Page 22

Kabir

That night she was curled against me like she belonged there.

Not in some poetic, meant-to-be way. I meant physically. Like her body had always known how to fit against mine. Her leg was tangled with mine, arm slung over my chest, her face buried under my jaw. It was the most peaceful l’d ever felt, and we hadn’t even had sex.

Didn’t need to. That could wait.

I’d waited years already.

Earlier, when I’d gone back to the Command Center after our explosive session, Zane had been waiting for me. Laptop open, smug smile in place.

“You’ve got a little…” he had gestured vaguely at his own lip, like I missed some remnants of Amelia on me.

I didn’t even blink. “She wears a sheer gloss. Has for years.”

He’d laughed, but I’d already tuned out. My body was at work, but my mind was still with her.

After weeks without her—without us—I couldn’t not be with her now that the wall between us had finally crumbled. But I forced myself to stay focused.

We had work to do. Zane, Delara, and Ronan were prepping a VR sim for the upcoming White House mission.

Amelia had wanted to watch but I wasn’t sure if she participated.

I hoped not. Not because I didn’t trust her, but because we were benched.

Alpha Team—formerly Squad Six—was officially grounded at the Blackthorn compound.

No missions. No field work. Definitely no D.C.

Still, she’d looked so excited when Zane indulged her, I hadn’t stopped it.

When I finally wrapped up for the day, I paused outside her room—not sure if I’d see her again tonight.

But when I opened the door to my room, there she was.

Sitting on my floor, legs crossed, eyes lit up as she played with the deadly machine I’d built for her. The look on her face made something deep in my chest squeeze tight.

She kept calling the drone her bouquet. I didn’t get the reference, but I didn’t care. Because she looked at that drone the way I’d always wanted her to look at me—like it meant something. Like it was hers.

Like I was hers.

She was excited. Adorable. Mine.

I couldn’t stop looking at her.

I couldn’t stop smiling when she adorably pointed to each propeller and said, “Dahlia. Lotus. Orchid. Lily.”

What the hell was this woman doing to me?

And now she was here. In my arms. Asleep, after swearing she wouldn’t be. She’d said she wanted to talk all night, to soak me in. We did talk—for a while.

She told me about how the whole thing with Sebastian started. How he needed help with something—though she wouldn’t share what.

I was okay with that. She didn’t need to.

I had my own assumptions and I was quite certain about what Seb needed help with.

But after twenty minutes, she crashed. Sound asleep.

I figured she’d probably joined the VR sim and worn herself out.

Didn’t matter.

She was here now. Wrapped around me like she’d always meant to be.

And God help me—I was never letting go.

I traced the slope of her nose with a single finger, brushing a thumb gently along her jaw. Tucking her hair behind her ear just to watch her wrinkle her nose at the tickle. This woman—this force of nature—was asleep in my arms and I’d never felt more like a fucking king.

And then it happened.

Ping .

That familiar sound. That sharp, cold ping that had no business coming from my phone at this hour.

My blood turned to ice.

Careful not to disturb her, I slipped my arm out from under her and grabbed my phone from the nightstand. The screen glowed.

Zane, Inactive

Timestamp: 00:42 hrs

Location: NULL; Signal terminated

My stomach dropped.

What the fuck?

I sat up sharply, my chest tightening as I stared at the alert. Zane’s RLM was inactive . The last time I was looking at the dreaded word was when Logan had allegedly died.

Something was wrong.

My pulse roared in my ears.

Without a second thought, I grabbed my usual hoodie, shoved my feet into my sneakers, and left the room. I didn’t wake her. Couldn’t. Not until I knew what this was.

I checked the cams as I walked, flicking through screens. That’s when I saw Zane grabbing one of the vehicles from the fleet and leaving the compound about an hour ago.

The Command Center was dead quiet, except for the clacking of a keyboard. Ronan was at the far table, lit only by the pale glow of his laptop screen.

He looked up briefly, then did a double take when he saw my face.

I dropped into the chair across from him and fired up my own laptop. My fingers flew across the keys, accessing Blackthorn’s internal logs. Zane’s RLM was active nineteen minutes ago. Now? Nothing. Not a single blip. I cursed so violently it echoed.

Ronan jolted up, instantly alert. “What? What happened?”

“Zane’s RLM,” I said through clenched teeth, eyes glued to the terminal. “It went inactive. No last location.”

Ronan’s whole body locked. “What?”

“I’m pulling the last pings. Trying to trace him through our private channels and local feeds.” My voice was clipped, focused.

Ronan didn’t move. His fingers trembled slightly over his keyboard. “He… uh… he said he had something to check. Then he was gonna meet me here.”

I glanced at him, reading the panic on his face.

“Where did he go?” I demanded.

Ronan hesitated.

“ Where ?”

He swallowed hard. “He went to his apartment. Outside the compound.” He rattled off the address, and my fingers were already flying across the keys again.

And suddenly, I didn’t just feel the weight of an alert.

I felt dread.

“Call an emergency meeting. I’ll be right back.”

I didn’t wait for Ronan’s response before I stood and bolted out of the Command Center. My heart was pounding in my chest like a war drum. Fuck.

Was Zane dead? Captured?

Where the hell was he?

I practically sprinted back to my room, every worst-case scenario playing on a loop in my head. As soon as I opened the door, both Amelia’s and my phones buzzed simultaneously. I glanced at the screen—Ronan had sent out the emergency alert.

Lia didn’t stir.

She was still curled up, peaceful, unaware that our world might’ve just cracked open.

I walked to her side and gently traced a knuckle across her cheek. “Lia.”

She mumbled something against the pillow and stretched.

“Wake up, Heer ,” I whispered, a little more firmly. “We need to go. Command Center.”

Her eyes snapped open, and the sleep vanished instantly. “What happened?”

“Zane’s missing.” My jaw clenched. “We lost his RLM.”

She inhaled sharply, panic flashing across her face, but she didn’t waste time. She threw off the covers, already moving. A few minutes later, we were striding into the conference room, side by side.

Ronan had already done the job—everyone was here. Their faces grim.

Zarek and Leora, back early from their honeymoon. Logan, Kaylan, Amelia, Seb, Delara… all seated. All tense. All waiting.

No one spoke.

I took my place, grabbed my laptop again, and started digging like hell.

Every camera feed around his apartment complex was blank. This was planned.

I discreetly checked my phone to see if there were any open hits on Zane on the dark web. None.

“When exactly did he go inactive?” Zarek asked.

I briefly glanced at him. “At 00:42. We don’t have his last location logged but Ronan told me where he might have been.”

Eyes flew towards Ronan who was staring blankly at the wall. His jaw clenched.

“Find him, Kabir.” Zarek ordered in his usual tone.

I nodded barely looking at him. “On it, Ghost.”

“Kabir?” Sebastian’s voice was calm but I could hear a slight tremor. “Just… find out if he’s alive?”

That gave me an idea. The location module was deliberately turned off for his RLM. As far as I knew that could only be done as a manual override. And other than me, only Zane had access to do it.

I quickly switched windows to check what the last logged location was. The dot glowed. Right here. Blackthorn security office. Just as I suspected.

I cleared my throat. “As far as I can tell. He deliberately turned his RLM locator off. He’s probably still alive.”

A bang sounded. Followed by Ronan scrambling up from his chair and storming out of the conference room.

I wasn’t going to focus on what that meant. He needed certainty before I could give him any information. So I started digging again.

Amelia circled behind me, eyeing my phone sitting on the desk. She knew the code so she opened it. My eyes darted between my laptop and what she was doing.

“What’s this?” She suddenly froze. “There’s an encrypted file sent to you anonymously. Two minutes before he went dark”

I frowned. “What?”

Grabbing my phone from Amelia I started running scans on the file before opening it. I lightly tapped on my laptop and she immediately took over scraping the local camera feeds.

A loud groan came from Seb. “Fucking hell. We’ve got company.”

“In the middle of the night?” Logan asked.

“Headaches one and two are coming.”

I wasn’t paying attention. I needed to get into this file because I strongly suspected it was Zane’s message.

Just when the encrypted file began to load the conference room door opened and in walked a woman in a leather jacket, black pants and boots, and a man with a similar outfit. She looked familiar but I wasn’t paying attention.

Ronan followed them inside, seemingly calmer.

“Jesus, Seb!” Amelia snapped, voice sharp with urgency. “Detective Inez. Detective Mateo. How can we help you?”

I barely registered her words. My eyes were locked on my phone screen, heart jackhammering in my chest.

Two things happened at once.

The encrypted file Zane had sent me finally opened—and Inez’s voice sliced through the room like a knife.

“Two uniformed officers were called to respond to a public disturbance. A man matching Zane Cruiser’s description was seen in a scuffle with three men before being shoved into an unmarked van.”

Everything stopped. Because it was all adding up. Every horrible possibility. Every damn fear.

I wanted to throw my chair at the wall.

“Fucking CIA,” I muttered, my voice low, resigned.

When I looked around, Zarek and Sebastian both wore the same expression—confusion tangled with a small flicker of hope. Because if what she said was true… Zane was still alive.

I forced down the rising panic and spoke evenly, carefully. “Thank you, Detective Inez. They think Zane might have attempted to…” I hesitated. I didn’t know how much I could safely say with them in the room. “…access sensitive information from a federal agency.”

Mateo barked a laugh, dark and unbothered. “What a moron. He’ll be dead in a few hours. We’ll call—if we find the body.”

Sebastian’s sigh was audible. “Please leave.”

“He’s not wrong—” Inez started, but Seb cut her off cold.

“I said leave.”

Inez blinked at him like she was just realizing the tension in the room wasn’t just about Zane. “We can help,” she added slowly. “Maybe it wasn’t the CIA. I know y’all don’t leave evidence behind.”

That last sentence settled heavily in the air. She knew more than she was letting on. Just enough to stay cautious. Just enough not to push.

I kept my voice calm. “Do you know which officers responded?”

They both nodded, but Inez was the one to speak, her voice grimmer now. “What good is that gonna do?”

I swallowed—hard. Because nothing. It would do nothing.

“I—”

My chest tightened, lungs barely working. Because it wasn’t a coincidence. And deep down, I already knew.

Zane had sent me a file—his logs from two days ago.

He’d done exactly what I told him not to.

He accessed the Crazon infrastructure shielding the Pentagon.

The fucking Pentagon .

And now he was gone.

The CIA didn’t take people into custody. They erased them.

Zarek. Sebastian. Dylan. Logan. They all knew it.

And Zane had walked right into it.

“Could you give us the room, Detectives?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

They nodded without protest and slipped out. I waited until the door clicked shut before finally breathing out.

I turned to the team. “Zane made four attempts,” I said quietly, stepping back to my laptop, “in the past week to infiltrate the Crazon defense matrix stationed at the Pentagon.”

Sebastian’s head dropped. His hands fisted on the table, like all the air had left his body.

“I checked every digital trail,” I continued, almost talking to myself now. “They were clean. Whoever took him knew what they were doing. There’s no trace. There never will be.”

Seb looked… hollow. A man trying to come to terms with something he’d already started mourning.

“What do we do?” Delara asked. Her voice wasn’t the sharp, composed tone we knew. It trembled.

And no one had an answer.

Because the silence that followed—it wasn’t just tense.

It was grief.

Mourning.

Because no one wanted to say it, but we were all thinking it.

Zane was probably already dead.

“Arden Mercer?” Logan muttered, almost reflexively. But even he sounded unconvinced. Zarek shook his head in agreement, expression grim.

I hadn’t looked at Ronan this whole time.

Maybe because I didn’t want to.

Because when I finally did, I saw him—and I froze.

He was already halfway gone. Not physically—but mentally, emotionally. There was a calm, deadly determination on his face. A resolve I didn’t understand yet, but instinctively knew not to question.

Sebastian caught it too.

“No,” he said firmly, a warning packed into a single word.

“Yes,” Ronan bit out, his voice breaking slightly. He didn’t even glance at Seb, just straightened his spine. “Thank you,” he added softly. “For everything you did.”

The air shifted.

“Ronan—”

Seb’s voice cracked on his name.

I was missing something. Something huge.

Ronan turned to the room, expression suddenly still. “I’ll bring him back.”

The conviction in his voice was absolute. Like a promise made to no one but himself.

Seb’s jaw clenched. “You really will, won’t you?”

Ronan’s eyes never left the door. “He’ll be back.”

And with that—he left.

The silence he left behind was almost unbearable.

Amelia’s voice cracked through it, hesitant. “He’s a CIA free agent, isn’t he?”

Seb gave her a small smile—tender, unguarded. And if the atmosphere wasn’t this heavy with uncertainty, I would’ve snapped at him.

“No, he isn’t.”

Then what the fuck was he?

I opened my mouth, but Zarek beat me to it.

“What—”

Seb lifted his hand.

A sharp, deliberate fist in the air.

A halt signal.

Zarek. Logan. Dylan—they all fell silent.

The meaning wasn’t lost on them.

Something unspoken passed through the room.

I watched Seb wrestle with something, some internal wall.

And then… he said it.

Just one word.

“Phantom.”

The reaction was immediate.

Zarek paled. Logan flinched. Dylan swore under his breath.

I froze. This wasn’t even Ronan’s call sign. It was ‘Viper’.

So I didn’t know what the hell Phantom meant. But they did. And they weren’t telling the rest of us.

Whatever this was—this term, this designation—it wasn’t something they wanted in circulation.

This was clearly above my paygrade.