Ryan pushed past Mercer, his face flushed. He had heard the last part. “The hell it is. I’m coming with you.”
“You’re a liability, Ryan,” I snapped.
“I’m a SEAL,” he shot back, tapping the Trident. “You’re not doing this alone.”
I didn’t have time to argue. I unscrewed the backplate of my watch with a micro-tool from Mercer’s kit. Inside, etched microscopically into the steel, was an alphanumeric sequence. The key to burning Halcyon to the ground.
We moved toward Building 32. Hayes coordinated a silent perimeter. Mercer flanked me, his weapon drawn. Ryan stayed close behind. My father walked in front, a dead man walking.
We breached the heavy steel doors of the annex. The air inside was stale, smelling of rust and old targets.
At the end of a long, concrete corridor, a single tactical light blinded us.
“Slide the weapons across the floor,” a voice commanded.
I squinted against the glare. The man holding the gun to Lucas’s head wasn’t a faceless mercenary. He was wearing the uniform of a Navy Commander.
It was Paul Voss. The deputy director of base security. A man I had shaken hands with an hour ago.
Lucas lifted his head. His eyes met mine. They were the same deep, stormy gray I had dreamed of for two thousand nights. Em, he mouthed, silent.
“The watch, Captain Carter,” Voss smiled, his gun pressed hard behind Lucas’s ear.
I reached for my sidearm to toss it away.
But before my fingers touched the grip, a cold steel barrel pressed against the base of my skull.
“Don’t move, Emily,” Senior Chief Jonah Mercer whispered from right behind me.
Chapter 3: Blood and Betrayal
The betrayal didn’t register right away. It felt like a glitch in reality.
Jonah Mercer. The man I had carried for two miles through hostile territory with a sucking chest wound. The man who wept at my non-existent husband’s memorial. He had his service weapon pressed against my brain stem.
“Mercer, what the hell are you doing?” Ryan yelled, raising his own rifle, aiming it squarely at the man who had saved him from drowning just months ago.
