Chapter One #2
He caught snippets of conversation drifting across the yard as he waited.
Kael barking orders at a contractor who’d cut a corner.
Luca swearing grumpily about drone overlap and blind spots.
Keanu humming under his breath as he laid wire that was a targeted explosive.
Niko’s laugh—short, sharp, familiar—cut through it all.
Tane glanced back at the feed just in time to see Victor smile.
A real one. Brief. Unguarded.
“He can hear us,” Tane muttered.
That ... was not ideal.
Victor had Directorate tech. Tane didn’t need a briefing to know what that meant. Long-distance eyes. Directional audio. Capabilities that had no place anywhere near Black Tide’s operations.
He made a mental note to talk to Luca about shutting that shit down.
Not later later. Hell, no. It would be sooner rather than later.
If Victor could hear them, then so could anyone else using similar tech. And the Directorate didn’t miss opportunities—they harvested them. Tane ran the possibilities automatically, seeing how fast a listening net could turn into a kill box if the wrong ears were tuned in.
Victor thought he was hunting the Directorate.
What he didn’t seem to grasp was that the Directorate never stopped hunting back.
One man, no matter how skilled, didn’t dismantle a machine like that.
He burned out.
Or disappeared.
Tane studied Victor through the contact lens, taking him in properly for the first time.
Tall. Lean. Built like someone who spent a lot of time in the water, wide shoulders, strong chest, narrow waist. Dark hair cropped short at the sides, longer on top, stubble shadowing a square jaw.
Even at a distance, there was something coiled about him—contained violence held in check by discipline rather than fear.
And Tane was drawn to him in a way that made no sense.
It wasn’t just attraction. He’d felt that before, plenty of times, and this was different. Deeper. Like recognition.
His grandmother’s voice surfaced unbidden, soft and steady, as it had been near the end.
The men in our family know, she’d told him once, fingers curled around his wrist as if anchoring him to the world. When it’s the right person, their person, they know. No hesitation. No doubt.
Tane had been young then. Before he had lost his grandmother to a disease she couldn’t fight and was sent to an orphanage where he met the rest of the team, the weight of too much loss sitting heavy on his shoulders. He hadn’t believed her.
Now, watching Victor in the trees, he wasn’t so sure.
Maybe Victor was that person for him. Maybe. If you believed in that kind of thing.
Or maybe Tane was projecting something he wanted onto a man who’d spent his life running.
Either way, it would take time. Conversation. Proof.
Victor’s camera swung.
Tane felt it before he saw it—the subtle shift in pressure, the instinctive prickle at the back of his neck.
He’d learned to trust that sense the hard way, in places where hesitation got people killed.
He’d felt it the first night the orphanage doors closed behind him, the first time he’d stepped into a fight that wasn’t his but became his responsibility anyway.
He straightened just enough on the balcony, forearms still braced, posture loose. Ready. He let his breathing slow, his presence settle.
This wasn’t a challenge.
It was an invitation.
The lens settled on the balcony.
Tane didn’t flinch.
He stared straight at the spot where he knew Victor was hiding, held the gaze with the same calm he brought to a fight. Satisfaction flickered when Victor pulled back in visible shock, the sharp little head shake telling Tane exactly what he was thinking.
No way.
Tane waited until his eye returned to the scope, then he smiled.
Slow. Deliberate.
Then he nodded once.
Yeah, he thought. I see you.
Victor packed up not long after.
Tane stayed where he was long after the feed showed the tree empty.
The site noise faded into something distant and dull—voices, machinery, the thud of work continuing without him. The air felt heavier. Like a held breath that hadn’t been released yet.
He knew that look.
The one Victor had worn when he pulled back from the scope. Shock, yes—but also resolve. The kind that set men on paths they didn’t survive alone.
Tane rested his hands on the railing, jaw tightening.
Running wasn’t cowardice. Sometimes it was the only way to stay alive.
But Victor wasn’t running to survive.
He was running toward a fight he didn’t think he deserved help with.
And that—that was something Tane refused to accept.
Tane watched him move through the forest, silent as smoke, disappointment settling heavy in his chest. Running again.
He waited until Victor hit the ground and headed for the motorcycle parked well back from the site. Only then did Tane turn and head inside.
“Luca,” he said, already moving.
“I know,” Luca, who was back in the command center and sitting at his desk, replied without looking up. “We’re good, I’m on him.”
“Tag him.”
Luca’s fingers danced. A drone lifted without a sound, slipping into the canopy like it belonged there. Tane watched the feed as it followed Victor to the bike, a pinpoint laser flickering once before vanishing.
Invisible. Persistent.
Tane exhaled, tension easing just a fraction.
Victor could run.
But not forever.