21. Alexei #3
Before she can finish, I reach for her hand. My grip is firm, steady, a promise in the silence between us.
Then chaos detonates.
My attention jerks back to the screen, Clara moves first, a blur of motion and violence, dropping low as muzzle flashes tear through the space she occupied a second earlier.
Ruslan comes in from the flank, all brute force and momentum, slamming his body into the first man hard enough to drive the air from his lungs.
Ruslan is on top, his arm coming down in a brutal strike. Bone crack. A muffled scream.
“Braydon,” Clara snaps into the comm. “Go. Now.”
On our screen, Braydon’s marker moves and breaks his cover within seconds.
He moves like a man with purpose: unleashed.
Braydon slides his dart gun up, wrist steady, and fires in smooth, economical bursts.
One. Two. Three. Bodies stagger before collapsing, attempting to regain their hold on their weapons as they turn toward him, and fold.
The sedatives coursing through their veins, dragging them down mid-step.
Braydon doesn’t slow down or look back. He trusts Clara and Ruslan to have his back.
I switch channels. “Braydon, talk to me. What do you see?”
“Hostiles everywhere,” he grunts, breathing hard but controlled, the monitor showing him moving over treacherous terrain. “It’s working. They’re funneling toward Clara and Ruslan.”
“Status on Hannah?”
“I’ve got her.”
The camera jolts as he reaches her. Her muffled sound punches through the speaker, raw and desperate.
“I’m okay,” she forces out as Braydon pulls the gag free when he’s close enough, the words distorted but unmistakably hers.
Braydon yanks the gag free. Hannah coughs, sucking in air, then grabs his sleeve with shaking hands. “It’s a trap,” she says hoarsely. “You have to leave. Now.”
“We know,” Braydon replies grimly, already cutting rope. “Elena deciphered your message. You’re not staying.”
Her eyes dart past him, panic sharpening. “Was that really Alexei and Elena?”
Before I can stop her?—
“Hannah,” Elena’s voice breaks through the room, soft and wrecked. “I’m here. Are you okay?”
Hannah’s breath stutters. “Elena?” Her voice rises, relief crashing through fear. “You have to go. Leave me. Please.”
“Over my dead body,” Braydon mutters, freeing Hannah from the rest of the ropes binding her to the tree.
Gunfire cracks close. Hannah flinches. “If I’m talking to you,” she whispers urgently, “then who is that?”
“Clara and Ruslan,” Elena answers.
“Who’s Ruslan?”
“Not important,” I cut in. “Braydon, move. Now. Get her to safety.”
“With pleasure,” Braydon growls.
Braydon clasps Hannah’s hand with a fierce resolve as they race through the dark underbrush. The camera tracks them, tearing through the trees, branches whipping past, breath loud in the mic. My heart hammers against my ribs as if I am in the thick of it with them.
Then Hannah screams.
“Braydon,” I bark.
Only gunfire answers.
Another scream, closer this time, terror shredding the air.
The room, the screens and servers, even Maurice’s fingers on his keyboard, go utterly still.
Clara’s voice slices through the noise. “Braydon, keep going. I’ve got you covered!”
“Maurice,” I bark, already turning. “Do it. Send them. Now.”
He’s moving before I finish speaking, phone pressed to his ear, orders firing off in rapid succession.
We wait. Elena drifts toward me, her presence creeping in until every breath feels shared, her body instinctively seeking the shelter of me.
Seconds stretch thin and brittle. My mind runs the contingency we buried under layers of planning, the reinforcements staged over a mile out, the line we swore we wouldn’t cross unless everything went sideways. The line was fast approaching.
Static hisses through the line, filling up the room.
Then—
“I’m up,” Clara declares.
My breath stutters. “Report.”
“We’re fine,” she replies. “The Russian’s a little beat up.”
Ruslan snorts faintly in the background.
“But,” Clara continues, slower now, uncertain, “something doesn’t make sense.”
Elena leans forward. “What doesn’t make sense?”
“They backed off,” Clara answers. “It was a clean, organized, tactical retreat.”
Elena turns to me. “Because you sent in the reinforcements.”
I don’t answer.
Because I know better.
I hear it in Clara’s voice. In the way the fight ended too neatly. In the space they were allowed to escape through.
If they wanted Hannah, they would have kept her.
They wanted us to take her. Why?
“Lex,” Clara says quietly.
“Exfil,” I order. “We got what we came for. Watch your six. Get out now.” I glance at Maurice. “Cut the feed.”
The screens in the room go dark.
Elena turns to me, worry etching lines between her brows. “What’s going on?”
“They let her go,” I say softly. “On purpose. This wasn’t about keeping Hannah. It was about sending a message.”
Her frown deepens. “A message?” Her brows pinch together in deep thought. “What do you think their next move is?”
Before I can answer, her phone buzzes.
The sound is loud in the silence.
She pulls it from her pocket.
Unknown number.
Again.
I meet her eyes. “I think,” I say quietly, “we’re about to find out.”