Chapter 14 #2
Mara’s gaze lifted across the deck. Her lips moved. Two words. “Mom? Dad?”
Blake’s chest ached. Did the kid believe the lie? Maybe it didn’t matter.
“Put the gun down,” the leader ordered. “Show me you’re serious.”
Vivian lowered the muzzle just enough to sell it. “You want a name? The one who sold you out? Let my daughter go, and I’ll give it to you.”
The leader’s patience snapped. “Cute story,” he said. “But I think I’ll keep the kid and decide later who to believe.”
“Believe this,” she said. “I misdirected the FBI to the lighthouse. You notice the gunfire stopped? That’s because your hired guns and the Bureau cut a deal a long time ago. We just proved we’ll do anything for our daughter, and they’ll do anything to keep their hands clean.”
Gunfire fractured the air.
Blake pivoted toward the docks—shadows moving fast through the fog, weapons raised. Not Laurel Tide. Different uniforms, unmarked. The hired guns.
The first volley cut through both sides—Laurel Tide and their own position. Bullets splintered wood, tore through cargo crates, punched sparks off metal.
“Down!” Blake shouted, dragging Vivian behind a winch post.
“Who the—”
“Militia,” he said, voice hard. “The same ones you’ve been paying to ‘keep Laurel’s routes clean.’ Believe her now?”
Laurel Tide scrambled, confused, turning their guns on the new arrivals.
She stood, bold and furious, weapon raised—not at Laurel Tide, but at the mercs. She fired two clean shots, cutting down a gunman creeping behind the crates.
Laurel Tide’s leader jerked up in surprise.
Vivian’s voice carried across the chaos. “You want to live? Start returning fire.”
The line between enemies blurred instantly. For brutal seconds, they fought side by side, pushing back the tide of gunfire. Then silence, the reek of smoke and blood, and the wind screaming through bullet holes.
Blake never thought in his life he’d be defending Laurel Tide, the organization he’d fought for years to take down, but he wasn’t fighting for them. He was fighting for Viv and that little innocent child to survive.
Laurel Tide’s commander, bleeding from a graze, pointed his weapon at the ground. “You saved my men,” he said warily.
Vivian didn’t lower hers. “We just stopped the people you were stupid enough to hire.”
Blake stepped forward, hand raised, his voice steady. “We’ve got intel that’ll make this stop—for all of us. The data you wanted from the FBI? It’s real. I’ll give you everything we found. Call it proof of good faith.”
The man hesitated. “And why would you do that?”
Blake met his gaze. “Because the agency will burn both sides just to stay clean.”
Vivian watched him, something flickering in her expression—trust and disbelief, all tangled up. He ignored it. The only way out was through.
Blake straightened, lowering his weapon but not dropping it. “You want proof?” he said, jerking his chin toward the docked boat. “It’s on board. Every route, every payout, every contact name the Bureau buried. You’ll see exactly how deep this goes.”
The Laurel Tide commander hesitated, eyes narrowing. Behind him, his men shifted uneasily—wary, exhausted, blood-smeared. They wanted this over as much as anyone.
“Show me,” the commander said finally.
Blake nodded once. “Viv, watch our six.”
He retrieved the file Thirteen had given him from his coat.
“Everything we pulled,” Blake said. “Financials, routes, names tied to both Laurel Tide and Bureau ops. You’ll notice your own accounts flagged.
The Bureau wanted to use your shell companies to launder confiscated weapons.
They were never going to let your people walk away clean. ”
The commander stepped forward, leaning over, studying dates and sums and contact codes stacked like evidence in a courtroom. The man’s jaw tightened.
“This came from the Bureau servers?”
“Off-books archives,” Blake said. “The kind that don’t exist unless someone bleeds for them.”
Thirteen marched up the docks, eyes only whispering over them like they were nonconsequential. “We’ve got movement on the ridge,” he muttered. “Headlights.”
Blake’s pulse ticked higher. “Militia?”
The commander looked to Thirteen, “Your men? I hold you responsible.”
Thirteen only offered a curt nod. “I want to take them down myself, then you can deal with me. Brothers don’t betray brothers.”
Rapid fire erupted from the end of the docks, stealing the commander’s attention.
Blake scooped Viv and Mara into his arms and ushered them into a warehouse.
Automatic fire rattled the tin walls—short, disciplined bursts.
They stumbled in and slammed the door shut.
Outside, muzzle flashes lit the rain in strobe bursts. Thirteen crouched behind a cargo crate, returning fire in measured rhythm.
Bullets shredded the edge of the crate, splinters slicing his cheek.
“They’re cleaning house,” Blake said.
Vivian’s voice cut through the chaos. “We need to get Mara out of here.”
He spun to find Viv crouched on the floor, shielding the little girl, murmuring soft words between bursts of gunfire. For half a second, it was all wrong—the domestic tenderness of it inside a warzone.
He forced himself to look away and face the battle raging outside.
A flash grenade detonated near the bow of a ship, white light swallowing everything. The commander who’d stood beside them moments before went down hard. His men scattered, shouting over one another.
Blake blinked the flash from his eyes. “Viv—out the back door, now.”
She hesitated. “Blake—”
“Go!”
He covered her movement, firing through the doorway as she darted into the main part of the building, Mara clutched tight against her chest. The sight hit him harder than the concussion of the next blast. He’d called the girl his child as a bluff, a desperate card to buy time—but watching Vivian shield her like that, something inside him twisted, settling into a new truth.
A man tumbled into the door and rolled. Blake lifted his gun, but Thirteen held up his hand. “I’ll draw fire. You get them out.”
“Not happening.” Blake crouched low behind the console and made a decision. “Viv, you ready to leave the agency?”
She offered a firm nod.
“Then get your phone out and finish executing this crazy plan of yours.”
Thirteen looked between them. “I hope it’s a good crazy.”
“This is Special Agent Vivian Durand, FBI. Pier Seven—active firefight tied to Laurel Tide. Noncombatant child and classified evidence in play. We need immediate extraction and tactical units on site.
“Three minutes?” She lowered the phone and tucked Mara closer to her chest. “It might as well be three years,” she grumbled.
Men burst through the office into the main building, so they took cover behind some crates.
Vivian tucked Mara by her feet then fired another burst over the top, the muzzle flash lighting her eyes like lightning. “If they don’t get here fast, there won’t be anything left to extract.”
“They’ll come. We’ve got information they can’t afford to lose,” Blake said, forcing conviction into his words. He needed her to believe it, even if he didn’t himself.
Vivian nodded. “I hope so, because they’re the only ones who can get us out alive, but they’ll want something to show for it.”
Thirteen’s gaze flicked toward Mara, then back to Blake. He understood. “Then let me be the something.”
“You’ll be in deep for a long time. You could still take Mara and escape now.”
“There’s no running from this. And we don’t know each other. I’m not father material anyway. Let me be the only father I can be and protect my daughter.”
Vivian nodded. Blake clapped him on the shoulder, knowing Thirteen was a man he could respect and befriend, but that would never be, so instead they’d be comrades for a few moments in time.
The three of them held the enemy. Stinging bullet casings hissed in the puddles that had dripped from the holes in the tin roof.
“I’m out,” Vivian yelled, and squatted down, cuddling Mara closer, covering her head and holding her tight.
“Me, too,” Blake said.
Thirteen kept firing for another ten seconds until he dropped to their side in defeat.
A beat later, a shadow swept across the cement floor through the broken windows at the top of the walls. Blake leaned enough to see out the main door. Black helicopters dropped low, their spotlights cutting through the storm. Gunfire faltered from the docks as armored silhouettes hit the ground.
The FBI had come for its mess.
By the time they reached them, the fight was over. The harbor burned behind them. Agents in black vests entered the building fast, weapons trained until a senior field officer spotted them in the corner. Agents fanned out, weapons trained hard on them.
“Hands up. Identify yourselves,” one shouted.
Blake lifted both hands slowly. “Special Agent Thomas Blake. Challenge phrase: Slate Horizon.”
Vivian raised her chin. “Agent Vivian Durand. Countersign: Horizon Acknowledged. Child is noncombatant. We initiated the extraction.”
A beat—radios crackled, bursts of static cutting through the storm.
“Command confirms challenge and counter,” someone reported.
Then the senior officer strode forward, lifting a hand. “Stand down,” a tall woman with blonde hair pulled into a bun ordered. They all laid down their weapons.
Vivian stiffened at Blake’s side.
The agent accepted it, unreadable. “Director wants this clean. You’re both out. Effective immediately. But you won’t be going home.”
Vivian didn’t flinch. “We want a deal.”
The officer’s gaze slid to Thirteen, wounded but standing tall. “Who’s he?”
Blake met Thirteen’s eyes. “He’s your next move. Deep cover. He can get closer than anyone.”
Thirteen gave a faint, crooked smile. “As long as they’re relocated and set up with full pension.”
“How deep?”
“Deep enough to know about your FBI plants in the missionaries Laurel Tide hired and the three you have deep cover in the operation.”
“Then you have contact with the leak in our agency.” The agent scowled, reaching for her cuffs.
“No, but the FBI has a pattern. I discovered it and was able to track men that slid into the organization at the right time and place. I’ll tell you the pattern, give you the names, and tell you that of the Americas Division of Laurel Tide.
Their chain of command collapsed after your strike.
Commander was taken out in the firefight.
I was already embedded, already trusted. Sliding into the vacancy wasn’t hard.”
The agent’s eyes went wide. “You’re what?”
But even as she said it, Blake saw recognition that she knew how fast power shifted in the fractured organization.
“You slaughtered everyone left here with that stunt you sent to clean up. I keep my mouth shut about your involvement, and any documentation I’ve collected, and I’ll feed you inside information on not only Laurel Tide, but the militia hired to protect them.”
Blake watched Thirteen spin his new legend into place and recognized the last step—not invented, but accelerated, the way only a collapsing criminal empire allowed—and recognized the final step of Vivian’s gamble.
They were trading one ghost inside Laurel Tide for a chance to keep a child, and the truth, alive.