Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 376(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
“How long?” I ask.
A pause follows. The kind that carries bad news.
“Hours. Not days.”
My jaw sets.
“They’re calling it a precision strike,” he continues. “This is elimination, not recovery.”
Kira’s name hangs in the beat of silence.
“If she agrees to testify, we can move. Arrest warrants are drafted. Teams are ready. We’re prepared to take Vaughn alive.”
I close my eyes for half a second and run the math. Routes. Timelines. How many men it would take to overwhelm a compound like ours. How many bodies it would cost them.
Hours. Not days.
I already know she’s in. We’ve had the conversations. Atlas explained contingencies. Grizz made it clear her safety mattered most of all. Kira took it all in, asked the right questions, and understood the risk.
She said she didn’t want to hide forever. She’d asked what testifying would mean for her daughter, not for herself. Fear didn’t stop her from choosing the harder, cleaner path.
I didn’t like the choice, but I trusted the woman making it.
“She’s in,” I say. “Full cooperation.”
“Copy,” my contact replies. “We’re moving.”
The line goes dead.
I take a moment to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. Then I key the internal channel. “Atlas, you up?”
His response is immediate, like it always is. He and Grizz join me within minutes. They take one look at my face and know what’s happening.
“They’re moving,” Grizz says.
I nod. “Hours. Not days.”
Atlas is already shifting into command. “Wake Kira.”
She’s out in the hallway upstairs, wrapped in one of Atlas’s sweatshirts, her hair loose, eyes alert despite the early hour. She doesn’t ask why I’m looking for her. She waits.
“They’re mobilizing now,” I tell her. “Not to search, but to strike. We don’t have long.”
Her hand goes to her belly. “Is it happening the way you anticipated?”
I nod. “Feds are coming, based on your agreement to testify.”
She’s quiet for a moment, but not frozen with fear. Finally, she nods. “Okay. As we planned.”
Atlas and Grizz come up then, circling in.
“We’ll walk you through the next steps,” Atlas says calmly. “Our focus is on keeping you safe.”
“Tell me what you need me to do.”
As Grizz takes her hand and leads her downstairs, Atlas says, “It’s time for the safe room. Once you’re in, you need to stay there. If you hear gunfire, you stay. If things go silent, you stay.”
“Come out only when one of us opens the door and says your name,” I add.
“Running is what they're going to expect,” Atlas says. “Staying put will keep you alive.”
She looks around at each of us, meeting our eyes in turn. “I won’t move.”
During meetings, we briefed her on radio usage. I hand her one now. “Channel three only. If comms go dark, assume we’re still working at the problem. Don’t come out.”
Downstairs, Atlas opens a secured locker in the armory, removes a pistol, already cleared, and hands it to me. Meeting Kira's eyes, he says, “You’re not expected to be brave. Only alive.”
"You don’t go looking for anything," Grizz adds.
At the reinforced room we built back when storms were our biggest threat, Atlas motions to the interior shelf. “Keep the pistol there once you’re inside.”
She slides the radio into her pocket, and I hold the gun out to her, grip first. “Safety on. Finger indexed. Off the trigger unless you intend to fire."
She takes it and walks into the room, composed and unflinching, and something settles in me that has nothing to do with tactics.
“You’re coming back for me,” she says.
It isn’t a question.
Atlas nods. “Yes.”
“Every time,” Grizz says.
I don’t say anything because I don’t need to. She already knows.
Atlas squeezes her shoulder once, then steps back. Grizz lingers a fraction longer before turning away. He’s already mapping explosives and terrain in his mind.
When Atlas seals the door and the lock engages, the compound immediately feels smaller and darker.
“All right.” He says, turning to us. “Let’s get ready.”
Outside, the sky is beginning to show the first signs of light. Twenty-five minutes later, as the sun crests the horizon, the assault begins.
Drone reconnaissance hits first, and Grizz’s sensors catch it before the images finish rendering on the feed.
“Eyes in the sky. Multiple vectors,” I say.
“Positions.” Atlas’s jaw is set, but his voice is calm.
The three of us disperse like muscle memory. I take to my nest in the east tree line, rifle dialed in. Through the scope, I spot the attackers and track them as they fan out. They’re moving like men who think this will be easy.
I intend to make sure it won’t.
My first shot drops their point man. Before the suppressed report reaches the compound, I fire again and take down another target.
They scatter, return fire, and keep advancing.
They’re not here to talk.
Bullets tear through the tree, one of them inches from my cheek. I adjust, recalculate, and fire again.
Below me, Atlas moves through the compound directing the action like he’d never left command.