My throat tightens. “Done,” I murmur.
Outside, snow still falls, but it doesn’t feel like a threat anymore. It feels like the world turning a page. And for the first time in a long time, I let myself believe in something simple and impossible:
She’s alive.
She’s safe.
And she’s mine—
not to own.
To love.
To keep.
To come home to.