Chapter 13 - Kade
THIRTEEN
Kade
The last mile is a blur of agony and gray static.
My world has narrowed to the sound of Wren's breathing and the rhythmic, pounding torture of my own pulse in my left arm. Every step sends a fresh spike of fire through my shoulder, radiating to my fingertips and up into my neck.
Not running on fumes. Running on the stubborn refusal to die in front of the woman who just told me she loves me.
We save each other.
The words rattle around in my skull, keeping me upright when gravity tries to drag me down.
"Kade." Wren's voice is tight. "The ridge. I see it."
Through the breaks in the canopy, the granite spine of the ridge is silhouetted against the moonlit sky. Beyond it, the landing zone and the extraction team. Freedom. Safety.
Between us and that ridge, a depression in the terrain—a shallow ravine choked with dense brush and shadows. A natural choke point.
I stop, boots skidding in pine needles. I pull Wren back behind a thick spruce with my good hand.
"Wait."
"What? It's right there."
"Too easy." I lean against the rough bark, blinking away the black spots crowding my vision. "If I were hunting us, that's where I'd be. The ravine is the only path that doesn't require scaling the cliff face."
"So, he's waiting."
"He's waiting."
I check the Glock. One round chambered. Four in the magazine. My spare mags are gone—lost in the tunnel or the scramble down the slope. Five rounds to stop a Tier One operator who is fresh, equipped, and patient.
My hand is shaking.
"Give me the shotgun."
Wren shakes her head. Face smeared with dirt and my blood. Eyes clear and ferocious. "No. You can't handle the recoil—your arm is shredded. You fire that thing, you pass out from the pain."
"I can—"
"No." She tightens her grip on the Mossberg. "You take the pistol. Cover me. I take point."
"You are not walking into a kill box first."
"Look at you." Her voice cracks, but she doesn't back down. "You're gray. You're bleeding out. If you walk out there, he drops you before you can lift your arm. If I walk out... maybe he hesitates. Maybe he wants to talk. Maybe he underestimates me."
Tactically, she's right. Completely right. And I hate it with every fiber I have left—every instinct, every protocol, every vow I made to myself after Amara.
But we aren't client and protector. We're partners. The partner with working arms takes the heavy weapon.
"Okay." The word tastes like ash. "But you don't hesitate. You see him, you put him down. Center mass. Don't think about it."
"I won't."
Her hand goes into her pocket. It closes around the last chemical hand warmer packet. She grips it like a talisman.
"Stay close."
We move out.
The ravine is a nightmare of shadows. Wind howls through the gap, masking our approach and deafening us to anything moving nearby. Brush waist-high in every direction. Perfect ambush country.
We move in a staggered column—Wren five paces ahead, me trailing, scanning the flanks. My gun hand trembles. I brace my wrist against my chest.
Ten yards. Twenty.
The ridge above us. Tantalizingly close.
A twig snaps.
Not natural. The distinct, sharp crack of a boot on dry wood.
Right flank.
Wren spins with the shotgun, but he's already moving.
Ivan steps out from behind a boulder. Ten yards. Not hiding—standing in the open, pistol leveled, posture relaxed. Almost bored. The bearing of a man who has done this so many times that killing is administrative.
"You were supposed to be the easy part of this job, Bishop." His English is precise, lightly accented. "I want you to know how personally I'm taking the inconvenience."
"Drop it," Wren says. The Mossberg is on his chest.
Ivan's eyes flick to her, then away. Not dismissive—categorizing. He keeps his weapon on her. It's a standoff she can't win. She has to aim, fire, and trust the spread. He has to twitch.
"Drop it, Miss Calloway. Or the next sound you hear is your own skull cracking."
"Don't," I say, stepping out from behind her. I bring the Glock up, sights on his head. "Take the shot, Wren."
Ivan's eyes move to me. That dead smile again—the one that doesn't touch anything above the jaw.
"The walking dead." He doesn't shift aim from Wren. "You've lost two pints, minimum. Three? You're shaking, Bishop. I can see it from here."
"Steady enough."
"No, you're not. And we both know it." He tilts his head. "Here's the math. You pull that trigger, you might hit me. Might. But my reflex puts a bullet in her eye before I hit the ground. Is that a trade you're willing to make?"
The negotiator's dilemma. The impossible choice.
I hesitate. A fraction of a second.
That's all he needs.
Ivan shifts—not to Wren, to me. He fires.
BANG.
Gravel sprays from the dirt at my feet. A demonstration. A proof of speed.
"Next one goes in your kneecap," Ivan says. "Guns down. Both of you."
I look at Wren. Terrified. Chest heaving. Shotgun still up.
"Wren. Put it down. We can't win the draw."
"Kade—"
"Do it."
She lowers the Mossberg slowly, bends, places it on the rock. Stands with her hands raised.
"Kick it."
She kicks it. It skitters across the stone, five feet away.
"Now you, Bishop."
I lower the Glock. My fingers cramp in protest. I let it fall.
"Good." Ivan holsters his pistol.
He pulls the Karambit from his tactical vest—curved blade, wicked and fast. He walks toward us, unhurried, the knife turning once in his grip.
"I'm done with bullets," he says. "Too much noise. And frankly, Bishop—you've cost me men. I want you to feel this."
He moves toward me, angling past Wren. To him, she's a civilian. A bystander. A loose end to clean up after I'm gone.
He steps past her.
Wren moves.
Not away. Not back.
She reaches into her pocket.
"Hey."
Ivan turns his head—annoyed, dismissive. "Stay put, little—"
She lunges. The packet tears open in her fist, and a cloud of black dust hits him full in the face.
Iron filings. Charcoal. Grit.
A sandstorm at point-blank range.
He roars. Both hands fly to his eyes—involuntary, unstoppable, the blinding reflex that even the best training can't override.
"Now!"
I move.
The last dregs of adrenaline come up from whatever reserve I've been running on for three days. I hit him waist-high, driving my shoulder into his gut. We go down hard, a tangle of limbs crashing into dirt and scrub.
The impact jars my wounded arm. White-hot agony tears through my system and nearly takes my vision. I scream—and turn the scream into effort. Knees into his thighs. Trying to mount him.
Ivan is strong. Blinded and furious, still a lethal machine. He bucks, throwing my balance. His hand lashes—the Karambit slices air.
The blade catches my thigh. Shallow. Burns like a brand.
I scramble back, boot connecting with his jaw. His head snaps, but he rolls with it, coming up to his knees. He's blinking hard, tears streaming, the grit clearing.
He can see. Enough.
He lunges.
I catch his wrist with my right hand, blocking the blade inches from my throat. We lock—his strength against my desperation, gravity on his side. The knife tip trembles and descends, inch by inch, toward my jugular.
His eyes are red and watery and full of cold, absolute hate.
"Die.” He grounds out the words.
My grip is slipping. Darkness closing at the edges.
BOOM.
Ivan stiffens. Profound shock crosses his face.
He's thrown off me—body jerking sideways as if yanked by an invisible cable.
I scramble back, gasping, clutching my arm.
Wren stands ten feet away, the Mossberg shouldered, smoke curling from the barrel. The recoil knocked her back a step. She's standing.
She didn't take the headshot. Didn't take the chest.
She took the leg.
At this range, the buckshot shredded his right calf. His leg is a ruin of meat and bone. Ivan is on the ground, screaming, clutching the wound, the Karambit forgotten in the dirt.
He tries to rise. The leg collapses. He goes down, writhing.
Wren pumps the slide. CLACK-CLACK.
She walks forward, barrel on his chest. Her face is pale, streaked with tears and dirt. Her eyes are dry.
She looks terrifying.
She looks magnificent.
Ivan looks up at her through the pain and the shock. He sees the steel I told her she had.
"Don't," he gasps.
Wren looks at me. "Kade?"
I get to my feet. Swaying. I look down at the man who profiled her, hunted her, tried to carve us apart in the dark.
I should let her finish it. It would be justice.
But she's not a killer—not that kind, not the kind that executes a man in the dirt. She shot to save my life. The weight of what comes after a shot like that is one thing. Asking her to carry an execution is another thing entirely, and she shouldn't have to.
There's a tactical calculation too.
A dead cleaner tells Black Helix nothing.
An unconscious one wakes up and reports a failure—a three-man entry team neutralized, their specialist taken off the board, and in twenty-four hours, a data breach that dismantles their entire network drops across five federal inboxes.
That combination doesn't just wound an organization like Black Helix.
It fractures it. Ivan Kova surviving to deliver that report is more useful to me than his corpse.
"I've got him."
Ivan hears something in my voice. His eyes track to me with the specific recognition of one professional reading another.
"Bishop." He chokes. "Wait. I can give you the—"
I drop to my knees beside him, wrap my good arm around his neck, and close the choke before he can finish the sentence.
Carotid compression. Clean.
"No more," I tell him.
He claws at my forearm. His nails dig in. He bucks once, twice. His strength is already gone—shock and blood loss are doing my work for me. I hold on through the ten seconds of resistance. Hold on until I feel the fight drain out of him completely.
I let go.
I shove him onto his back, reach into my vest pocket, and take out the Black Helix pendant—the small obsidian disk I pulled off the first operative in Wren's apartment hallway four days ago. I've been carrying it like a stone in my chest ever since.
I set it on Ivan's sternum.
No words. Their calling card, returned.
I shove myself upright and slump back against the dirt.
"Kade!"
Wren drops the shotgun and falls to her knees beside me, hands on my face, checking.
"I'm okay."
"You're not."
"He's down." I reach up and wipe a smear of dirt from her cheek. My hand leaves blood. I hate it. "You stopped him."
"We saved each other."
She tears the hem of her shirt and presses the fabric against the knife slash on my thigh.
"Hold this."
I hold it.
We sit in the dirt, surrounded by wreckage, the wind howling colder through the ravine.
"Do you hear that?"
"My heart?"
"Rotors."
The sound builds—low, rhythmic thud-thud-thud, vibrating in my sternum. Lights crest the ridge. Bright blinding searchlights cutting through the dark.
A helicopter. Blacked out. Fast-ropes dropping from the skids.
Figures hit the ground moving—tactical gear, night vision, the unmistakable posture of operators with a purpose.
"Theirs?" Wren shrinks against me.
I squint into the glare. A familiar hulking shape touches down and immediately scans the perimeter.
"Ours."
A voice booms through the rotor wash.
"Bishop. We have the perimeter."
Flint.
I let my head fall onto Wren's shoulder.
"We made it."
She wraps her arms around me, holding me up, holding me together. "Yeah. We made it."
Operators swarm the ravine. Hawk takes the high ground. Frost is moving toward us with a medic bag, face grim and focused.
For a moment the noise and lights fall away. Just me and Wren in the dirt.
She turns her face to mine and kisses me. Desperate and salty with tears. It tastes like survival.
"I love you," she says. Fierce. Absolute.
"I love you too." The words weigh more than any weapon I've ever held.
Frost shouts orders. The world rushes back.
All I can look at is her.
Standing in the rotor wash.
Battered.
Bloodied.
Beautiful.
My little bird.
My wolf.
My partner.