17. The Return
SEVENTEEN
The Return
ADDY
Two days.
Forty-eight agonizing, suffocating hours since Frost and his tactical team loaded into their heavy SUVs in a freezing motel parking lot and vanished into the desert. Forty-eight hours since I forced Wyatt's brother to make a choice between following orders and saving his own blood.
I haven't slept a single minute since they left.
I pace the length of the secure command center, my boots completely silent against the heavy industrial carpeting.
The safehouse is a sprawling, subterranean bunker hidden deep in the unforgiving Arizona desert, miles away from civilization and far beyond the reach of the Ares syndicate.
Hawk brought me here immediately after Frost deployed.
It's a fortress of thick concrete, blast doors, and humming server towers.
It feels exactly like a tomb.
"You're going to burn a hole straight through the subfloor, Addy." Mitzy doesn't look up from her sprawling bank of curved, glowing monitors.
Mitzy is the technical lead for Guardian HRS. She is small, fiercely intelligent, and completely unfazed by the frantic, nervous energy radiating off me in waves.
She types with blinding speed, the endless streams of encrypted code reflecting bright green against her skin. Her desk is a chaotic landscape of empty energy drink cans and tangled cables.
"I can't just sit here." My voice is tight and raw from disuse. "I can't do nothing while he's out there."
"Sit anyway." CJ leans casually against the edge of a massive oak conference table in the center of the room.
CJ is the lead of the Guardian teams. He's a massive, deeply imposing man with calm, calculating eyes that miss absolutely nothing. Sam stands next to him, equally quiet, equally lethal. Hawk introduced them when we arrived, treating the two men with a profound, unspoken respect.
They are the apex predators of the black-ops world. They move without making a sound, and their mere presence shifts the gravity in the room.
Right now, their steady, immovable calm is the only thing keeping me from losing my mind.
"We don't pace in this house." Sam's voice is soft, his sharp gaze tracking my movement. "Pacing means you're doubting the team. Frost doesn't lose. If he went after his brother, he's bringing him back."
"You don't know the compound they're hitting," I whisper, wrapping my arms around my chest. "You don't know the odds."
"We don't need to." CJ leans back against the leather sofa. "We know Frost and his team."
"Got it!" Mitzy shouts, slamming her hand down on the enter key with a sharp, victorious crack.
The three massive tactical screens dominating the far wall instantly shift from black to a blinding white.
Data floods the displays in cascading columns.
Names. Offshore bank accounts. Routing numbers.
Shell companies tied directly to the Ares broker and the upper echelons of the human trafficking syndicate.
"This is brilliant." Mitzy spins her heavy ergonomic chair around to face me. "The forensic audit you ran on his ledger? The files you pulled from the USB? It's completely flawless."
I stop pacing, staring at the endless rows of data exposing the monster who hunted me. "Is it enough to break them?"
"You didn't just find a leak." Mitzy's voice is thick with genuine awe.
"You handed us the entire plumbing system.
We have their logistics, their payroll, their international transit routes.
With this intel, we can permanently dismantle the Ares syndicate.
Not just a branch of it. The whole damn tree. "
Mitzy shares a heavy, meaningful look with CJ.
"It's exactly what we need." CJ's deep voice carries absolute authority. He pushes off the table, turning his gaze to me. "The real work begins now. Guardian HRS will tear their infrastructure apart piece by piece. They won't have the resources or the manpower to hunt anyone ever again."
"But is it enough to keep Wyatt safe?" The question tears out of me, jagged and desperate. "None of this matters if he doesn't come back."
A sharp, sudden burst of static crackles from the heavy military radio resting in the center of the conference table.
The entire room goes dead silent.
Hawk crosses the command center in three massive strides. He grabs the heavy handset, his thumb depressing the mic button. "Actual, this is Overwatch. Go ahead."
The static hisses over the room speakers, thick, distorted, and agonizingly slow. I grip the back of a leather chair, my knuckles turning white as the blood drains from my hands.
"Overwatch, this is Actual." The voice is harsh, breathing heavily. "Package secured. Threat neutralized. We're ten minutes out from the rally point. Prepare the medical bay."
It's Flint's voice.
My breath catches sharply in my throat. The words threat neutralized echo in the quiet room. The broker is dead. Wyatt did what he set out to do. But the words prepare the medical bay, make my blood run cold.
Hawk holds the radio to his ear, listening to a secondary, encrypted transmission that doesn't broadcast over the room speakers. His expression gives absolutely nothing away. The hardened tactical operator remains entirely stoic, his jaw locked tight.
Every second that passes feels like a physical weight pressing down on my chest.
Hawk slowly lowers the radio. He meets my eyes across the room.
"He's with them." Hawk's deep voice softens just a fraction, a crack in the armor. "Alive, kickin' and cursing up a storm."
The relief hits me with the devastating force of a physical blow.
My knees instantly buckle. I sink heavily into the leather chair, burying my face in my trembling hands. A broken, ragged sob tears out of my throat. The agonizing tension that has held my spine rigid for two days shatters completely, leaving me hollow, exhausted, and shaking uncontrollably.
He's alive. He's coming back.
Ten minutes stretches into a lifetime.
I pace the corridor leading to the subterranean vehicle bay, unable to sit still for another second. The heavy rumble of diesel engines finally vibrates through the thick concrete walls of the safehouse. Tires crunch aggressively on gravel outside the reinforced, blast-proof bay doors.
CJ pushes through the double doors leading into the bay, moving with long, purposeful strides. Sam and Hawk follow closely behind him.
The vehicle bay is massive and blindingly lit by rows of heavy industrial halogens. Two matte-black Guardian SUVs sit in the center of the stained concrete floor. A third drives in, steam hissing violently from the radiator.
The heavy tactical armor plating is pockmarked with fresh bullet holes, and deep, jagged gouges mar the reinforced steel doors.
The heavy diesel engines cut off. The doors swing open.
Frost steps out of the driver's side.
He's covered head to toe in a thick layer of pale desert dust. Dark, wet blood stains the heavy canvas of his tactical plate carrier.
He doesn't look like the cold, emotionless, untouchable commander who stood in the motel parking lot two days ago. He looks exhausted. He looks entirely human.
CJ steps forward, offering his hand. Frost takes it in a firm, solid grip.
"Good to see you back in one piece." CJ scans the damage to the vehicle.
"Barely." Frost rolls his broad shoulders with a wince. "Ran into some heavy, entrenched suppression fire on the initial breach. Took us longer than I wanted to clear the courtyard. We burned down the house."
"I hear you picked up a stray on the way." CJ's eyes shift deliberately toward the back of the SUV.
The rear passenger door opens.
Wyatt steps out into the harsh fluorescent light.
My heart stops dead in my chest.
He looks like he walked directly through hell.
The left sleeve of his dark jacket is completely soaked in dark, dried blood.
A thick, black combat tourniquet is strapped high and tight on his bicep.
His tactical vest is torn open down the center, the heavy ceramic plate beneath it shattered into jagged, useless pieces.
He moves slowly, agonizingly, his uninjured arm held tightly against his ribs. Every single breath visibly costs him, his chest heaving with the effort.
He stops leaning against the heavy frame of the SUV and scans the bay. His pale blue eyes pass over CJ, Sam, and Mitzy. He clearly recognizes the heavy hitters of Guardian HRS by reputation, but his gaze doesn't linger on them for a single, solitary second.
He finds me.
The lethal chill in his eyes melts instantly. The defensive armor he wears like a second skin simply vanishes.
I don't wait for him to walk to me.
I cross the concrete bay in a dead sprint. I throw my arms around his neck, burying my face in the curve of his shoulder, not caring about the blood or the dirt or the audience watching us.
Wyatt lets out a harsh groan, his good arm wrapping fiercely around my waist. He crushes me against his bruised chest, burying his face deep in my hair.
He smells of sharp cordite, dry desert dust, and old blood, and it is the most beautiful, intoxicating thing I have ever breathed in.
"I'm here." His words are ragged and desperate against my ear.
I pull back just enough to look at his face. The bruising along his jaw is dark, purple, and angry. He looks exhausted down to his bones.
"You lied to me." My voice trembles as I reach up to touch his cheek. "But you left the GPS coordinates on the desk. I had to send Frost after you."
"I should have known you'd find the coordinates."A ghost of a smile touches the corners of his chapped lips.
"You're an idiot." I whisper, pressing my forehead against his.
"I know."
CJ clears his throat, his deep, resonant voice carrying easily across the concrete bay. "Well, Frost. It looks like you finally found the sixth member for Echo Team."
Wyatt stiffens instantly. He turns his head, his brow furrowing in deep confusion as he looks between CJ and Frost.
Frost leans against the shattered hood of the SUV, crossing his massive arms over his chest. The icy, unapproachable commander is completely gone. A genuine, profoundly arrogant smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth.
"Yeah, about that." Frost looks directly at Wyatt. "Echo Team is officially standing up this week. We've got an empty spot. I don't know if you want it, but the team's complete if you take the sixth slot."
Wyatt stares blankly at his older brother. The absolute shock is written in the rigid set of his shoulders.
Frost isn't just offering him a job. He's offering him a home. He's offering him absolution for the sins of the past four years.
For four agonizing years, Wyatt has been a ghost. A killer operating alone in the dark, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Now, the finest, most elite black-ops unit in the world is opening its doors to him. His brother is opening his doors to him.
Frost pushes off the hood of the SUV, wincing slightly as he stretches his lower back. He looks at me, his arrogant smirk widening.
"That's one hell of a woman you have there, brother." Frost shifts his gaze back to Wyatt. "You should have seen the way she ripped into me. Convinced me to cross the border and drag your ass home."
He wrinkles his nose in exaggerated disgust. "Now do me a favor, Addy, and take him to the medical wing. Clean him up. He stinks to high heaven, and he bled all over the back of my SUV."
"It's a rental, you jackass." Wyatt lets out a short, rough laugh, the sound catching painfully in his cracked ribs.
"It's the principle," Frost shoots back without missing a beat, turning to walk toward CJ and Sam.
I grip Wyatt's uninjured hand, my fingers lacing tightly through his. He doesn't pull away. He doesn't hesitate. The walls he spent four years building have completely crumbled into dust.
"Come on." I tug him gently toward the makeshift medical bay.
Wyatt looks down at me. The shadows in his eyes are gone, replaced by something steady, warm, and infinitely permanent.
"Lead the way." He shifts the heavy gear bag higher on his shoulder.