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Jaxso n

My emotions had no place here.

Her ears twitched, and her nose dropped to the ground, sniffing the mangled tangle of timber and tin with a precision only she could manage. Her movements were purposeful, sweeping side to side as she sniffed every crevice. She was born for the role: muscles taut, tail low, completely locked in.

Captain Watts had cleared all other personnel from the demolition zone, ensuring that any sound Onyx heard would come from inside the debris .

It was just us now. The weight of that responsibility pressed down on me. Behind me, a crowd was gathered at the barrier, their silent prayers and pleading eyes drilling into my back like a battering ram.

When I’d first arrived at the wharf, Zena had gripped my hand so hard it had nearly stopped my circulation.

Her voice cracked as she’d begged, “Find Blade. Please.” Beside her, Harper had stood frozen, her chin trembling, her eyes watery and wide.

She didn’t say a word, but the way she looked at me, like I was their last hope of finding Viper, had cut me deeper than any explosion ever could.

Forty-three hours.

That was how long it had been since the blast. I couldn’t stop myself from doing the math, no matter how much I tried.

Forty-three hours of smoke, water, and wreckage.

Forty-three hours of crushed steel and splintered wood.

Forty-three hours with no food, no fresh water, and no guarantees.

The numbers sat heavily in my chest, ticking down like a clock I couldn’t ignore.

The chances of finding them alive weren’t good. I knew it. Deep down, everyone knew it.

But I shoved those thoughts aside. Negative thinking never helped us find Charlotte, and it wasn’t going to help now. If I let doubt creep in, it would only weigh me down, and I couldn’t afford that. Not when lives were on the line.

Onyx paused, her nose hovering near a mangled slab of tin. Her ears flicked, and her body stiffened, every muscle coiled like a spring.

“Good girl,” I whispered, my heart pounding.

The countdown didn’t matter. The odds didn’t matter.

Blade and Viper were in here.

And we were going to find them.

I followed Onyx’s lead, scanning the debris field.

Every step across the twisted wreckage was a fight against gravity, and one wrong move and I’d be eating steal and shit.

Shattered beams jutted out like broken ribs.

Glass shards sparkled in the sunlight, crunching under the boots I’d borrowed from Parker.

Scents of scorched wood mingled with the ocean breeze.

But there was also something else. Something metallic, bitter, and wrong.

C4 powder maybe. I refused to believe it was anything worse .

“Good girl,” I murmured as Onyx paused near a collapsed section of corrugated iron. Her tail stiffened, nose pressing low, inhaling deep. That was her tell. She’d found something.

I shifted a buckled sheet of corrugated iron, the damn ground tilted beneath my boots, and I froze.

Above, a rusted beam let out a low groan, like the fucking thing was tell me to get the hell away. Onyx, however, didn’t waver.

“Show me, girl,” I said, keeping my voice steady.

She moved forward, threading through a narrow gap in the rubble with the precision of a predator on the hunt.

I followed, ducking under a jagged sheet of iron that threatened to take off my head.

The air became hotter and somehow thicker, and the stench of charred wood and ash filled my nostrils.

Sweat trickled down my spine, soaking into my T-shirt as I crawled deeper.

My knees scraped against something solid. Not tin. Not rubble. Floorboards. Weathered, splintered, but unmistakable.

My chest tightened with a flicker of hope.

Yes. We’ve reached the warehouse floor.

I paused, catching my breath as I panned my flashlight over the chaos. The beam swept across the wreckage, illuminating jagged edges of broken timber and twisted metal. The devastation was overwhelming, a labyrinth of destruction where every step felt like a gamble.

Nobody else had made it this far. The other search teams had kept back, fearing the remaining beams, the few that hadn’t already collapsed in the fall, would come crashing down at any second.

But I wasn’t stopping. If they were alive, they would be somewhere in this section.

The creaking of the structure above me was a constant reminder of just how dangerously close we were to disaster, but I couldn’t let it get to me. I couldn’t let fear win.

Blade and Viper are down here. Keep moving.

“Good girl,” I murmured, resting my hand on Onyx’s back before reaching for my comms. I pressed the button. “We’ve breached the rubble. Going in.”

“Copy that,” Captain Watts’s reply crackled through the static. He had been talking about retirement for years. Maybe this disaster would finally push him over the edge.

All the more reason to make sure this operation ended on a high note.

“Onyx, lead,” I said, and Onyx surged forward.

The space narrowed, pressing in from all sides. The air was suffocating. Hotter and somehow thicker.

Onyx froze again, her body rigid but vibrating with tension, like high-tensile wire about to snap. Her nose hovered just above a patch of splintered timber, nostrils flaring as she caught something I couldn’t see.

I crawled in beside her, squinting at the spot, and found a faint outline of something. Fabric maybe? It was hard to tell.

“Good girl,” I said as my pulse quickened.

I brushed away the debris with my gloved fingers and found a torn scrap of fabric, frayed and stiff with what had to be blood, around it was a dark stain on the wood.

Captain Watts had briefed me on what Aria had seen before the explosion: Grant Hughes, strapped to a chair in the center of the warehouse, his head slumped forward, unconscious.

His bandaged, amputated legs and hospital gown confirmed his kidnapper had brought him there from the hospital.

As Blade checked Grant’s neck for a pulse, Viper had yelled at all of them to run.

Maya had sprinted toward Aria, blocking her view of Viper and Blade, and from that moment to when she woke up in the hospital bed, her memory was a blank slate.

The dark stain on the weathered timber before me was enough to tell me we were close to blast central. Grant Hughes had been at ground zero when it all went to hell . . . his blood and body parts could be all over the fucking place.

I swallowed hard, the weight in my chest tightening. This wasn’t going to be pretty. But no matter what, we weren’t leaving without answers. Good or bad.

Not knowing what had happened to Charlotte was the deepest wound our family ever suffered.

If we’d known she was dead, we could have dealt with the aftershocks.

And maybe we could even start to heal. Instead, we were left drowning in the relentless what-ifs of uncertainty and constantly bombarded by every rotten possibility except closure .

This wasn’t just about finding Blade and Viper. It was about ending the spiral of impossible questions for everyone who loved them.

“Possible evidence of blood found,” I said into my radio, keeping my voice level. “I may be close to the blast zone.”

“Copy that,” Watts replied. “Be careful, Jaxson.”

I exhaled slowly and rested a hand on Onyx’s side. She leaned into me, her body warm and solid against my palm.

“Let’s go, girl. Seek,” I said.

The crashing waves below the floorboards grew louder the deeper we pushed into the wreckage, their relentless rhythm amplified by the stillness around us. The air was a cocktail of decay. Rotting fish and salt mixed with the acrid bite of charred wood and ash.

The steady pounding of the surf tugged at my thoughts, pulling me back to Ryder’s offhand comment about nearly drowning at high tide. Four high tides had come and gone since Blade and Viper disappeared. Four opportunities for nature to drown them.

Please, let me find them . . . s omewhere beneath this rubble, in a pocket of air . . . still alive. I clung to the thought, repeating it like a mantra. They have to be alive. They just have to be.

Onyx pressed on, her nose working the air as she threaded deeper into the wreckage. I followed close behind, steadying myself with one hand against a beam as I climbed over a crumpled heap of charred corrugated metal.

Every sound seemed to echo: the scrape of my boots against debris, the groaning protest of shifting wreckage, the low whistle of wind weaving through the ruins. It was a symphony of destruction, oppressive and unrelenting.

Onyx halted, her body tense, nose pressed against a narrow gap between two collapsed beams. Her tail went rigid, ears forward, every muscle coiled with purpose.

I crouched beside her, my heart hammering as I peered into the dark void.

“Show me, Onyx,” I said over the pounding waves.

She barked once. Sharp. Certain.

Hope flared in my chest, fragile but undeniable.

A tapping noise carved through all the others .

My heart launched to my throat.

Onyx barked.

Three taps replied.

“Holy shit.” Someone was alive. “Go, girl. Fetch.”

Onyx twisted her body to squeeze through the narrow gap between the beams. I pressed my face closer, trying to see through the darkness, my own breath loud in my ears. The tapping came again. Three sharp beats.

Onyx barked and her tail wagged, but her posture was intense and alert.

I scrambled forward, easing past jagged edges of the metal that bit into my knees and palms.

“Hello!” I yelled into the void. “We’re here! We’re coming!”

My voice sounded raw and desperate, which I fucking was.

The gap was too tight for me to fit through, but Onyx vanished into the shadows beyond. Her barks turned into a rhythmic pattern that matched the tapping replies. She was locked on. I pressed my face as close as I could to the opening, straining to see.

A flicker of movement caught my eye between two fractured floorboards: fingers, trembling and wriggling weakly.

“Yes! I’ve got you!” The words burst out of me, my heart hammering as I swept the beam of my flashlight over the hands.

Beneath the floorboards, I could just make out two pale faces.

Their eyes were open but unfocused, their lips cracked and trembling.

Blade’s head jerked toward me just as a wave surged in, crashing over his face and submerging him.

Drowning him.

Oh fuck.