Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Maddox stood on the dock, hair plastered to his temples, coat whipping in the wind like a banner. He shouted something Vivian couldn’t hear and jabbed a hand toward the men on the pier. They hesitated, weapons dipping a fraction.
Vivian’s throat closed around a hundred unsaid things. “He came,” she breathed.
Blake didn’t look away from the scene below. “Or they dragged him along for the show.”
A smaller team broke off from the convoy, moving toward the gangway. One carried a megaphone. Another had restraints clipped to his belt.
Negotiation. Or capture.
Once, Maddox had been the reason she joined the program. The man who’d pulled her out of the wreckage of her first mission and told her she was worth more than her father’s shadow. But the men flanking him now wore unmarked uniforms and moved like operators, not allies.
She lifted the rifle, sighted down at the trucks. “Maddox,” she whispered, “what did you do?”
Lightning split the sky, freezing everything—trucks, men, black water, and Maddox, staring straight up at the ship.
Right at her.
Their eyes met through sleet and distance. Relief or regret, she couldn’t tell which lived in his face.
Thunder cracked, shattering the moment. A woman’s voice boomed from a loudspeaker, sharp and impersonal.
“Vivian Durand. Thomas Blake. Stand down and come out slowly with your hands visible.”
Vivian flinched. Not Maddox. Someone above him. Thirteen’s warning about someone close to him being the leak leached into her thoughts.
Blake gave a humorless huff. “There’s your rescue party.”
“They want us alive,” Vivian said, forcing her brain to keep working. “Alive is leverage.”
The ship groaned under them, tilting another inch toward the water.
“We hold here,” she said. “Nobody gets up the ramp until we know whose side Maddox is on.”
Blake nodded once. “Then let’s find out.”
She slid into the shadow of the control room bulkhead, pressing her shoulder to cold steel. Below, headlights cut through the rain, turning the pier into a wash of white and shadow. Men moved with mechanical precision. Too controlled. Too clean.
The loudspeaker crackled again. “You’re surrounded. Stand down and prepare for retrieval.”
Retrieval. Like she was cargo.
“Something’s wrong,” Blake said.
“Everything’s wrong,” she answered.
Floodlights along the pier snapped on, bathing the deck in white glare. Vivian ducked deeper into shadow.
“If they’ve got thermal, we’re done,” Blake muttered.
Maddox’s voice came over the loudspeaker, distorted but unmistakable. “Hold positions. I’ll make contact.”
Her chest squeezed. “He’s stalling,” she murmured. Buying them time, or setting the board. She didn’t know which.
Blake’s gaze locked on Maddox’s figure commanding the men below. “He’s not moving like a man in charge. He’s moving like a man on a leash.”
“If there’s any part of him left, I can reach it,” she whispered.
“And if you can’t?”
She didn’t answer.
The loudspeaker barked again. “Final warning. Stand down or we will engage.”
Vivian inhaled slowly, let it out. “We can’t take them all.”
“No,” Blake said. “But we can make them think we can.” He gestured toward the nearest floodlight.
She shifted, braced the rifle. One shot burst the lamp into sparks. Darkness swallowed half the deck.
Gunfire ripped up from the pier, rounds pinging off the hull. Vivian dropped, fired three controlled bursts toward the gangway, then rolled to cover as Blake shifted to the stern and returned fire.
The rhythm came back fast—move, aim, fire, breathe.
The radio flared again, Maddox cutting through the chaos. “Vivian. Stand down. That’s an order.”
Her muscles locked. The words hit bone-deep—years of training and loyalty compressed into a single command.
“You’re protecting him,” Maddox continued, voice rough, threaded with something like grief. “You’re becoming exactly what you swore you wouldn’t. Your father’s daughter.”
The accusation hit harder than the bullets.
“Viv,” Blake snapped, sharp enough to break the spell. “Stay with me.”
She blinked, vision clearing. Men below were repositioning, two breaking toward starboard, using the hull as cover. Maddox moved with them, shouting orders she couldn’t hear.
“Vivian!” His voice lifted again, louder now, cutting through the storm without the loudspeaker. “I’m giving you a chance. Surrender, and we can fix this.”
Fix this. The same words he’d always used when the body count was wrong and the op went sideways. We can fix this. As if guilt could be filed and forgotten.
Blake crouched beside her. “Look at their formation. Flankers, hooks, advance team at the ramp. This isn’t negotiation. It’s extraction.”
“Extraction of who?” she demanded. “Us or them?”
“Both,” Blake said. “You as the trophy. Me as the corpse.”
A sharp metallic clank echoed across the deck. Grappling hooks bit into the railing. Lines went taut. Dark shapes began to climb.
“Here they come,” Blake said, swinging his rifle.
Vivian fired, dropping one climber, jolting another off the hull with a well-timed shot. A wave did the rest, ripping him into the dark.
“Fall back. Control room,” Blake shouted.
They ran low across the slick deck, bullets sparking off steel. They dove through the ragged opening blown out by the earlier blast. Vivian hit the floor hard and slid behind a console, breath tearing in her chest.
“Port side,” Blake called. “Keep them off the glass.”
She braced her rifle on the window frame. Three shapes. Then four. She fired until one fell and the others dropped below the lip of the hull.
Rain poured through the broken doorway, flooding the floor. Blake reloaded in a smooth, practiced motion.
“They’re not pushing,” he said. “They’re waiting.”
“For what?” she asked, though she already knew.
“For Maddox,” Blake said. “For whatever he promised them.”
Vivian’s gaze dragged back to the pier. The floodlights were gone now, shattered or cut. Only SUV headlamps and pulsing hazard lights strobed red across the waves. In the middle of it all stood Maddox, dark coat snapping like a flag.
He grabbed one of his men by the collar and slammed him against a truck when he balked at an order.
“That’s not control,” Blake said quietly, following her line of sight. “That’s desperation.”
Hope flickered—small and reckless. Then the ship shuddered. A low, gut-deep groan rolled through the hull. Metal screamed.
“Pressure hull breach. We’ve got minutes before she starts going under,” Blake said.
“We can’t stay,” Vivian said.
“No,” he agreed. “But we can make sure they don’t drag us out in chains.”
He moved to the console. “Engine room’s primed. One overload and this whole operation loses its dock.”
Her hand shot out, grabbing his arm. “Blake, if Maddox is playing both sides, he could still turn this. Let me try.”
A voice cut her off. Closer this time. Not through speakers.
“Vivian!”
She turned. Maddox stood partway up the gangway, rain sluicing off his face, weapon hanging loose at his side.
“Don’t do this,” he yelled.
Blake stepped in front of her, rifle raised. “Stay where you are.”
Maddox’s gaze flicked to Blake, then back to her. “If you trust me, tell him to lower that gun!”
“Trust you?” Blake snapped. “You brought an army to finish the job.”
“I didn’t bring them. I steered them here. You think I control this?” Maddox flung an arm toward the trucks, the guns, the men. “I’m barely holding them off.”
Lightning flared, throwing his face into stark relief—drawn, exhausted, eyes raw.
“You think this is about you?” Maddox called. “It’s not. You’re convenient. They need someone to blame for the leak. Someone off the books. Former field asset, dirty history. You fit the headline.”
“They want Blake,” Vivian said, the pieces snapping together.
“They want a scapegoat,” Maddox corrected. “You’re leverage. They won’t kill you outright. They can’t. Too valuable. But if they get you both? They don’t have to choose.”
Blake’s jaw locked. “So your solution is what? Walk me down in cuffs and call it a win?”
“I can get her out,” Maddox said, voice fraying. “If they think you took her hostage and I recovered her, I can write you out of the final report. But I can’t do that if you’re still standing at her side with a gun in your hand.”
Vivian’s stomach turned. “You’re asking him to sacrifice himself so you can play hero?”
“I’m asking him to buy you a life,” Maddox said, eyes on her now. “It’s the only way this ends with you breathing.”
Blake looked at her. The fight in his gaze shifted—hardening into something quieter. Resigned.
“If he’s telling the truth,” Blake said, “this gives you a shot.”
She shook her head. “No. Maddox isn’t your ghost to carry. He’s mine.”
Blake’s mouth tilted, a faint, crooked almost-smile. “You’re better at long games than I am.”
Lightning cracked overhead. Before she could stop him, Blake lowered the rifle. Slowly. The echo of the safety clicking off duty sounded louder than the storm.
“Blake—don’t,” she choked.
He let the rifle drop. It hit the deck with a dull, final thud.
He raised his hands, never looking away from her. “Guess this is where I lean into my reputation.”
Maddox exhaled, shoulders sagging. “They’ll take you alive,” he promised. “I can work with that.”
Vivian surged forward, but Maddox caught her arm, shoving her back against the bulkhead.
“You move, he dies,” he said, voice ice-cold. “You know how they work.”
Rain and seawater and panic blurred everything. Blake walked toward the rail at the far end of the deck, He stopped at the edge, turned back one last time.
His smile was small and devastating. “We could’ve been good together,” he said.
Then, before the men could reach him, he pivoted, vaulted the railing, and disappeared into the black water below.