6. Novak #2
“Five adults downstairs. Central living area. Victims are in a shielded room on the west side. Reinforced. Probably sound dampened.” He flicked to another overlay. “There are two main entry points. Levi and Killian will take the back; you go in the front and ensure no one stops the retrieval.”
No one will get in the way with a bullet in their head.
Caleb expanded the west wing of the building, isolating a section where the thermal read fractured.
“Children aren’t visible,” he continued. “Hence, the shielded room hypothesis. Reinforced walls, possible signal dampening. That’s where they’re likely being kept.”
I leaned closer, bracing one hand against the interior wall of the van above his shoulder. The distance between us closed without me deciding to move. Six feet became three. Most of the time, I’d correct myself and reset back to six.
Not tonight.
He went still for half a second, and I stepped closer than necessary. One thing I noticed was that Caleb never noticed the distance closing until the last few inches. That delay interested me.
He was so watchful of everyone else; did that mean he trusted me because he didn’t look at me? His breathing changed, and his attention returned to the screen as if nothing had happened.
He smells so good.
A pulse thumped strongly in his neck, just above the collar of his shirt, visible in the blue glow of the screen light, steady but faster than typical before he forced everything back under control. Sister Mary Agnes used to check our pulse, telling us it was our only truth.
Caleb’s accelerated whenever I stepped closer or when he was angry.
Faster when he was trying not to be.
It always gave him away a fraction of a second before his voice did.
He didn’t step away from me. He didn’t tell me to leave him alone.
He absorbed it and kept working, and that restraint was intentional.
The span of my hand would’ve fit easily beneath his chin, thumb resting along the hinge of his jaw, fingers spread across the front of his throat.
I could imagine how it would feel—pressure upward to expose the airway, then back into the van wall, tightening enough to control without crushing, testing how long he would hold my gaze before instinct overrode discipline. I liked that I made his heart race.
Caleb’s spine locked. His fingers halted mid-command, code suspended on the screen. A muscle worked in his jaw. He kept his eyes on the display.
“You need to fuck off now,” Caleb snapped.
“Do I distract you?” I asked quietly.
His typing didn’t falter this time. “No,” he said, his voice level.
I inhaled the scent of him again, leaned in, and his eyes flicked up to mine.
“Move the fuck back,” he snapped.
My erection pressed hard against my pants as I imagined licking his salty skin from his throat to his eyes.
I wondered what he’d do if I closed the distance and put my hands on him, instead of just thinking about it.
The urge to find out hit harder than it should have, sharp and insistent, a pressure low in my gut that had nothing to do with the operation and everything to do with him standing there pretending he wasn’t affected.
It would be a mistake to test that now, in the middle of a live op with Doc and Levi ten feet away, but the fact I had to talk myself out of it annoyed me.
I was dangerously close to losing control, but I masked the messy impulse and focused on the screen.
I was here for one thing, and that was to kill and leave nothing behind.
The impulse that had flared under my skin had no operational value.
Head in the game.
“We don’t breach through the front,” I said. “They’ll cluster toward the noise. We force movement toward the front exit. Doc and Levi take the back. I take primary and neutralize threats.”
Caleb turned his head slowly toward me. “Remember Ball-Cap and Skinny. We don’t need a fucking kill zone.”
“I’m assuming rational behavior,” I summarized. “Self-preservation. Predators protecting assets.” His jaw tightened at the word. “Quick removal of the hired security.”
“Keep them away from the kids.”
“It’s okay, if one of them grabs a victim as leverage, I’ll shoot through the adult, angle downward for a reduced exit trajectory.”
Silence.
Caleb held my gaze now, fully. “How about not shooting at all?”
That was confusing. “Then the victim dies.”
“Kids, Novak. They’re children. You don’t feel a goddamn thing, do you?”
“I feel efficiency,” I said, then considered the question because accuracy matters. “And outcome.”
“Fuck you,” he cursed.
I held his gaze because I was never going to be the one who looked away. I was hard. I wasn’t imagining sex with him, but I wanted to be closer and see how he reacted, and the idea of picking him apart and learning him was a familiar and intrusive thought.
What would he do with his hatred of me if I touched him? What if I dug my fingers into the tension in his shoulders? Would he be scared? Would he punch me? Did I care either way?
If he made me bleed, would I make him bleed in return?
“If a victim is held, what do you want me to do?” I was curious what he would say. His priority was always the innocents, and what I’d asked was a legitimate tactical question, not a puzzle for him to solve, even if he frowned at me.
“Prioritize the kids,” he said finally.
I frowned. “That wasn’t the question.”
Caleb full-on snarled at me. “Just get rid of whoever’s holding them, find me someone to get intel from, and don’t hurt the kids, you fucking serial killer.”
Oh, there was so much wrong in that sentence.
“I don’t hurt kids,” I reassured him. “Or animals. I don’t torture for curiosity or escalate for pleasure, and I don’t kill without purpose.
” I cleared my throat. For a second, something flickered at the edges of my control—a thin, quiet thread of doubt, almost like static.
“Most people assume I’m a psychopath, but true psychopaths don’t bother with rules, and I don’t lose control.
” The words hung a little off balance, more uncertain than I meant.
He blinked at me. I found myself wishing I could be sure of that last part, for a second.
Hmmm. Maybe explaining serial killers wasn’t a thing I should be doing right now.
I watched his eyes darken and narrow, his mouth flattening into a hard line before he turned back to the screen. Was that horror? Anger? Disgust?
Recognition?
I straightened, stepping back enough to give him some room.
“Five adults,” he repeated, returning to logistics.
Okay, I could do that—ignore the moment and focus on the work. “One minute from breach to clear,” I said, and tugged zip ties from the pocket of my combat pants. “Maybe less, or more if they resist intelligently.”
“Jesus, it’s not fucking intelligent to use a kid as a shield.”
I stared at him, noting the way his skin reddened. Anger, probably.
“Ready?” Levi asked, interrupting my staring, analyzing, and stopping Caleb from doing whatever he was about to do next. Shame. I liked it when that perfect pulse quickened. “Novak?”
I didn’t need to check my weapons, but I did anyway.
The Glock 19, fifteen in the magazine and one already chambered, sat familiar and solid in my hand, customized trigger breaking clean, night sights filed to my preference, the same weapon I carried every time because reliability mattered more than novelty.
I’d lifted it off a Southside gang lieutenant three years ago after he’d tried to put a round through my spine; he was now sealed in concrete at the bottom of the Pacific, and the gun had better discipline than its former owner ever had.
Two spare mags at my back, a fixed-blade knife at my spine, compact suppressor in the kit if we needed quiet entry.
Caleb exhaled slowly and refocused on the screens. “I can delay the system alert once,” he said. “After that, they’ll know.”
“Then we don’t give them time to think,” Levi replied.
He nodded once.
I stepped out of the van with defined objectives. Remove obstacles. Extract kids. Try to keep either Skinny or Ballcap alive.
Through the van’s open doors, I could still see Caleb in profile, lit by screens, jaw tight, hands precise.
The pull in my chest remained.
I didn’t understand it.
But again, I couldn’t ignore it.
The property was set a mile back from the main road, surrounded by barbed wire and cameras.
The security was expensive and deliberate, given the motel was ancient and crumbling, which was why Caleb was there—after all, he was only here for the ones where security needed to be breached.
It took us twenty minutes to get close, winding our way through security zones, with Caleb manipulating whatever he could.
“Levi, Doc, rear corridors clear. Three targets are seated in a room off the front entrance. One in the bathroom.”
Levi checked his weapon and moved first. Doc followed, already focused on the west wing entrance Caleb had isolated on the map.
I took the front approach, shifting slightly left to control the primary sightline into the space that had once been reception, the faded signs in the window reading cash only .
“Sixty seconds,” Caleb said evenly.
The front door opened at his signal. The first guard looked up from a ratty sofa, confusion registering too late.
I shot him through the throat before he could rise.
The second reached for his weapon; I put a round through his shoulder, then another through his eye as he fell.
The third exited the bathroom, pants around his ankles, shouting a warning that never finished when I shot him off-center in the neck and closed the distance, ending it with a round to the back of his head.
Levi’s voice came sharp through the comm. “We’re by the room.”
“Novak. Kitchen to the left,” Caleb said in my earpiece.