Page 110 of Zorro

Then, she saw her across the room, near the ballroom entrance, dressed in a hot pink bikini, strappy sandals. Casual as sin.

Bree West. Her memory jogged. FBI agent embedded with Joker’s team to root out the ambassador’s assassins. She’d stitched the woman up several times, and the kick-ass agent had been part of the force who had saved her when she’d been kidnapped by United Stand for Islam, Tuareg clansmen who had banded with their Libyan counterpart, Path of Enlightenment. Their leader, Teboho Achebe, had demanded the return of his brothers’ bodies, or they would execute her.

Everly’s breath caught but she didn’t react. Didn’t give it away. She just kept walking.

But her mind was already sprinting.

Bree West was here…ah…God. It was probably Blitz that she married. There was no mistaking the chemistry between them. Of course, another SEAL wife. Everly just surrendered to the inevitable.

One thing was absolutely clear.

This was a play. If Bree was in the ballroom in that outfit, it meant the team was getting ready to assault. So Everly complied

She began to breathe again.

He was coming for her, and God help anyone standing in his way.

Professor breathed through his cheek weld, slow and still, feeling the heat of the metal barrel beneath his palm and the faint drag of humidity clinging to his skin. The kill box was tight, two confirmed snipers down already, bodies cooling in scaffolding and rust-stained balconies. But Anya Duarte remained, and she was moving.

“Top of the ironwork, northeast grid,” he murmured into comms, voice low, steady. “She’s repositioning.”

He could just barely track her, flickers of movement through the framework, a shift of weight, the glint of glass. She was fast, smarter than the stories gave her credit for. Calculated. One shot, one kill, then gone, and she was hunting him now.

That was fine. They’d planned for that.

He shifted, just enough to suggest a blind angle, keeping the scope loose, almost negligent.

He knew how she thought. She’d look for patterns, predict rhythms. When a shot didn’t come from him again, when he stayed quiet, she’d think he’d moved, gone cold, or flinched.

She would take the bait. His rifle stayed still, trained nowhere in particular. His voice was a whisper. “Gator, how we doing?” A beat of silence, then the smooth cadence of homegrown hell in his ear.

“She lookin’ at you, bro?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’m right where I need to be.”

Professor didn’t twitch. Didn’t blink. He let her take the shot. Crack. Metal sparked inches from his elbow. He was at an impossible angle, but damn if she didn’t get close. He rolled, not for cover, but to buy her belief. Make her chase him. She rose from her cover, shoulder lifting into view. He saw her face. Sharp features. Blonde braid. That sniper’s stillness. Calculating.

Then shock. Just one flash, a sliver of frozen realization as her gaze swept sideways. It was too late. The muzzle flash came low and from the side.

Gator.

Tucked deep beneath rusted piping and a broken duct, sprawled like a sun-drenched panther in wait. Everything slowed down. Gator’s round spiraled from the barrel of his sniper rifle. The round punched through her forehead, her head snapping back—split second, alive, then dead. His partner’s perfect cold zero ended the legend. She went limp instantly. No sound. No cry. Just gravity.

Professor sat up slowly, letting the silence settle.

He kept his voice low. “She saw me.”

“Yeah,” Gator replied. “But she missed the gator in the grass, brother.”

Professor exhaled long, a rare flicker of satisfaction in his chest. He spoke into his comm. “Three snipers down, LT. All quiet up here.”

Gator’s voice came again, lazy and lethal. “Ain’t nothin’ quiet ’bout justice.”

The ballroom doors slammed open just long enough to let someone out, just long enough for Zorro to see her.

Everly.