Page 15 of Pressure Point (Lantern Beach Blackout: Detonation #2)

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

As if in slow motion, Atlas watched in stunned silence as Quinn fired with the precision of a trained sniper.

“No!” His leg muscles strained as he darted toward her.

His gaze shifted to the copter, and his lungs froze.

Quinn’s shots had found their target with deadly accuracy.

The helicopter’s engine coughed, sputtered.

Then it died.

The aircraft began to spin as it lost altitude, black smoke pouring from its engine compartment.

He had to stop Quinn before she did anything else.

Atlas launched himself at her, tackling her to the ground.

He wrenched the rifle from her hands before she could turn it on his team.

She didn’t resist. She only stared up at him with wide, confused eyes as if she were waking from a dream.

“What . . . ?” She blinked rapidly. Her gaze darted from Atlas to the weapon he now held, then back to his face. “What just happened? Did I . . . ?”

Her voice carried genuine bewilderment, like someone who’d just been woken up and told they’d been sleepwalking.

But Atlas had seen the way she’d handled that rifle—the textbook stance, the controlled breathing, the calculated precision of each shot.

That wasn’t beginner’s luck or adrenaline.

That was years of training.

A splash echoed across the water as the helicopter crashed in the sound and exploded into a tremendous ball of fire.

Through the smoke and spray, a parachute drifted toward the sound.

The pilot had ejected and made it out.

Atlas’s colleagues ran toward the scene, phones and radios already in hand as they called in the incident. If that was one of their guys, they needed to help him.

Atlas shifted on the ground toward Quinn, who sat up now, pressing her palms against her temples as if trying to hold her thoughts together. Her hands shook—whether from shock or the aftermath of whatever had just possessed her, he couldn’t tell.

Who are you?

The question burned in his throat, but he didn’t voice it. Because the terrified confusion on Quinn’s face looked genuine. She appeared as shocked by her actions as he was.

And who have I allowed into our midst?

The woman sitting in the sand before him had just taken down a military aircraft with three precise shots. The woman who claimed to remember nothing had moved like a seasoned operative, reacted like someone who’d spent years in combat zones.

Atlas’s psychological warfare training screamed warnings. Everything about this situation seemed wrong.

Quinn’s perfectly timed appearance. Her convenient amnesia. The hitman who’d found her so quickly. This helicopter attack that had given her the perfect opportunity to reveal her true capabilities.

Quinn looked up at him, a haunted look in her gaze. “Atlas, I don’t understand what just happened. I saw the helicopter, and then I just . . . moved. It was like my body knew what to do even though my mind didn’t.”

His chest tightened at the raw vulnerability in her voice.

Was she a woman whose training had been buried so deep that only mortal danger could bring it to the surface?

The possibility was terrifying.

Atlas stood at the edge of the Blackout compound, watching the controlled chaos unfold around the crash site.

Emergency vehicles lined the shore of the Pamlico Sound—Coast Guard boats, police cruisers, and an FAA investigation team. The FBI was on the way as well as the NTSB. It wouldn’t surprise him if the Department of Defense also showed up.

The aircraft’s wreckage was being pulled from the shallow water, and what they’d found made his blood run cold.

Despite how it had initially appeared, the helicopter hadn’t been one of theirs.

Someone had deliberately chosen an aircraft that would blend in with Blackout’s fleet—same model, similar paint scheme.

It looked close enough to fool anyone who didn’t look too carefully.

But the real discovery was in the wreckage itself: traces of C-4 explosives, rigged to detonate on impact with . . . whatever the target had been.

If Quinn hadn’t brought the aircraft down over the water, the explosion could have taken out their headquarters.

She may have saved dozens of lives.

Had that been their plan? To drop the explosives here?

If not at Blackout, then where?

The pilot they’d fished from the water was unconscious and unresponsive, currently under guard at the Lantern Beach Medical Clinic. Dr. Spenser was keeping him stable while they waited for federal agents to arrive.

Atlas’s gaze drifted to the gazebo near the water’s edge, where Quinn sat with Sarah Blackmore keeping watch. Blackmore was one of Colton’s most trusted operatives—former Secret Service, unflappable, and armed. If Quinn was a threat, Blackmore would handle it.

But Quinn didn’t look like a threat. She looked small and lost, her arms wrapped over her chest as she stared out at the water where pieces of the helicopter still floated. She’d been like that since the shooting—quiet, withdrawn, as if she were afraid of her own shadow.

Or afraid of what she’d just revealed about herself.

Atlas couldn’t stop replaying the incident. The way Quinn had grabbed that rifle. The practiced efficiency with which she’d checked the chamber and flipped the safety. The professional shooting stance, the controlled breathing, the deadly precision.

That level of skill didn’t come from a weekend at the gun range. It came from years of training, countless hours of practice, and muscle memory carved deep enough to survive even amnesia.

Who trained you, Quinn? What’s your story? And whose side are you on?

“Atlas.”

He turned and saw Colton striding toward him, his expression grim but thoughtful. The Blackout cofounder looked as if he’d aged a decade in the past few hours.

“We finished the preliminary assessment.” Colton stopped beside him. “As we suspected, that helicopter was loaded with enough explosives to level our main building. If it had hit its target . . .” He shook his head.

Atlas nodded, though the knowledge did nothing to ease the questions churning in his mind. “Were we the target?”

“That’s still unclear.”

“Any idea who was behind it?”

“Working theory is Sigma, but we won’t know for sure until the pilot wakes up. If he wakes up.” Colton’s jaw tightened. “What I want to know is how a woman with supposed amnesia recognized a hostile aircraft and neutralized it with three perfect shots.”

“I keep asking myself the same question.”

“And what answer are you coming up with?”

Atlas was quiet for a long moment, watching Quinn through the gazebo’s weathered slats. She’d turned slightly, and he could see her profile—the delicate line of her nose, the way her dark hair caught the brief sliver of sunlight as it peeked through the moody clouds.

She looked fragile, not like someone who could take down military aircraft.

In the distance, the clouds churned. If he didn’t know better, he’d think that the storm was coming faster now.

Maybe it was the emotional storm here on Lantern Beach that gave him that feeling.

“I think Quinn is exactly who she says she is,” Atlas said finally. “Someone who doesn’t know her own past. But I also think that past is a lot darker than any of us imagined.”

Colton studied him with sharp eyes. “You still trust her?”

Atlas thought about the way Quinn had looked at him after she’d taken the helicopter down—the genuine confusion and fear in her blue eyes. The way she’d asked what had happened as if she’d been watching someone else pull that trigger.

“I think she saved our lives today,” he said. “But I also think we need to be very careful about what we do next.”

Because whether Quinn was friend or foe, one thing was certain: She was far more dangerous than any of them had realized.

And they hadn’t even uncovered all of what she was capable of.