13. The Heirloom #2
She finds me across the cavernous room. The connection is instantaneous, a physical jolt locking us together. The heat of the last three hours flashes between us, a shared secret in the heavy air.
I close the distance, my boots echoing against the concrete.
"You should be sleeping." I stop a foot away. The urge to pull her into my arms is a physical ache.
"I couldn't." Her voice is quiet but steady. She looks up at me, green eyes clear of fear. "Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Andrea in that elevator."
Guilt sits heavy in my chest. I prioritized Lily, and Andrea is the debt I have to pay.
"Cipher has the compass." I gesture toward the workbench. "It's a military-grade data cache. He's breaking the encryption now."
Hope flares in her expression, a brightness cutting through the exhaustion. "Does it have the location? Do you know where she is?"
"Not yet." I keep my voice level. "It's a hostile system. It's going to take time."
She looks past me, watching Cipher and Ivy work. The tactical operation in the center of the facility is alien to her world.
"My father was a monster." A quiet confession, laced with bitter sorrow. "He built a cage for innocent girls, and he financed it playing the perfect, respectable businessman."
"He was." I refuse to offer empty platitudes. The truth is ugly. "But he also gave you the weapon to tear it down."
She turns her gaze back to me. The sorrow hardens into resolve. She's forging her grief into a weapon.
"When you find the location," she says, her voice dropping to a fierce whisper, "you're going to take me with you."
The protective instinct surges. "Not a chance."
"Dax." She steps closer, invading my space. The scent of my soap clings to her skin, an intoxicating reminder of the last three hours. "She's my best friend. I'm not going to sit in a rusted shack while you fight my battles."
"It isn't a battle." I grip her upper arms, fingers pressing into the fabric of the T-shirt. "It's a slaughter. The Consortium's central hub will be fortified with a paramilitary force. You have no tactical training. You're a liability in a firefight."
"You took me into the Consortium's compound." She lifts her chin, challenging the operator. "That was a trap, and I walked out of it beside you. You already decided I could handle myself. Why is this different?"
"That trap closed on us. Fighting you out of it wasn't a choice—it was the only door." The memory of her diving into the line of fire sends a spike of terror through my veins. "The hub is a choice. Keeping you close is not the same as marching you into a meat grinder."
"You don't get to decide my fate." She tries to pull away, but my grip holds. The frustration in her eyes is a blazing inferno. "You don't get to lock me in a tower to keep me safe."
"I get to keep you alive." The words come out a harsh, possessive growl. Beneath them, a feral instinct overrides the tactical logic—claim her, protect her, never let her out of my sight.
"I'm not yours to control." Anger flashes across her face, sharp and brilliant. "I'm not a target. I'm not an objective. I'm a person, and I'm choosing to fight."
The argument is derailed by a triumphant shout from the workbench.
"Got it!" Cipher slams his hand against the metal table.
I release Lily's arms and turn toward the center of the room.
"Talk to me." I cross the concrete floor; Lily right on my heels.
"The polymorphic cipher collapsed." Cipher's fingers fly across the keys, organizing the influx of data. "Ivy's tandem attack forced a buffer overflow. The firewall is down."
The ruggedized screen fills with columns of plain-text spreadsheets and regional property records.
"It's a regional expense ledger." Ivy leans closer, tracking the scrolling data. "Water bills. Commercial electricity accounts. High-bandwidth internet contracts. Arthur Masters wasn't holding the global treasury. He was paying the local operational overhead."
"I don't care about the utility payments." I stare at the screen. "Find the physical hub. Find the holding facility."
"The bills are the map." Cipher types a rapid string of commands, cross-referencing the expense cache. "A facility holding that many people requires massive water filtration and industrial climate control. I'm filtering the ledger for properties with anomalous commercial power consumption."
A map of Southeast Asia replaces the financial ledger. A red beacon pulses in the mountainous region of northern Thailand, near the Myanmar border.
"Bingo." Cipher taps the screen. "Coordinates confirmed. It's an abandoned Cold War-era radar installation. Massive subterranean structure. Heavily fortified."
"Are there heat signatures?" Rook steps up behind Cipher, the point man already analyzing the objective.
"Running a satellite pass now." Ivy taps her earpiece, accessing a classified orbital feed. "Standby."
The tension in the room is a physical pressure. Lily stands beside me, her gaze locked on the red beacon. Her friend is there. The nightmare is tangible.
"Satellite confirms." Ivy taps a new key command. "Multiple heat signatures in the subterranean levels. At least forty hostiles patrolling the perimeter. It's a fortress."
"Then we breach the perimeter." I stare at the red dot. "We have the location."
"It's suicide for five operators." Bronco shakes his head, leaning over the console. "We're outmanned and operating off the grid. Hutch isn't going to send a cavalry to pull us out if we get pinned down."
"We don't need a cavalry." I keep my voice flat. "We hit them fast. Prioritize the holding cells, extract the captives, and burn the rest."
"Stop thinking like a hammer, Wraith." Ivy holds up a hand, cutting off the tactical debate. She drags a new spreadsheet onto the main display. "We don't need brute force. Look at these vendor payments from the last forty-eight hours."
I look at the screen. The numbers are staggering. "That's a massive volume of alcohol."
"Alcohol, high-end catering, and private transport." Ivy's eyes track the data columns. "They aren't just holding girls down there. They're hosting an auction tonight. And these outbound transport logs? High-level Consortium couriers, scheduled to extract the sold assets under cover of the party."
Cipher nods, catching her drift. "A party means external contractors, staff, noise, and distracted guards."
"Exactly." Ivy taps the screen. "We don't lay siege to the building. We slip in through the logistical blind spots. Give me twenty minutes with these files to map the vendor delivery routes."
The mood in the room shifts from desperate last stand to calculated infiltration. The prospect of a surgical strike sharpens the team's focus.
Cipher seats the drive back into the compass housing and snaps the back plate into place. He crosses to Lily and settles the chain into her palm. "The original rides with its keeper. The copy lives on my tablet. If anyone ever cracks that casing open, they'll find what they expect to find."
I turn back to Lily.
She stares at the map, the reality of the coming violence reflected in her green eyes.
"You stay here." My voice leaves no room for negotiation. "Ivy stays with you. She'll secure the perimeter, and you can help her monitor the comms."
She looks at me, the defiance returning. "I'm going."
"Lily." The exhaustion bleeds into my tone. "Please."
The single word is a devastating concession. The sniper never begs. The operator never pleads. But the man standing in front of her is terrified of losing the only light he's found in five years of darkness.
She hesitates, the anger warring with the realization of what that word cost me.
"I'll bring her back." I reach out, my calloused fingers brushing her pale cheek. The weapon and the grace, side by side. "I swear to you, I'll bring Andrea back. But I can't do my job if I'm worrying about a bullet finding you."
She leans into my touch, her eyes closing. A ragged sigh escapes her. The dancer concedes the physical battle, trusting the killer to execute the violent choreography she cannot perform.
"Okay." She opens her eyes, vulnerability shining through the steel. "But you come back to me, Dax Calloway."
"Always."
She doesn't pull away. Her gaze drops, and a heavy flush creeps up her neck. The porcelain ballerina is gone, replaced by a woman fiercely aware of the countdown clock ticking above our heads.
"How long do we have?" Her voice drops to a register that bypasses my Kevlar and goes straight into my bloodstream.
"We don't deploy until oh-dark-thirty."
"What does that mean?"
"The dead hour before dawn. We don't hit the party—we hit the couriers leaving it." The tactical discipline fractures. The sniper is now very distracted. "We have the whole night."
"Good." She steps closer, sliding her hand down the webbing of my vest until her fingers curl into the fabric at my waist. "Because before you go—I want you to teach me how to give you a blowjob."
The oxygen vanishes from my lungs. The entire building could collapse and I wouldn't feel the impact.
I drop my spare magazine onto the crate. The metallic clack is deafening.
The war can wait.