65. Blaze
BLAZE
Nobody spoke for almost ten seconds after Rook opened the file.
The safehouse conference room felt colder somehow.
Darker.
The photographs spread across the table looked like pieces of hell stitched together.
Politicians shaking hands with traffickers.
Military contractors.
Judges.
Bank transfers.
Dead girls.
Missing children.
Hollow Men symbols hidden in plain sight.
Flick stared at the evidence like her entire world was cracking apart.
“My father found all this?”
Rook nodded once.
“He didn’t just find it.” His expression hardened. “He copied everything.”
Wolf let out a low whistle.
“Well… that explains why Mercer’s losing his damn mind.”
Trigger leaned against the wall quietly.
“He wasn’t protecting money,” he muttered. “He was protecting an entire network.”
Exactly.
And now Flick had become the one loose end capable of exposing all of it.
I watched as realization slowly hit her face.
“He killed my father because of this.”
Nobody answered.
Didn’t need to.
Her eyes filled anyway.
“He pushed me away to keep me hidden,” she whispered shakily. “All those years I thought he stopped loving me…”
Ah hell.
I moved closer instantly despite the fire tearing through my ribs.
“He loved you enough to die protecting you.”
Her face crumpled slightly.
The kind of pain that came from finally understanding someone too late.
I knew that feeling.
Too damn well.
Rook quietly closed the file.
“Mercer and Shepherd won’t stop now. Not after tonight.”
Wolf folded his arms.
“Then we end it.”
Rook’s eyes shifted toward me.
Long pause.
Then—
“This is where Shadow Division steps back.”
The room went still.
Trigger looked over immediately.
Wolf frowned slightly.
But I understood instantly.
Rook wasn’t abandoning us.
He was drawing a line.
Making this ours.
“Shepherd’s tied to our world,” Rook continued calmly. “We’ll continue hunting his larger network.”
Then he looked directly at me.
“But Flick?”
His gaze hardened.
“That’s personal now.”
I nodded once slowly.
Yeah.
It was.
Rook walked around the table toward me.
“Mercer’s operation reaches farther than Eagle River. Shadow Division has to move on the bigger structure.”
His eyes flicked briefly toward Flick.
“But Blaze…”
The room got very quiet.
“You kill Shepherd before he gets to her again.”
Not a suggestion.
Not an order.
Permission.
Something cold settled into place inside me.
Across the room, Flick looked at me sharply.
Like she heard the finality in that statement too.
Wolf pushed away from the wall.
“Well then.” He cracked his neck once. “Guess the Rangers are back on point.”
Trigger smirked faintly.
“About damn time.”
For the first time all night, the tension in the room shifted slightly.
Not gone.
Never gone.
But clearer now.
This wasn’t a military operation anymore.
This was a hunt.
Rook reached into his jacket and tossed a set of keys onto the table in front of me.
“Cabin outside Blackstone Ridge,” he said. “Off-grid. Nobody knows it belongs to us.”
Flick immediately shook her head.
“No.”
Every eye turned toward her.
She swallowed hard.
“He found me once while I was sleeping.”
Fear flickered across her face before she buried it again.
“I can’t sit in another cabin waiting for him.”
Damn.
That hit me right in the chest.
Because she was scared.
But she was also angry now.
Done running.
Wolf nodded slightly like he respected that answer.
Rook studied her for a second.
Then surprisingly?—
he gave a small nod too.
“Fair enough.”
Trigger straightened. “So what’s the move?”
I looked down at the photographs again.
At the corruption.
The blood.
The children.
Then at Flick sitting beside me trying so hard not to break apart.
And suddenly I knew exactly where this ended.
“At the ranch,” I said quietly.
Wolf’s eyes narrowed immediately.
“You sure?”
“No.”
I looked toward the storm-dark windows.
“Shepherd thinks Flick’s a weakness.”
Then I slowly checked the magazine in my weapon.
“Let’s teach him otherwise.”