SIXTEEN
His sixth sense had been kicking in all evening, and he expected it even as he dreaded leaving Stina in the middle of the night.
He slipped out of bed and started yanking on clothes, listening to the sound of the team rushing to the war room. He skidded into the room first with the rest of Sierra flooding in behind him in various states of dress.
Cannon faced them. “Search and rescue request came in. Seven hikers, Montclair range, north face. Got caught in the weather change, one of them managed to get a distress call out before they lost signal. They’re pinned down and the temps are dropping.”
Rome looked at the coordinates on the screen. “That’s not our job.”
“No, but we’ve got orders. We’re the closest asset by forty minutes. Seven people die if we don’t move.”
The room was silent for exactly one second.
“What’s the extraction plan?” Rome asked.
“We pull them off the mountain. There will be a team waiting at the foot of the mountain to transport to the hospital. Our job is to get them down.” Cannon swept his gaze over the team. “We provide basic first aid on site if necessary, move them to the handoff point, done.”
Rome was already calculating timeframes. “Snowmobiles.”
Cannon looked at Younger. “Prep them.”
“Copy, boss.” Younger strode out of the room.
Cannon’s gaze moved to Rome and Monk. “Rivers stays.”
Rome knew how Cannon’s mind worked. Rivers was staying because he was equipped to handle anything the base could throw at him—combat, medical, security.
The look Cannon sent his way said the rest.
The women are here. Rivers will protect them.
“Roll out in five.”
Rome hit the door running for his locker. As he threw on his body armor and cold weather gear, he calculated the number of seconds it would take to run to his room and kiss Stina.
He strapped on his sidearm, grabbed a rifle and laced his boots in seconds. He had just enough time to say goodbye to Stina.
When he rounded the corner, he saw the women standing in the hallway, holding on to each other.
Stina’s eyes flared wider when she saw him. She rushed forward and threw her arms around him.
When he folded her close, she was shaking.
“What’s happening?”
“Nothing to worry about. Short in and out. Stay here with Jolie. Rivers is your guard.”
Her gold and green eyes glimmered with emotions neither of them had time for. But he lowered his head and stole that kiss he hoped for.
As he released her and stepped back, he saw her chest heave.
He twisted and took off running to meet the rest of his brothers-in-arms. On the way, Monk pushed past him, on his way for a brief moment with Jolie.
With every step Rome took away from Stina, his mind shifted to the op.
They weren’t responsible for search and rescues, but occasionally they were called on for help.
The same way the FBI intercepted threats and handed them off to local authorities who could reach the people in time, Blackout received SOS calls.
The mountain was dark and brutal, and beautiful in the way that things were when they were capable of killing them. They pushed the limits of the snowmobiles, the wind cutting sideways across the north face. Visibility dropped with every quarter mile they went.
Rome kept his eyes on the terrain and his mind on the task ahead and tried not to think about the woman he’d left standing in the hallway in the middle of the night with her hand pressed to her chest.
They reached the coordinates in eighteen minutes.
Nobody was there.
Rome rolled to a stop and cut the engine. The north face stretched out in every direction. Snow. Rock. The skeletal outline of old lift equipment half-buried in deep snow that never melted, tilted and broken.
No hikers. No gear.
No sign anyone had been here recently at all.
“Check the perimeter,” came Cannon’s order in their comms.
They spread out to search. Rome moved along the ridge line, aware that one wrong placement of his boot would send him shooting off the steep side. Monk was on his six, using just as much caution.
“Where the hell are they?” Monk muttered.
The snow was also unbroken. Not a footstep marred the inky blue snow that reflected the moonlight.
“No evidence of hikers,” he reported.
His ear filled with the same reports from the rest of the team.
Cannon broke in. “Keep looking. They may have moved. Disoriented hikers don’t always stay put.”
Rome and Monk exchanged a look.
Monk shook his head. “I saw a lot in mountain warfare training, but disoriented hikers still leave tracks.”
They gave it another twenty minutes, widening the search to a different grid. He called out into the darkness but got nothing back but the howl of wind.
Rome activated his comms. “Sierra Two to Sierra One. There’s no sign of anyone. Command had to give us faulty intel,” he said to Cannon.
“Command says keep looking. They have to be in this sector.”
He stood on the ridge, gazing out over the mountain, and tried not to feel it.
The wrongness of a situation that didn’t add up. The math that refused to work, no matter how many times he ran it.
Seven hikers would leave tracks, even ones covered over by blowing snow.
He got back on the comm. “We’ve covered the full grid. There’s nothing here.”
Silence on the other end. Then Cannon’s voice filled their ears, more tense than any of them liked to hear. “Return to base.”
He stood there for another moment, listening to the driving wind. But more, he listened to the inner workings of his mind.
Something was wrong.
He couldn’t name it yet, but he’d been operating long enough to know with the cold certainty that he was standing in the wrong place.
Monk touched his shoulder. “Mount up.”
The team rolled out without a word spoken between any of them—and that worried him just as fucking much as his own misgivings.
One operator questioning orders was one thing. An entire Blackout team another.
They turned the snowmobiles back toward base. Though the wind was at their backs, the knot in Rome’s chest was as cold as ice.
He pushed harder and told himself he was being paranoid, that it was a genuine mistake—bad coordinates, a false alarm that only cost them a few hours of sleep.
By the time they neared the base, the sky was taking on a new hue, still black but a little lighter, like charcoal smudged over the screen of stars. Snow fell in fat flakes, covering the ground in fresh powder as far as they could see.
His comm crackled, and for no discernable reason, adrenaline hit his system.
He pushed the snowmobile faster, telling himself he was being paranoid.
Too bad he didn’t fucking believe it.
He leaned into the throttle and pushed down the concern that his chest hadn’t loosened even one degree as they approached base.
He just rode faster.
* * * * *
Stina sat on the edge of the bed, knees bouncing, and listened to the sounds of the empty base.
If she was sitting on her bed at this time of night in Chicago, she would hear traffic on the street, her neighbors fighting—or fucking—and the loud groan of the water pipes every time someone in the building flushed a toilet.
There wasn’t much noise on base, only the hum of ventilation. Outside noises didn’t exist underground. No wind, traffic, no world beyond these concrete walls to remind her any of this was real.
She stared at the open door straight into Rome’s room.
She could slip back into his bed and surround herself by his scent, but she was too afraid of where he was and what he was doing.
Or what was happening to him.
A figure stepped into her line of vision.
“Jolie.”
After the team left, Jolie went to her room to get dressed as if she felt more vulnerable in her pajamas and needed the armor that clothes provided.
Stina spread her hands on her bouncing knees. “I hate this.”
“I know.” Jolie strode forward and plopped onto the bed. Stina immediately leaned her head on her bestie’s shoulder, and Jolie hugged her.
They sat that way for a long time. Their worries didn’t change. Their fears were the same. But at least they were together.
Jolie pointed to the object leaning against the wall. “What’s that?”
“Oh!” Stina hopped off the bed and grabbed the painting she’d found in the resort. “I found it when Rome took me upstairs. I thought of you.” She held it out to Jolie.
She took it as if it was a priceless artifact. “It’s amazing.” She lifted her gaze, revealing eyes bright with tears.
Stina laughed, but it came out a bit watery too. “It’s not like I painted it. Hell, I didn’t even pay for it.”
They burst into laughter, and somehow that made things funnier. Soon, they were wheezing and leaning on each other.
Another figure filled the doorframe. Rivers’s broad shoulders took up the entire width.
Jolie jerked. “Did something happen?”
Rivers shook his head, looking between both of them. “I just came to let you know I’m here. I’ll be in the war room. Try to go back to sleep. The team will be back soon.”
Without another word, he walked away.
Stina stared at the empty doorway. “Was that supposed to be reassuring?”
“That’s Rivers being warm. You get used to it.”
“I suppose you’re going to tell me Rome is the really warm one around here.” She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. The nerves had been coiling in her stomach since the moment she heard the thump of boots and knew they were gearing up for a mission.
She still felt the solid warmth of Rome’s chest, the strong heartbeat pumping against her own skin, before he rushed out.
She shot Jolie a glance. Her friend was hunched forward, elbows on her knees, staring into space.
“How do you do this?” Stina asked. “You’ve been here with Archer for months. How do you just—” She gestured vaguely at her friend’s composure, which was somewhat reassuring but irritating at the same time. “How are we supposed to go back to sleep?”
Jolie was quiet for a moment. “Rivers means well, but he’s crazy to think we could ever calm down enough to sleep.”
They shared a small smile.
She drew one leg underneath her. “Archer taught me something. You know why they call him Monk?”
“No.”