Page 2 of Rescuing Ally, Part 2 (CHARLIE Team: Guardian Hostage Rescue Specialists #8)

TWO

Survivors’ Account

GABE

The kids are the worst part.

Luke’s eyes are vacant—a thousand-yard stare on a five-year-old face. He hasn’t made a sound since we found them. Just clutches his stuffed dinosaur with white knuckles and burrows deeper into Sophia’s side whenever someone moves too fast.

Zephyr’s different—won’t stop crying. Silent tears track down her cheeks, and she hiccups when Violet tries to soothe her. The crying strips you raw because there’s no tantrum in it. Just pure, distilled fear.

And I want to fucking kill someone for putting tears in Zephyr’s pretty eyes and that vacant stare in Luke’s.

Techies swarm Jenna’s apartment, cataloging blood spatter and retrieving tranq darts.

The scene’s gone clinical—evidence markers dotting the wreckage like toxic yellow flowers.

Max is on a stretcher, still unconscious but stable.

Carter crouches beside him, hand resting on the dog’s flank, his face carved from stone.

He hasn’t said a word since we told him about Jenna. Not a goddamn sound. Just nodded once, jaw so tight I thought I heard something crack, then went straight to Max.

The hollow look in Carter’s eyes—it’s worse than if he’d broken down. This ain’t no storm. It’s the calm before something apocalyptic.

I pace the perimeter, calculating blast radius, entry points, tactical advantage—the shit that keeps my brain from short-circuiting.

Five steps. Turn. Five steps. Turn. Repeat.

“Sophia.” I stop mid-circuit. My voice comes out rougher than intended. I dial it back. “We need everything you can remember. Every detail.”

Blake gives me a warning look— Back off, she’s traumatized —but Sophia straightens, steel in her spine despite the tremor in her hands.

“It was Harrison.” The name is acid on her tongue. “It all happened so fast. He was at the door, claiming he had documents from Ally’s father.”

She strokes Luke’s hair mechanically as she speaks. The boy doesn’t stir.

“Max knew something was wrong right away. Started growling before Jenna even opened the door.” Her eyes go distant, replaying the memory. “When she cracked it open, Harrison reached for something inside his jacket. Max just—exploded. Went straight for his arm.”

“Good boy,” I mutter. Mental note: steak dinner for that dog when he wakes up.

“Then everything happened at once.” Sophia swallows hard. “Harrison screamed. Dropped a gun. Jenna shouted ‘Gun!’ and dove for it. His men outside started moving. Rebel yelled for me to get the kids to the safe room.”

Her hands tremble. Blake covers them with his own.

“That’s when I grabbed Luke and Zephyr. The last thing I saw was men in tactical gear rushing through the doorway and Jenna raising Harrison’s gun. Then there was gunfire, glass breaking… I got the kids to the panic room like Stitch taught us.”

“So you didn’t see what happened to Ally? The others?” Hank asks, materializing beside me. His voice is too controlled.

Dangerous.

Sophia shakes her head. “No. Once we were in the panic room, we could hear everything—the fighting, the shots, someone screaming. Then—silence.” Her voice breaks. “When it went quiet, we waited, like Stitch taught us. We stayed hidden until you came.”

“You did exactly right,” I tell her, the words scraping against my throat. “You saved the kids.”

“The bastards had a plan all along,” I snarl. The magnitude of Harrison’s betrayal is staggering—the man’s been Robert Collins’s head of security for decades. He watched Ally grow up.

Protected her.

And now?

I’ve never wanted to unmake someone as badly as I want to unmake Harrison.

“We need to see what happened after Sophia got to the safe room,” Hank says to Ethan, his voice flat. Deadly.

Ethan plugs a tablet into the wall display. The apartment’s security feed fills the screen—multiple angles, high-definition clarity, but views are limited to the hall.

It’s an incomplete picture.

I analyze it with a technician’s eye—cataloging weapons, tactics, vulnerabilities. The team moves like pros, but there’s something— off .

“Stop,” I say at one frame. “Go back fifteen seconds.”

Ethan rewinds.

“There…” I point. “Gas deployment pattern. That’s Guardian protocol. See the formation? The way they stack? That’s our standard breach procedure.”

The weight of this sinks in.

“These aren’t random mercenaries,” Hank says, following my thought. “Someone’s feeding Malfor our playbook.”

“Or he’s got more moles,” I mutter.

The footage continues. We watch Harrison enter first, the smooth deception as he approaches the door. The moment Max lunges, exactly as Sophia described. The gun falling. Then chaos erupts.

The hallway camera catches glimpses through the doorway—flashes of movement, Max latched onto Harrison’s arm, Jenna diving for the fallen weapon, then gunfire.

As the team floods in, we see what Sophia couldn’t.

Rebel grabs a kitchen knife from the counter and slashes at the first operative to reach her, opening his arm from wrist to elbow.

Malia flips the heavy dining table for cover.

Ally—my chest tightens—swings a brass lamp at an attacker’s ribs. The impact drops him.

“Fuck,” Walt breathes as we watch the assault continue. “That’s Trac-tech equipment. Ghost-class thermal. Government contract only.”

“And look at the build on the two at the back,” I add. “Similar profile to Sentinel operatives. Same stance, same kit configuration.” I can’t be certain—Kazakhstan was a blur of smoke and blood and explosions—but the physical signature feels familiar. Like a scar you recognize by shape, not sight.

The footage captures what happens next. Gas canisters roll across the floor.

Max collapses from a tranquilizer dart. Jenna fires until her gun empties, then swings it like a club before succumbing to the gas.

Rebel takes a dart to the shoulder, yanks it out, and keeps fighting until a second one drops her. Mia and Malia fall to the gas.

Then Harrison reappears, blood streaming down his arm, his face a mask of fury as he stands over Ally. He extracts something from his tactical vest—a syringe.

“What’s he giving her?” Blake asks.

“Something specialized,” I reply, demolitions training kicking in as I analyze the delivery mechanism. “Not a standard tranq. Look at the delivery system—that’s a pressure injector. High-velocity deployment. Military grade.”

The rest of the feed shows the extraction. Women dragged through the hallway, unconscious. The elevator security camera captures them loading Ally, Jenna, Rebel, Malia, and Mia into what appear to be large equipment cases. Then they move to the roof.

“The roof?” Blake’s brows tug together. “What the fuck?”

“Mitzy,” Ethan barks into his comm. “We need rooftop footage. Now.”

Her voice crackles back, “Working on it. Roof cameras were compromised, but I’ve got fragments from the perimeter sweep.”

The screen flickers, switches to a grainy night-vision feed. At first, it’s just static darkness, then movement. Shadows against the sky, whirring blades cutting the air.

“What the hell,” Rigel breathes.

Drones. Not surveillance models. Not the little quadcopters used for recon. These are military-grade transport drones, featuring heavy lift capacity, near-silent operation, and massive payload potential. Six of them hover above the roof like mechanical vultures.

“They used drones for extraction?” Walt’s disbelief mirrors my own. “That’s?—”

“Brilliant,” I cut in, mind already calculating lift capacities, flight ranges, and acoustic signatures. “High-risk, but fucking brilliant. Low radar profile, especially at night. No heat signature like a chopper. Virtually invisible to perimeter security. Relatively silent.”

The footage shows figures loading the equipment cases, which hold our women, onto harness systems beneath each drone. Then they rise and vanish into the night sky.

Hank’s face transforms as he absorbs every frame. His eyes go glacier-cold. His jaw locks. His breathing slows to a predator’s patience. The mask slips into place—the one I recognize from our darkest ops. Our worst recoveries.

This is Hank at his most lethal.

“Timestamps,” he says. “Cross-reference with perimeter breach alerts.”

“Already calculating,” Ethan responds, fingers flying. “They had a sixty-eight-minute head start before we arrived.”

“Sixty-eight minutes, fifteen seconds and counting,” I correct automatically, my brain already mapping distances, potential extraction routes. “We need Mitzy to run calculations on probable range and capabilities of these things.”

Mitzy’s voice cuts in through the comm. “I’ve tracked the initial flight path. They headed west, out over the ocean. Lost them after about three miles offshore.”

“Ocean extraction,” Hank mutters. “That means a vessel.”

“Rendezvous with a ship,” I agree, connecting the dots. “The drones don’t have the range for a full extraction, just the initial phase. Could be anything waiting out there—yacht, fishing trawler, cargo vessel.”

“Checking maritime traffic now,” Mitzy reports, the clatter of her keyboard audible through the comm. “Four commercial vessels passed within the projected flight path window. Cross-referencing against satellite imagery to identify any vessels running dark.”

I’m running mental calculations—drone flight endurance, ocean currents, shipping lanes—when Forest’s voice cuts through the chaos. The Guardian HRS founder looms in the doorway, his face weathered granite as he surveys the destruction.

“Stitch is missing too,” he says without preamble, each word precisely measured. “Her apartment was hit simultaneously. Professional. Clinical. Same approach.”

The air stills around us. Stitch—Malfor’s prodigy, until he sold her out and left her to rot in federal prison. The woman Mitzy recruited for her incomparable skills as a hacker.

“Full lockdown,” Forest orders. “All operations suspended. All personnel are confined to quarters or duty stations. Sigma protocols are active.”

Sigma protocols. Our nuclear option. The glass-breaking contingency for when Guardian HRS itself has been compromised.

Ethan steps forward. “Our team?—”

“Is missing five civilians and one essential operative under our direct protection,” Forest finishes, steel in every syllable. “I’m well aware, Ethan. This is now a Category 1 recovery operation.”

Category 1. No restrictions. No rules of engagement.

Forest’s eyes lock with each of us in turn. “Whatever you need. Whoever you need.” His gaze settles on Hank. “You have full operational autonomy. Find them.”

“And Malfor?” I ask.

Forest’s expression doesn’t change. “Bring me his head or don’t come back.”

He doesn’t wait for acknowledgment. None needed.

“Mitzy’s running traces now,” Forest continues. “CJ and Sam are activating international assets. We’re calling in every marker ever owed.”

I’m barely listening, my mind already calculating. Sixty-eight minutes, forty seconds. Every second burns, acid eating through my control.

Flight trajectories over open water. Vessel interception points. Drone battery life versus payload weight. The weather conditions over the Pacific tonight. I map it all, trying to predict where they’d take six heavily guarded women.

Where they’d take Ally.

My chest constricts thinking about her—unconscious, at Harrison’s mercy. The specialized injection. Malfor’s particular interest is in her brain and her research. The fact that he’s tried to capture her twice before.

And succeeded, this time.

I catch my reflection in a broken mirror—I barely recognize the face staring back. Eyes like blown glass. Jaw rigid. Something feral is lurking beneath the surface.

I know this feeling. I’ve used it before.

The rage builds, familiar and dangerous. A tightly controlled explosion is waiting for detonation. The kind that, properly channeled, lets me do the unthinkable. The kind that lets me move mountains or tear men apart with my bare hands.

The kind that lets me hunt the most dangerous men alive through the darkest corners of the earth.

The kind that will bring Ally back to us.

Hank catches my eye across the room, and the same savage calculation is reflected there. His fury runs cold where mine burns hot, but the destination is identical.

We’re going to kill Malfor.