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I lined up another shot, heart pounding, scope tracking a guy raising an RPG—fuck, no—dropped him before he could fire, but the numbers weren’t adding up.
Too many.
Too fucking many.
“Atlas, where are you?” I snapped, firing again, another body down, my barrel hot, the fleet rocking under me as waves kicked up.
“Thirty seconds,” Atlas said, grunting—gunfire popping through his comms now, his team joining the fight.
I swung my scope back to Ryker’s house, saw his men holding—barely—barrels blazing, but 77’s teams were closing, relentless, like they’d die before they stopped.
“Marcus, you in position?” I called, voice tight, praying his drop was ready.
“One minute out,” he said, static heavy.
One minute was a lifetime down there.
I fired again—missed, cursed, adjusted, and dropped another, but it wasn’t enough, not with Ryker bleeding men, Atlas not there yet, and 77 swarming like roaches.
Hallie Mae’s face flashed—her eyes, her voice, “Come back to me,” and my chest burned, the promise I’d made feeling like a lie I couldn’t keep.
This was it—doom, clawing up my spine, the reckoning I’d felt coming since Kemper’s shaky voice on that yacht.
We’d bitten off too much, and now it was chewing us to pieces.
I lined up another shot, ready to take one more bastard down, when the boat’s alarm screamed—shrill, piercing, ripping through the vessel’s quiet.
“Incoming!” the cockswain yelled, and I jerked my head up, scope forgotten, eyes catching a streak of light—bright, fast, screeching toward us like a demon from the dark.
No time to move, no time to think.
The boat rocked, men shouting, and I stood, heart slamming, Hallie Mae’s name on my lips as the world slowed.
I’d promised her—sworn I’d come back, be there for her dad’s funeral, hold her through the grief—but now, with fire roaring closer, I wondered if I’d fucked it all, if I never should’ve made that vow, if I’d doomed us both by thinking I could outrun my family’s war.
25
HALLIE MAE
The clock beside the bed said it was nearly two in the morning.
I hadn’t slept.
Not really.
I’d dozed a little right after Noah left, wrapped in one of his shirts and curled into the corner of the mattress where his scent still clung to the sheets. But the quiet here—it wasn’t like the quiet back home at my apartment. It hummed with electricity. With motion. With worry. The kind of silence that made you think the walls were listening.
And every time I closed my eyes, I saw him—jaw tight, eyes burning, gun strapped to his thigh.
“Come back to me,” I’d whispered.
But what if he couldn’t?
What if I never saw him again?
I sat up, pushed the covers off, and swung my legs to the floor. The air was cool against my skin, and I reached for the bag I’d packed. Just a few essentials—clothes,toiletries, the old worn Bible I couldn’t bring myself to open.
I pulled on a pair of soft cotton leggings and slipped a sweatshirt over my sleep shirt, tugging the hem down to cover me proper. I didn’t bother with shoes. Just padded barefoot across the hardwood, one quiet step at a time.