REAPER (GUARDIAN HOSTAGE RESCUE SPECIALISTS: SHORT READS #6)

1. The Scope

ONE

The Scope

WYATT

Wyoming wind cuts across the ridge. It carries the scent of dry sage and crushed granite.

The temperature hovers just above freezing, stripping the heat from the stone beneath me.

My muscles lock with the deep, settling stiffness of fifty hours holding the same position.

I've trained my body to ignore the elements, to slow my heart rate down to a crawl so the crosshairs don't drift. I don't shiver. I don't move.

My right eye stays welded to the glass of the scope.

Two thousand, six hundred and forty yards. A mile and a half.

At this range, the world reduces to mathematics and windage, to the spin drift of a bullet and the curve of the earth. But the crosshairs rest over something entirely human. The front door of a secluded timber-frame house in the valley below.

The rifle stock bites into my shoulder. The McMillan TAC-338 is a heavy anchor. Familiar. Unrelenting. For fifteen years, this weapon served as my identity. First as a Ranger. Then Delta. And for the last four years, a freelance contract sniper.

A hitman for hire.

A pariah.

Frost's voice surfaces in the quiet spaces of my mind. Cold. Unforgiving. You killed an innocent man, Harrison. You're no brother of mine.

He's right. I pulled the trigger on a broker's word, and a federal witness died.

He was caught in the crossfire of a hit I never should have taken.

I carry his blood on my hands. I see his face every time I close my eyes.

The stain doesn't wash out with time or distance.

I'll carry it until they put me in the ground.

The exile Frost handed down is earned. The code is absolute, never harm an innocent.

I broke it.

The isolation of this mountain is my penance. I'm a morally bankrupt man hunting the men who made me a murderer. Every broker, every middleman, every handler in the Ares syndicate. I'll dismantle their network bullet by bullet until I find the man who gave the order.

Down in the valley, the front door of the timber house swings open.

Adelaide Hart steps onto the porch.

Addy.

She wears faded denim jeans and a gray thermal henley. A wet braid hangs over one shoulder, dripping water onto the dark wood of the porch. A Glock 19 rests on her right hip in a worn leather holster.

She carries it from the moment she wakes to the moment she lies down at night.

She's a federal forensic accountant auditing a massive sanctions-evasion network, a woman who hides her gender behind the byline A.D.

Hart. But out here, she's simply a woman living alone on land shared with wolves and coyotes. She refuses to be prey.

I adjust the magnification. The glass brings her close enough to count the stray hairs escaping her braid.

Fifty hours of overwatch. The MREs taste like ash. The water in my canteen is half-frozen. But I wait. Waiting for the broker's verifier to show up. Waiting to document his face, add him to the list, and climb one step closer to the top of the chain.

Fifty hours of watching Adelaide Hart live her life.

She doesn't know a killer haunts the high ground.

Yesterday afternoon, the temperature spiked, turning the valley floor into an oven. She walked down the dirt path to the creek behind the property. I tracked her movement through the scope, sweeping the tree line for threats.

Then she stopped on the rocky bank and stripped off her clothes.

She waded into the freezing, snow-melt waters and submerged herself completely.

I stayed on the glass. I should have looked away. I should have maintained the detachment that kept me alive for fifteen years.

But the late afternoon sun hit the water, painting the lines of her skin in gold. The light illuminated the swell of her breasts, her peaks pulling tight from the freezing current. It traced the inward sweep of her waist and the flare of her hips as she sank below the surface.

She's not a faceless target anymore. She's flesh and blood.

The water beaded on her collarbones when she rose, throwing her head back.

My grip tightened on the rifle stock. The code demands distance, but the blood pounding in my veins wanted something else.

I spent four years existing as a ghost, feeling nothing but cold granite and steel. Watching her shatters that isolation.

A visceral urge seized me, an instinct to abandon the overwatch, cross the valley, and drag my hands down her waist. I needed to grip those hips and pull her flush against me, to wind my fingers into her wet hair and taste the creek water on her mouth.

I need to prove to myself that I'm still alive.

Blood rushes south. An aching erection strains against my tactical pants.

I shift my weight on the rock, grinding my teeth against the physical discomfort.

I fight the distraction, forcing my breathing to steady, but the image of her in the water burns itself into the back of my eyelids. The lack of control is a liability.

For ten minutes, she isn't a federal agent. She isn't a name on a broker's hit list.

She's fierce. Solitary. Beautiful.

Owning her femininity with a raw, unprotected vulnerability that punches the breath out of my lungs.

The memory tightens my jaw. I force my focus back to the present. The crosshairs. The porch. The perimeter.

Dust kicks up on the access road leading to her property.

A gray SUV rolls toward the tree line.

I shift my grip on the rifle. The broker's verifier hasn't come. This isn't a reconnaissance pass. The broker lost faith in my timeline. At hour fifty-one, he sent a replacement.

A cleanup crew.

The SUV parks in the shadow of the pines. A man steps out.

No tactical gear. Just a canvas jacket and a suppressed HK USP in his right hand. He doesn't bother hiding the weapon. He expects an easy kill. An accountant alone in the woods.

He walks toward her porch, his boots crunching on the gravel.

Addy stops on the top step. Her hand drops to the Glock on her hip. She doesn't draw, but she anchors her stance. The casual lean of her body vanishes, replaced by a sudden, rigid tension.

Don't be a hero, Addy. Stay back.

I exhale.

At a mile and a half, I don't shoot where a target is. I shoot where he will be. I operate three seconds in the future. I map the length of his stride. The arc of his arm raising the HK USP. If I wait until his sights are aligned, Addy dies. He has to go down before his finger finds the trigger.

The world goes perfectly still. The wind dies. My heartbeat slows, the rhythmic thud in my ears fading into nothing.

I squeeze the trigger.

The recoil slams into my shoulder, a brutal, familiar impact. The crack of the shot shatters the silence on the ridge, echoing off the stone.

It takes three seconds for the .338 Lapua round to cross the valley. Three seconds for the present to catch up to the future I just wrote.

One.

Through the glass, the contractor takes another step.

Two.

Addy's fingers curl around the grip of her Glock.

Three.

The contractor raises his weapon. His head snaps back. A spray of crimson mists the air behind him. His body crumples to the dirt, dropping like a severed puppet.

Addy flinches. She stumbles back a step.

Then her training kicks in. The Glock clears her holster in a smooth motion. She sweeps the tree line, bringing the weapon up. Weaver stance solid. Hands completely steady.

She looks at the dead man bleeding out on her gravel driveway. Her eyes track the trajectory, instinctively following the invisible path of the bullet straight back to the ridge.

She won't find me.

I'm already gone.

Forty-five seconds.

I unseat the magazine. Clear the chamber. Fold the bipod. The rifle slides into the hardshell drag bag. Zip. Sling it across my back.

I break from the overwatch position, sprinting through the brush. The physical exertion burns my stiff muscles, but the adrenaline overrides the pain.

I swing my leg over the dirt bike hidden in a thicket of scrub oak. Kick the starter. The engine roars to life, a guttural snarl in the quiet mountain air.

I dump the clutch. The rear tire spins, biting into the dirt, and I tear down the ridge.

The access road is a treacherous blur of sage, deep ruts, and jagged rock.

I push the bike to the limit, the suspension bottoming out as I navigate the steep descent.

I don't check my corners. I don't maintain noise discipline.

Every rule of engagement I learned in Delta is gone, replaced by a singular, driving need to reach the valley floor.

The wind tears at my clothes, biting through the layers of my jacket.

The engine noise deafens me, masking the sound of my own ragged breathing.

I dodge a fallen pine, the handlebars jerking in my grip.

My tactical instincts scream at me to slow down, to establish a secondary perimeter, to approach with caution.

I could be driving into a prepared ambush.

But the image of her standing on that porch with a dead man at her feet overrides my training.

She doesn't know who took the shot. She doesn't know if the threat is neutralized or if the woods are swarming with an Ares cleanup crew. She's an accountant standing alone in a combat zone. Every second I spend on this mountain is a second she spends exposed.

I hit the valley floor and open the throttle. The house looms ahead.

I skid the bike to a halt in her gravel driveway. The back tire kicks up a spray of sharp rocks.

I drop the kickstand and step off in one fluid motion.

Her front door is closed.

I cross the driveway, boots crunching over the same gravel the contractor walked. I step over his body. Blood pools on the wooden planks, thick and dark.

I don't knock.

My combat boot hits the wood right next to the lock. The frame splinters with a violent crack. The door crashes open, rebounding off the interior wall.

The inside of the house smells like cinnamon and fresh bread. A sharp contrast to the copper tang of blood creeping over the threshold behind me.

Addy stands in the center of the living room.

The Glock is leveled directly at my chest.

Her eyes are wide and locked on mine. She doesn't shake. She doesn't scream. She holds the weapon with the competence of someone fully prepared to pull the trigger.

"Drop it." Her voice cuts through the ringing in my ears. Sharp. Unwavering.

"You've got sixty seconds. A cleanup team is already on the way." I ignore the command, holding her gaze. "We are out of time."

She studies my face. Her eyes track over the hardshell rifle bag slung across my back. They drop to my empty hands. She calculates the risk, reading the angles.

"Who are you?"

"Wyatt. Wyatt Harrison."

"That tells me nothing." The Glock wavers a fraction of an inch.

"You're down to fifty seconds." I step into the room. I keep my hands loose, resting near my thighs, far away from my sidearm. "You don't have time for second guessing. Not if you want to live."

She doesn't lower the barrel completely, but the tension in her shoulders shifts.

She turns. She doesn't run to the bedroom to pack. She doesn't scramble for shoes or a jacket. She moves straight to the kitchen counter.

She pulls a tactical go-bag out from under the island. Fully packed. Waiting. She's been anticipating a breach.

Then she grabs a heavy, reinforced hardshell external drive.

I clock the movement. The way she holds it. The protective curl of her fingers over the casing.

She drops the drive into the go-bag, prioritizing the data above everything else. The work is her shield, her entire life condensed into a metal box.

Who the hell is this woman?

"Let's go." She slings the heavy bag over her shoulder and turns back to face me.