Hardline Torque (Black Tide #2)

Prologue

They hit the warehouse the same way they always did.

Together.

The night air was still vibrating with the echo of the bomb site that was their planned extraction location behind them—boots pounding, breath burning, the metallic tang of adrenaline clinging to Tane’s tongue as they crossed the cracked asphalt and slid through the yawning service door one by one.

The door groaned softly as it shut behind them, sealing out the night and pulling the dark in close.

Concrete. Steel. Shadows.

Tane rolled his shoulders as he moved, senses stretched wide, tracking his brothers without needing to look. Five heartbeats. Five rhythms. Black Tide flowed in a tight wedge, weapons up, spacing precise, each of them exactly where they were meant to be.

“No hero shit,” Niko muttered under his breath, voice calm despite the rush still in his veins. “Same way we came in.”

Tane huffed a short breath. “That is how we roll.”

A few quiet chuckles ghosted through the comms—low, familiar, grounding. It wasn’t bravado. It was habit. Code.

They moved deeper into the warehouse, boots whispering over concrete dusted with grit and oil.

Stacks of crates loomed on either side, their stenciled markings half-scrubbed, long past readable.

Overhead lights flickered, some dead, some buzzing faintly, painting the space in uneven bands of white and shadow.

This was supposed to be clean.

Execution done, confirmation sent, clean extraction. They had been doing this for years, but this was something else. This reeked of betrayal

Tane clocked the way the sound carried wrong, how the air felt thick, stale, like a held breath. He glanced left, caught Kael’s silhouette in his peripheral—still, watchful, already feeling it too.

“Eyes up,” Tane murmured.

They were almost to the central bay when the first shot rang out.

The crack of gunfire split the space, sharp and deafening, ricocheting off steel. Tane didn’t think—he reacted. He dropped into a crouch as rounds sparked off a crate above his head, concrete chips stinging his cheek.

“Contact!” Kael barked.

They moved as one.

Black Tide broke formation without losing cohesion, fanning out just enough to cover angles, backs never unguarded.

Tane surged forward, closing the distance fast. A man lunged from behind a forklift, rifle coming up—too slow.

Tane slammed into him shoulder-first, driving him into the machine with bone-jarring force.

The man gasped, weapon clattering away. Tane finished it with a brutal elbow to the throat and let the body drop.

Gunfire erupted across the bay.

This wasn’t a random ambush.

Enemies poured in from between the stacks, moving with purpose, pushing hard. Tane caught flashes of his team through the chaos—Keanu pivoting smoothly, dropping a target with ruthless efficiency. Luca covering high. Kael moving fast and brutal on the flank.

“Push left!” Niko snapped. “Don’t let them split us.”

Tane obeyed without hesitation, driving into the pressure point where the line threatened to buckle. He felt the fight settle into his bones—the familiar rhythm of strike, step, cover. He took a blade across the ribs and ignored it, countering with a knee that folded his opponent in half.

Too many. There were just too damn many of them.

And then Niko went down.

It happened fast. A shouted warning cut short, followed by a sharp cry of pain. Tane twisted just in time to see Niko stagger, one hand clamped to his side, blood dark against his fingers.

“Fuck,” Tane growled. He was there in two strides, dragging Niko back behind a stack of crates as rounds chewed into the concrete where they’d been standing moments before.

“I’m good,” Niko ground out, jaw tight, breath hitching.

“You’re bleeding like hell,” Tane shot back, pressing a hand hard against the wound without waiting for permission.

Niko swore, then nodded once. “Yeah. That’s ... not great.”

The fight surged around them. The sound was overwhelming—gunfire, shouted callouts, the metallic clang of rounds striking steel. Someone screamed and then the sound cut off abruptly.

Tane’s gut twisted.

This was wrong.

Not just bad luck. Not just sloppy intel.

Someone had known exactly where they’d funnel. Exactly when they’d pause, which meant it was someone who worked with or knew how Black Tide worked.

“Fall back!” Luca called. “We’re boxed in!”

Kael’s voice cut through the noise, low and sharp. “They’re herding us.”

That sent a chill straight down Tane’s spine.

He hauled Niko up, bracing him against his shoulder. “You stay with me,” he ordered. “You hear me?”

Niko gave a breathless laugh. “Not planning on going anywhere.”

The lights cut out.

Darkness slammed down hard, swallowing the warehouse whole. Gunfire stuttered, then shifted—controlled bursts now, deliberate, forcing Black Tide to move.

Tane tightened his grip on his weapon, heart hammering. His instincts screamed that this wasn’t the end of the fight.

It was the start of something worse.

As they pushed toward the exit, dragging the injured with them, Tane had one bone-deep certainty.

This was how Black Tide rolled.

And someone out there had just decided to test it.