Page 49

Everly knelt beside a wounded boy no older than sixteen, wrapping a torn strip of gauze around his arm with practiced ease. Without trembling, her hands moved like memory. But her blood boiled hot enough to burn in her veins. Her rage was quiet, tightly leashed, but it filled every breath.

They’d let her help, sure, but only just. One med kit. No backup. No real access. She’d had to argue, beg, and take a slap for the privilege of keeping people alive.

Still, they watched her like a threat.

She was finishing a compression wrap when a hand clamped down on her arm, fingers bruising against her bicep.

“You. Upstairs. Now.” She looked up into the face of a Black Dawn operative, mid-thirties, scar down the left cheek. His accent was Brazilian, but his words were clean and cold. “Our leader’s been wounded. He needs a doctor.”

She froze for half a second. Her gaze flicked toward Julia and Maritza, both of whom had gone rigid.

“I’m almost done here,” Everly said evenly, not looking away.

“He is your priority now,” the man growled. Then, with no further warning, he yanked her to her feet by the arm.

Julia rose slightly, voice calm but firm. “She’s not your property.”

His weapon rose. “You should stay out of this,” the man snapped.

Maritza said, eyes narrowed. “If anything happens to her….”

The man shoved Everly toward the exit, muttering something into his radio. She stumbled, caught herself, and kept her chin high. Resisting was only going to make them hurt her.

She was furious and a little afraid. She knew, deep in her bones, Zorro and his team weren't sitting still. There was no way Zorro wasn’t coming for her, not after the heat, the promises, the commitment, and the way he was already building for a future.

Zorro was coming.

They were coming. She couldn’t hear them. Couldn’t see them.But she could feel it.

So she walked.

Head high. Hands loose. Heart ready. She was going to fight like hell.

Then, she saw her across the room, near the ballroom entrance, dressed in a hot pink bikini, strappy sandals. Casual as sin.

Bree West. Her memory jogged. FBI agent embedded with Joker’s team to root out the ambassador’s assassins.

She’d stitched the woman up several times, and the kick-ass agent had been part of the force who had saved her when she’d been kidnapped by United Stand for Islam, Tuareg clansmen who had banded with their Libyan counterpart, Path of Enlightenment.

Their leader, Teboho Achebe, had demanded the return of his brothers’ bodies, or they would execute her.

Everly’s breath caught but she didn’t react. Didn’t give it away. She just kept walking.

But her mind was already sprinting.

Bree West was here…ah…God. It was probably Blitz that she married. There was no mistaking the chemistry between them. Of course , another SEAL wife. Everly just surrendered to the inevitable.

One thing was absolutely clear.

This was a play. If Bree was in the ballroom in that outfit, it meant the team was getting ready to assault. So Everly complied

She began to breathe again.

He was coming for her, and God help anyone standing in his way.

Professor breathed through his cheek weld, slow and still, feeling the heat of the metal barrel beneath his palm and the faint drag of humidity clinging to his skin.

The kill box was tight, two confirmed snipers down already, bodies cooling in scaffolding and rust-stained balconies.

But Anya Duarte remained, and she was moving.

“Top of the ironwork, northeast grid,” he murmured into comms, voice low, steady. “She’s repositioning.”

He could just barely track her, flickers of movement through the framework, a shift of weight, the glint of glass. She was fast, smarter than the stories gave her credit for. Calculated. One shot, one kill, then gone, and she was hunting him now.

That was fine. They’dplanned for that.

He shifted, just enough to suggest a blind angle, keeping the scope loose, almost negligent.

He knew how she thought. She’d look for patterns, predict rhythms. When a shot didn’t come from him again, when he stayed quiet, she’d think he’d moved, gone cold, or flinched.

She would take the bait. His rifle stayed still, trained nowhere in particular. His voice was a whisper. “Gator, how we doing?” A beat of silence, then the smooth cadence of homegrown hell in his ear.

“She lookin’ at you, bro?”

“Yeah.”

“Then I’m right where I need to be.”

Professor didn’t twitch. Didn’t blink. He let her take the shot.

Crack. Metal sparked inches from his elbow.

He was at an impossible angle, but damn if she didn’t get close.

He rolled, not for cover, but to buy her belief.

Make her chase him. She rose from her cover, shoulder lifting into view.

He saw her face. Sharp features. Blonde braid. That sniper’s stillness. Calculating.

Then shock. Just one flash, a sliver of frozen realization as her gaze swept sideways. It was too late. The muzzle flash came low and from the side.

Gator.

Tucked deep beneath rusted piping and a broken duct, sprawled like a sun-drenched panther in wait.

Everything slowed down. Gator’s round spiraled from the barrel of his sniper rifle.

The round punched through her forehead, her head snapping back—split second, alive, then dead.

His partner’s perfect cold zero ended the legend.

She went limp instantly. No sound. No cry. Just gravity.

Professor sat up slowly, letting the silence settle.

He kept his voice low. “She saw me.”

“Yeah,” Gator replied. “But she missed the gator in the grass, brother.”

Professor exhaled long, a rare flicker of satisfaction in his chest. He spoke into his comm. “Three snipers down, LT. All quiet up here.”

Gator’s voice came again, lazy and lethal. “Ain’t nothin’ quiet ’bout justice.”

The ballroom doors slammed open just long enough to let someone out, just long enough for Zorro to see her.

Everly.

She stumbled slightly, flanked by two armed men. Her arms were restrained but her chin was high, that surgeon’s spine still refusing to bend. Even from across the lobby, he could see the iron in her walk, that fury barely held behind her eyes.

Zorro’s heart clenched hard, heat flooding his chest. She was alive. Moving. But those bastards had their hands on her, and every instinct in his body roared to break free.

He turned to Joker, voice low but urgent, already moving even before the words cleared his throat.

“They’ve got her.”

Joker didn’t hesitate. Didn’t ask for clarification. He followed Zorro’s gaze, saw the flash of Everly’s blonde hair, the unmistakable fire in her expression, even as she was dragged across the tiles like a possession.

“Go,” Joker said. Quiet. Absolute. His jaw was set, eyes sharp. “She’s yours.”

Zorro didn’t need more.

He was already in motion, gliding low and fast along the shadowed wall, disappearing into the curve of the marble corridor without a backward glance.

No hesitation. No comms. No second-guessing.

He would not lose her. Not after everything they’d survived.

Everly was in enemy hands.

The waiting was over. It was no time for violence of action, full-scale assault. He was done holding back.

Bailee’s Glock clicked empty, a sharp, merciless sound in the chaos. No time to curse. No time to flinch. One of the Black Dawn thugs vaulted over the bar, rifle raised and aimed straight at her chest.

She didn’t move.

Behind her, the family huddled, trembling, wide-eyed. Her body blocked them instinctively, but her mind screamed no rounds left .

A blur. Black and fast and snarling came out of nowhere.

Flint hit the man’s arm like a missile, jaws locking onto the forearm before the trigger could be pulled. The rifle fired wide, round sparking off tile and stone, but it didn’t matter as Flint ravaged him with deep growls and rending teeth. No matter how hard the man struggled, Flint didn’t let go.

The gunfire ceased, but. Bailee didn’t stop to calculate what that meant. She saw the fallen weapon and moved, dove, grabbed it, and pivoted mid-kneel.

The shot rang out a half-second later.

One round. Center mass.

The thug dropped, eyes wide in stunned disbelief as he crumpled into a sprawl beside the bar. Her breath heaved. She barely had time to exhale before another shout tore through the air. “Flint guard!”

Flint let go, pivoted, and those brown eyes focused on her. He surged past her and put himself between danger and the family.

She turned. Bear was locked in hand-to-hand with the last remaining Black Dawn operative, both men bloodied, grappling between them. The fight was brutal, dirty, and intimate. Neither held the advantage for long.

“Get Zorro’s family out of here!” he shouted, voice raw with command.

Zorro’s family ? Oh, God. She turned to look at them. His mom, dad, sister Dani, he’d talked about her, and his brother-in-law, EMT/firefighter. No wonder the old man looked familiar. Zorro had his father’s gentle eyes.

Her throat tightened. Her gaze went back to Bear.

Her eyes locked with his calm, immovable, carved-by-time gaze—the deep gray of storm-washed slate, watchful as winter, and just as unforgiving.

But he was hurt. She could see it now. The stiffness in his shoulder, the limp in his stance. He wouldn’t last forever.

She wanted to stay. God, she wanted to stay.

But Zorro’s whole life was in her hands, and she couldn’t falter.

Bear was locked in combat with the last remaining Black Dawn operative, their bodies slick with blood and sweat.

The fight was savage, intimate, and fast. The kind where every blow mattered and every breath counted.

Bear wasn’t elegant. He didn’t need to be.

He was pure force, all power and purpose.

“Get out,” he growled, never taking his eyes off his opponent. “Now.”

Everly hesitated.

Then Bear struck.