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Ethan Cross

I swallowed a curse as our team’s van jolted over another pothole, the shocks doing a piss-poor job of absorbing the impact. Dust clogged the air, mixing with the scent of sweat, gunpowder, and the lingering bite of blood. My arms ached from days in the field, and my gear—damp with Colombian jungle humidity and stiff with dried mud—felt like an extra layer of weight pressing down.

But the job was done.

Another successful mission for Citadel Solutions, the security contracting firm I’d built from the ground up five years ago. No casualties, no loose ends—aside from the one currently groaning at our feet in the van. And he wouldn’t be our problem soon.

Rafael Herrera— El Lobo , the self-proclaimed Wolf of the Cartel del Trueno, although in reality merely a mid-level cartel boss—lay on the floor of the van, bound hand and foot, a black hood pulled over his head. Noise-canceling earmuffs blocked out all sound, and the gag in his mouth kept him from running it. Blood seeped through the fabric where his nose had been broken, the dark stain soaking into the hood.

Good. Bastard was known for trafficking children. So when a certain government agency had contracted us to bring him in, a job they couldn’t officially sanction, we’d readily agreed to do it quietly and off the books.

“Ty, status?” I asked.

Tyler “Ty” Hughes pressed fresh gauze against his upper arm, wincing slightly. The rookie had taken a graze during the extraction. Stupid mistake, standing in the open a second too long, but he’d learn. Everyone did, eventually. If they survived.

“It’s just a scratch, boss.” Ty grinned, the adrenaline still visible in his eyes. “Barely even counts as being shot.”

“It’s not a scratch,” Logan Kane muttered from the driver’s seat as he sped the van along at the fastest rate this shit road would allow. Logan was our tactical specialist and my second-in-command at Citadel. “It’s a graze . There’s a difference. A scratch means you brushed against something. A graze means a bullet almost turned your arm into hamburger.”

“Thanks for the distinction.” Ty rolled his eyes. “Super helpful. Burns like a bitch either way.”

“Stop poking at it.” Jace Monroe, seated across from Ty, barely lifted his head from his laptop, where his fingers flew across the keyboard. “That graze nearly cost us our clean exit. Next time, don’t be so eager to run ahead of cover.”

Ty winced—not from the wound, but from the reminder. “Noted.”

A groan rose from the floor, muffled and insistent. Herrera twisted against the zip ties, his body shifting awkwardly as if demanding attention.

“I think El Lobster wants to chat,” Logan said, his eyes still on the road.

“El Lobo,” Jace corrected. “It means wolf.”

“Whatever. Wolf, lobster. Same thing. ”

“Not even remotely the same thing,” Jace muttered.

I turned and nodded to Ty. “Take off the gag and earmuffs for a minute and let him talk. I’m sure he has nothing but important things to say.”

Ty yanked up the hood and pulled down the gag, and Herrera immediately spat on the floor of the van in disgust.

“You think you’re smart?” Herrera’s accent was thick, his English carefully practiced. “You have no idea who I am or what I can do. The Cartel del Trueno will hunt every one of you down. I’ll have your heads mounted on pikes outside my hacienda.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Interesting choice of decoration.”

The guy turned nearly purple in fury. “You’re already dead men.”

“Doesn’t look like it from here.” Ty put his fingers up to his neck to check his pulse. “Guys, I’m not dead. Just in case you were worried by anything you might have heard.”

I pointed back at the gag. “I think we’ve had enough from our lobster friend.”

“Lobo means wolf, for fuck’s sake.” Jace still wasn’t looking up from his computer.

Herrera switched tactics as Ty reached for him with the gag. “Wait! Whatever they’re paying you, I’ll triple it. Quadruple it.”

I shook my head. “Not interested.”

“One million US dollars. Each.” Desperation crept into his voice. “Walk away now. Drop me at the next village.”

Logan snorted from the driver’s seat.

“What’s funny?” Herrera demanded.

“Just wondering if our heads on decorative pikes comes before or after you pay us the million each,” he said. “Seems counterproductive, you know?”

Herrera’s face contorted with rage. “You think this is a joke? You think?—”

I nodded to Ty, who shoved the gag and hood back into place and popped the earmuffs back on. “Aw, man. I was enjoying that. I wonder if he would’ve offered us each our own puppy next.”

Despite Herrera’s monologue, this was the kind of job I preferred for Citadel Solutions. Clean. We took the fight to the target, neutralized the threat before it became someone else’s problem. No waiting, no reacting—just action .

The bodyguard work we did was different. Standing around, watching someone else’s life play out, waiting for danger to come to them. Too much sitting still. Too much time to think.

But bodyguard work paid exceptionally well.

Logan glanced back from behind the wheel. “Poor little guy still doesn’t know what hit him. One second, he’s in his jungle hideout sipping whiskey. The next, he’s eating dirt.”

Jace finally looked up from his screen. “Should’ve run when he had the chance.”

“He thought he was safe,” I said simply. “They always do.”

The cartel’s network had protected him for years—bribes, mercenaries, corrupt officials—but that was the thing about men like Herrera. They believed their own legend, believed they were untouchable.

His beliefs had been wrong. And when my team had struck, we’d struck hard.

Now he was on his way to a classified government facility, where he’d either rot in a concrete cell or disappear entirely. Either way, he wasn’t my problem anymore.

The conversation moved on, the lobster-wolf forgotten.

“So, next job,” Jace said, stretching out his legs. “We going with the Morocco business bigwig or pop star babysitting duty with Nova Rivers?”

I tried to offer my core team choices when feasible, although the final decision was ultimately mine.

Ty perked up instantly. “Wait, Nova Rivers? The Nova Rivers? ”

Jace frowned. “You listen to her music?”

“No, of course not.” Ty’s response was way too fast, and Logan and I both chuckled.

Jace clicked through a few files on his laptop, his face half lit by the screen. “Morocco pays pretty damned well.”

“More risk,” I countered. “More red tape.”

Logan hummed. “True. And let’s be real, how bad could the pop star gig be? Air conditioning. Private jets. Catered food. We could use a little luxury.”

Ty grinned. “And she’s hot.”

Jace shot him a flat look. “We’d be her security, not her fan club.”

I kept my eyes on the horizon, but something about the job sat wrong in my gut.

Jace tapped a few more keys, his brow furrowing. “Pop star gig might not be as easy as it sounds. They already had a break-in.”

I frowned. “Personal residence?”

“Yeah, bad enough that management wants us full time, twenty-four seven. Not just security at events—personal protection, house lockdown, the works.”

Logan exhaled. “So it’s not just a creeper fan situation. This guy’s serious.”

“Looks like.” Jace shut the laptop and leaned back. “Still better than a firefight in Morocco. It’s easier to fight perverts than terrorists.”

The van rattled over another pothole, sending a fresh jolt through my spine. Fifteen minutes to the airfield. The jungle was dense on either side of the path that passed for a road.

“What do we know about Nova Rivers?”

“Age twenty-six,” Jace rattled off. “Estate outside of Dallas. She’s been on the pop music scene for a decade but only hit stardom in the past year. Two breakout hits that you can’t turn on the radio for five minutes without hearing. She’s about to kick off another tour?—”

“Shit—company!” Logan suddenly yelled, eyes darting to the rearview mirror. “Where the hell did they come from?”

Jace had ducked down, frantically tapping at his laptop. “There’s a secondary road that intersects a quarter mile back. They must have been waiting.”

Bullets struck our van, taking out the back window in a rain of glass.

I slid the side door open enough to return fire, aiming with practiced precision. “Ty, cover the other side!”

Ty was already positioning himself at the opposite window, weapon ready, all traces of his earlier lightheartedness gone. He might be green, but the kid had solid training.

“Two vehicles!” Jace called out. “Four hostiles visible!”

A bullet pinged off the doorframe, inches from my face. I didn’t flinch. Close, but not close enough. I returned fire.

“Ty, concentrate your fire on the driver of the lead vehicle,” I ordered. “Jace, you have eyes on aerial?”

“Checking our drone feed now… No additional vehicles visible within a five-mile radius.”

I squeezed off three more rounds, hitting one of the gunmen. He disappeared inside their vehicle, but another immediately took his place.

“They’re persistent,” Logan commented, as if we were discussing the weather rather than being in the middle of a firefight. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, but his voice remained calm.

Ty fired steadily, his aim improving with each shot. “Got the driver!” he called out as the lead SUV swerved violently before crashing into the dense jungle foliage alongside the road.

The second vehicle continued pursuit. One of the gunmen leaned farther out, aiming what looked like a grenade launcher.

“Fuck. RPG!” I warned .

“Hang on!” Logan swerved hard right, then left, throwing us all against the sides of the van.

The grenade streaked past, detonating in the trees ahead with a thunderous boom. Debris rained down on the road.

Fuck that shit. It was time to end this. “Logan, hard brake and swerve on my mark,” I said. “Ty, ready on my three. One…two…three!”

Logan slammed the brakes and pulled hard to the right. The pursuing vehicle, not expecting the maneuver, shot past us. Ty and I fired simultaneously, taking out both the driver and the front passenger. The SUV careened off the road, flipping once before coming to rest upside down. A fireball erupted from the wreckage, sending black smoke curling into the sky.

Logan kept driving.

He secured his grip on the wheel, checking the mirrors. “Doesn’t look like we have anyone else in pursuit.”

Jace exhaled, rubbing a hand down his face. “Confirmed. No other moving vehicles in the area.”

I reached back and yanked the hood off our prisoner. Herrera was wide-eyed but uninjured. The look on his face suggested he’d expected his rescue to succeed.

“Sorry to disappoint.” I put the hood back over his head.

“So,” Ty said as he reloaded his weapon, his earlier wound forgotten in the adrenaline rush, “about that Nova Rivers job…”

I had to chuckle.

He shrugged. “You know we’ll do whatever you want, boss, but I’d like to point out that pop stars generally have fewer friends with grenade launchers.”

Logan shrugged, eyes still on the road. He lowered his voice so only I could hear him as Jace and Ty kept an eye out in the back while talking. “The kid’s an idiot, but not wrong. We’ve been hitting the road hard for the past year—taking on the most difficult and dangerous cases. I know you have your reasons for that, but you can eliminate every threat that comes your way and still be haunted by the ghosts you’re running from.”

Logan was right. The Morocco job would be challenging—political tensions, multiple security concerns, high-risk. The Nova Rivers stalker case would be more straightforward, but potentially tedious.

Easy money. Fewer grenades.

A few minutes later, the extraction point appeared ahead—a small airfield where a nondescript private plane waited. Two men in civilian clothing stood by the runway, our contacts for the handoff.

“Let’s wrap this up,” I said.

We pulled up to the plane, and my team didn’t wait as two agents approached. Logan yanked the rear doors open, and Ty hopped out first, stretching his legs before grabbing Herrera by the arm. The cartel boss grunted but couldn’t do much else. Jace followed, laptop tucked under one arm, already wiping Citadel Solutions’ digital footprints clean.

I stepped out last, rolling my neck. Herrera’s handlers—DOJ contractors, maybe military intelligence—stepped forward to claim their prize.

The taller of the two agents approached me. “Any complications, Cross?”

“Nothing we couldn’t handle,” I replied.

We completed the handoff with minimal paperwork—another advantage of unofficial operations. Within twenty minutes, we were stepping into the cargo hold of our own chartered plane where webbed seats lined the walls. Soon, we were in the air heading back to the States.

Despite the uncomfortable seating, the tension that had gripped the team for days finally started to fade. The guys weren’t the type to celebrate after missions like this, but I caught the subtle shifts. Shoulders lowering. Jaws unclenching. Even Logan, usually carved from stone, let out a breath that sounded almost like relief.

He took the seat beside me. “Decided on our next gig? Honestly, either is fine. If you’re still feeling the need for hard action, let’s go with Morocco. I hear the deserts of Africa are lovely this time of year.”

I chuckled under my breath. “No, we’ll go with the pop star. I have it on good authority there will be fewer grenades.”

Logan smiled. “It’s what every important decision should be based on.”

I closed my eyes, letting the hum of the engines wash over me. Another job completed. Another one waiting. The routine was predictable, comfortable in its familiarity. No emotional entanglements, no complications beyond the tactical challenges of each mission.

That’s how I preferred it, in business and in life. Clean. Uncomplicated. Professional.