Page 17 of Code Name: Hunter (Club Opus Noir #2)

There’s a rhythm to their assault—too efficient for freelancers, too restrained for a kill order.

It’s not chaos. It’s choreography. Another baton swings, this time from the left.

I barely deflect it with my forearm, pain blooming like fire beneath my skin.

I counter with a sharp elbow, twisting toward his center mass, but he absorbs the hit with a grunt and shoves me back.

They move in tandem, like mirrored wolves, forcing me toward the rooftop edge.

Not a wasted step between them, no hesitation in the handoffs—they’re running a play they’ve drilled to perfection.

These aren’t common enforcers. They’re trained. Efficient. Tactical.

They close ranks on me fast—surgical, synchronized. Like a Cerberus exercise.

But that's impossible. There's no way this is a sanctioned exercise—there’s too much at stake. Fitz wouldn’t green-light an op this exposed, not with civilians milling under tents and strings of festival lights like fish in a barrel.

It’s not just uncharacteristic. It’s reckless.

Reckless gets you burned in Cerberus. Fitzwallace would rather destroy a city block than let tradecraft slip like this.

So either he’s not behind it… or someone is rewriting the rules.

Fitz might be ruthless, but he’s never sloppy—and this? This is a mess waiting to detonate.

I catch one in the shoulder with a quick snap of my elbow; a solid hit throws off his balance.

Without hesitation, I pivot hard and break right, boots digging into sun-slick tile as I sprint for the opposite side of the rooftop's edge. I don’t know if it was him.

I don’t know what I want it to mean if it was.

But every part of me is moving now like it remembers him—even the fear.

My legs coil and launch—I vault across the yawning gap between buildings, gravity nipping at my heels.

A half-beat slower and I’d be painting the alley in red and regret.

The wind tears at my loose shirt midair, sun flaring in my eyes.

I hit the other side hard—knees jarring, breath knocked from my lungs—but I roll with the impact, shoulder grazing a chimney as I tuck and twist into cover behind a crumbling wall.

Gravel bites through my palms. My weapon's up, safety off. My pulse hammers against my ribs like it’s trying to break free. Then I hear it. A whistle.

Not just any whistle. Short-long-short. It’s a Cerberus field code.

A signal meant for close-quarters ally ID.

My blood turns to ice. That signal doesn’t belong in enemy hands.

Not unless someone handed it to them, which means the real threat isn’t on this rooftop—it’s already inside the walls I trusted.

These guys aren't Cerberus, but they’re using Cerberus’ signals.

Whoever these bastards are, they’ve been trained in-house—or by someone who had access to protocols that should be locked behind retinal scans and triple encryption.

That narrows the list significantly.

I steady my breathing, press against the cool concrete of what's left of the wall, and scan below. One attacker lingers at the other edge of the rooftop, scanning—but not for me. He’s waiting. Coordinating. Like he knows the next step in the playbook.

Time to rewrite the ending.

I pull a flash charge from my boot holster, prime it, and count. Three. Two. One.

Detonate.

It explodes with a shriek of white light. I move under smoke cover, drop to a lower rooftop ledge, and down a maintenance shaft that lets out between the seafood restaurant and the deserted building.

Whoever they were, they came hunting the Nocturne they remembered—the operative trained to attack, to avoid, to survive.

But I’ve changed. I’ve rebuilt myself from ash and adrenaline, forged by fire and betrayal into something sharper, colder.

The woman they were prepared for is gone.

And the one who replaced her? She doesn’t run.

She recalibrates.

She strikes back.

Fifteen seconds later, I’m dragged into the alley next to the empty building—swift, brutal, and precise.

A dark, gloved hand clamps over my mouth, silencing the startled gasp I barely make.

The other wrenches my weapon from its holster before I can even tense to resist. Their leg sweeps mine in a clean, practiced motion, and I hit the ground hard, my breath torn from my lungs.

The takedown is fast, with no wasted movement and no hesitation.

But something doesn’t track. I know the choreography of violence—this isn’t it.

No zip tie. No demand. No pain, just breath at my neck, still and silent.

Like a ghost that’s waiting for me to remember its name.

There’s no follow-up blow. No binding. No demand.

Just weight and breath behind me—controlled, steady, familiar in a way that makes my skin prickle with confusion.

The silence is deafening, not the chaos of an ambush, but the deliberate pause of someone waiting.

And that’s when it hits me.

This isn’t part of the assault.

It’s extraction.

Whoever has me isn’t here to kill me. Not yet.

But in this game, mercy wears too many masks—and I’ve survived long enough to know that rescue and capture feel exactly the same at first. The only difference is what they plan to do with you once they’ve got you—and I’ve learned not to like either option.