Page 73 of Jax (The Kansas City Reapers #3)

“The main warehouse has a truck dock on the south,” Niko said, marking it red. “Steel exit doors northeast and west. No rooftop access on the public plans, but Quinn tagged a thermal anomaly dead center.”

He tapped the smudge on the projection, the irregular heat bleed already anchoring a theory. “Probably a vent hatch. Possibly reinforced. But it’s a way in.”

Sully returned with two duffel bags and dropped them with zero ceremony. He laid the gear they contained out piece by piece, checking batteries, sliding mags into place, each motion clean and certain. He didn’t need to ask what we needed, just how fast we’d need it.

“If we come in from the east,” Niko said, “we’ve got wind cover and natural interference from the old silos. West is exposed. Floodlights, perimeter fence, camera feed every twenty feet.”

Carrick glanced up from his screen without pausing his fingers, eyes sharp as he asked the question we were all circling. “Stella. Which direction did the planes come from?”

Her voice didn’t waver. “West. Always from the west. Louder at night. Like they were flying lower after sunset.”

Carrick tapped a few keys, and a map snapped into place, an airfield just under a mile from the target. Half-decommissioned. Mostly cargo and private charter flights. Close enough to shake the building. Close enough to make sound a weapon.

It tracked. Low-altitude runs after dark.

Subsonic resonance. That kind of vibration doesn’t just rattle the walls; it settles into your bones.

The hum. The cold. The way she felt it in her teeth.

If she heard it, Violet did too. And if the site was still live, the flight path likely hadn’t changed.

“Add it to the auditory baseline,” I said. “Time our approach under engine cover. Noise masking buys us movement.”

Carrick was already adjusting the grid.

Seconds later, Quinn’s next drop landed, encrypted files pushed to our secure server.

Shift rotations, shell staff, two flagged names linked to suspected Dom Krovi.

No photos. No clean trail. Just aliases popping up in enough connected records to draw a line.

Carrick ran the cross-references while Sully handed off a preloaded tablet, screen already lit with gear specs and layout.

Deacon took the second whiteboard and started drafting exit paths.

Not entries. Not tactics. Extraction. That was always his lane: quiet egress, blind kill zones, fast disposal.

His pen moved with the precision of muscle memory, marking where walls would catch sound and shadows would let us vanish without leaving heat behind.

Across the room, Stella stood with one hand braced on the table, the other on her hip, sleeves pushed to her elbows.

She wasn’t absorbing the intelligence. She was memorizing it.

Carrick pulled up the internal render and asked for sensory markers—sound, scent, texture.

She didn’t hesitate. Her answers came fast and crisp, like memory lived in her bones.

“We’re estimating ten men,” Carrick said. “Two on perimeter patrol. One rotation. Sniper tower at the northwest corner, likely unmanned except during cargo windows. The rest will be inside. Surveillance is looped. Two-minute blind spot between resets.”

“That’s our entry window,” Niko said. “Tight, but doable.”

Bellamy stood then. Quietly. She moved to the edge of the projection and pointed to the hallway Stella had described earlier, one that had no architectural match in the official blueprints.

“What’s this?” she asked. “You said you heard water. What kind?”

Stella didn’t hesitate.

“Running. Constant. Like pipes. But high. Maybe overhead.”

“Second floor plumbing?” Sully asked.

“Could be,” Carrick said. “Or it’s being pumped. Reservoir system in one of the annexes, maybe. We’ll need to assume locked doors between levels. Possibly vertical access only.”

“I remember steel stairs,” Stella said. “Narrow. Loud. They echoed when someone climbed them.”

Carrick logged it. Another red mark. Another possible alert zone.

The air had shifted. Not toward fear, or even hope.

Toward purpose. Each breath moved with focus, clean and exact, the kind that replaced sleep, replaced food, replaced softness with something sharp.

We were etching bone into the plan now, the scaffolding of a mission clicking into place with quiet, surgical certainty.

And at the center stood the girl who had once been caged in that place. Not fragile. Not reclaimed. She was the one mapping the ruin.

It shifted mid-strategy. Not with a crash or sudden halt, but like a knot cinching quietly under the surface.

A pressure. That thing you feel when silence is pregnant with something unspoken.

The planning hadn’t stopped, routes still mapped, contingencies stacked, but every move felt a little thicker than before.

I sensed it before I saw it. Stella’s stance adjusting, her shoulders lifting, not tense, but resolute. She stepped forward without urgency, as if pulled by something larger than choice.

“I’m coming with you,” she said.

No tilt in her voice. No breath of plea. Just a sentence placed like fact.

Sully froze mid-check of the bolt cutters. Bellamy straightened in her seat. Deacon shifted, just slightly. And Niko, steady at the board, didn’t look at her.

Not right away.

“No,” he said at last. Not loud. Not cruel. Just absolute.

Stella didn’t retreat. “You need someone who knows it from the inside. Someone who remembers the blind corners. The weight of the air. The places the map doesn’t account for.”

“That’s why we’re listening to you now,” Carrick said, still at the laptop. “That’s the role you’re already playing.”

She shook her head. “That’s the role you’re letting me play. Not the one I’m choosing.”

Niko turned to face her. “You think this is about choice?”

“I think it’s about risk,” she said. “And I think you’ve already decided I’m too much of one.”

He didn’t answer. Not right away. But the silence said enough.

She stepped closer to the table, bracing her palms on the wood.

Her sleeves were pushed up, faint rope marks still etched into her skin, her body holding a memory she hadn’t set down.

I caught the tremor in her fingers, not fear.

Containment. The kind that built when you held something too long without letting it breathe.

“You’re not going,” Niko said again. “It’s not up for debate.”

“I’m not trying to run the op,” Stella said. “I’m not asking to carry a weapon, or breach a door. I’m asking to be there. To be present in the place that gutted my life.”

Her voice didn’t crack. If anything, it sharpened.

“If she’s there, if she’s alive, I need to be the one who sees her first. Not a stranger. Not a medic. Not some man in body armor with his weapon drawn. Me.”

Carrick shut his laptop harder than necessary.

“That’s not how this works,” he said. “You don’t get that moment if it compromises the team.”

“You think I’d risk that?”

“I think you’re too close to see clearly,” Niko said, low but unshakable.

Sully stepped in then, softer. “We don’t doubt your intentions. You’ve already done more than most could. But we don’t bring civilians on missions, Stella. No exceptions. That’s how people die.”

She took a breath and held it. “I wasn’t trained when they took me.

I wasn’t armed or prepared. And I still survived everything inside those walls.

” Her eyes flicked over the blueprints like she could see through paper into metal.

“You think going back will break me. But the truth is, staying here will.”

That was the truth she hadn’t said aloud, the reason her hands trembled even as her words held. It wasn’t about proving anything. It was about surviving the waiting. About knowing someone might still be in there while she stood outside, safe and paralyzed.

Bellamy rose, voice steady. “She’s not wrong. You’re trying to protect her. I get it. But this isn’t protection anymore. It’s containment. And I don’t think she can survive that again.”

Niko didn’t reply. He didn’t have to.

“She’s not asking to lead,” Bellamy continued. “She’s asking to be present. To witness what comes next—because it’s hers too.”

The team shifted. Carrick folded his arms and locked his jaw, silent but not opposing.

Sully stayed still, uncertain. Deacon didn’t move, didn’t blink, but I felt the way his awareness tracked every breath.

And Stella, she didn’t plead or push. She stood firm, like the storm had already passed through her.

I stepped forward because someone had to carry the weight, and because I trusted myself to do it right.

“If she comes,” I said, “she stays unarmed. Doesn’t leave my side. Five paces back, no exceptions. If she hesitates, freezes, can’t follow an order—I pull her out. No questions. No pride. No argument.”

Her gaze snapped to mine, and her voice didn’t waver. “I can do that.”

Niko’s chair scraped back, his voice sharp. “No. She doesn’t go.”

Carrick’s head came up fast, eyes hard. “She’s the only one who can place it. You want to gamble blind?”

Sully muttered under his breath, hands already busy with gear checks, like movement might bleed off the pressure.

Bellamy sat stiff in her chair, jaw clenched, eyes tracking Stella like she wanted to shield her with sheer will.

Across from her, Deacon stayed quiet, arms folded, gaze narrowing on the table but missing nothing.

The current shifted, pulled tight. Lines were being drawn.

Stella straightened, the floor plan clutched in her hand. “You need me.” The words were too quick, too sharp, a defense sharpened into a plea. “If I’m there….”

Niko cut her off. “If you’re there, you’re a liability. We can’t watch your back and the mission at the same time. That’s the line, Stella.”

Her chest rose fast and tight, like she might explode.

I let it play, let them all run hot, until the silence between heartbeats told me it was my turn.

“She’s not trying to play hero,” I said. My voice cut clean through the noise. “This isn’t about running into the fire. It’s about control.”

The room stilled. Stella’s head snapped toward me, eyes wide, raw.

“You’re not asking to go because you think you’ll save her,” I said, steady. “You’re asking because you can’t stand the idea of being here again. Waiting. Helpless. You think standing still is the same as abandoning her. Am I wrong?”

Her breath hitched, but she didn’t deny it. Couldn’t.

I shifted, leaning forward, deliberate, grounding the air with weight.

“You can’t go on the op. Niko’s right. That’s the line.

But you aren’t going to be sidelined either.

You’re the intel. The piece no one else has.

Your body remembers details maps won’t show: the smells, the rhythms, the background noise.

You feed that into the plan. You refine entry points with Carrick.

Work noise profiles with Sully. Build contingencies with me. ”

Her lips parted, trembling, but no words came.

“The mission doesn’t work without you, Stella.” I said. “But you don’t have to be the spear. You’re the spine.”

Stella’s throat bobbed once. Twice. Then she set her jaw, pulled the floor plan closer, and laid it flat like she was driving a stake through her own doubt. She didn’t thank me. Didn’t soften. She just bent over the paper, eyes narrowing, hands steady as she traced the lines.

Not sidelined. Not broken. Repurposed.

For war.

Hours passed in a choreography that needed no direction.

Niko confirmed Quinn’s shift drops while Sully laid out gear with near-religious precision: radios, bolt cutters, thermal scopes, each one checked and aligned by muscle memory.

Carrick cycled drone footage and blueprints, his fingers twitching with restless control.

No one checked the clock. Time folded in on itself. We moved by instinct now, not hours.

Near midnight, the storm arrived in fragments.

First, the wind, dragging rough across the roof.

Then the rain—soft, steady, a percussion against the metal siding that warned of something heavier building.

The sky didn’t flash. It brooded, thick and swollen, holding everything it hadn’t yet released.

I watched it build through the window. And in its reflection, I caught Stella bent over the plans, pen clenched, jaw tight. She wasn’t waiting to be invited in anymore. She moved like she’d always belonged, and the plan adjusted around her without resistance.

A low, rumbling peal of thunder rolled across the sky. It was the warning bell before a reckoning. And every breath we took inside it was an answer.