Page 53 of Reaper
ADDY
The digital clock bolted to the concrete wall of the Guardian HRS safehouse flashes 0300 hours in harsh, glowing red numbers.
Two days.
Forty-eight agonizing, suffocating hours since Frost and his tactical team loaded into their heavy SUVs in a freezing motel parking lot and vanished into the desert. Forty-eight hours since I forced Wyatt's brother to make a choice between following orders and saving his own blood.
I haven't slept a single minute since they left.
I pace the length of the secure command center, my boots completely silent against the heavy industrial carpeting.
The safehouse is a sprawling, subterranean bunker hidden deep in the unforgiving Arizona desert, miles away from civilization and far beyond the reach of the Ares syndicate. Hawk brought me here immediately after Frost deployed. It's a fortress of thick concrete, blast doors, and humming server towers.
It feels exactly like a tomb.
"You're going to burn a hole straight through the subfloor, Addy." Mitzy doesn't look up from her sprawling bank of curved, glowing monitors.
Mitzy is the technical lead for Guardian HRS. She is small, fiercely intelligent, and completely unfazed by the frantic, nervous energy radiating off me in waves.
She types with blinding speed, the endless streams of encrypted code reflecting bright green against her skin. Her desk is a chaotic landscape of empty energy drink cans and tangled cables.
"I can't just sit here." My voice is tight and raw from disuse. "I can't do nothing while he's out there."
"Sit anyway." CJ leans casually against the edge of a massive oak conference table in the center of the room.
CJ is the lead of the Guardian teams. He's a massive, deeply imposing man with calm, calculating eyes that miss absolutely nothing. Sam stands next to him, equally quiet, equally lethal. Hawk introduced them when we arrived, treating the two men with a profound, unspoken respect.
They are the apex predators of the black-ops world. They move without making a sound, and their mere presence shifts the gravity in the room.
Right now, their steady, immovable calm is the only thing keeping me from losing my mind.
"We don't pace in this house." Sam's voice is soft, his sharp gaze tracking my movement. "Pacing means you're doubting the team. Frost doesn't lose. If he went after his brother, he's bringing him back."
"You don't know the compound they're hitting," I whisper, wrapping my arms around my chest. "You don't know the odds."
"We don't need to." CJ leans back against the leather sofa. "We know Frost and his team."
"Got it!" Mitzy shouts, slamming her hand down on the enter key with a sharp, victorious crack.
The three massive tactical screens dominating the far wall instantly shift from black to a blinding white. Data floods the displays in cascading columns. Names. Offshore bank accounts. Routing numbers. Shell companies tied directly to the Ares broker and the upper echelons of the human trafficking syndicate.
"This is brilliant." Mitzy spins her heavy ergonomic chair around to face me. "The forensic audit you ran on his ledger? The files you pulled from the USB? It's completely flawless."
I stop pacing, staring at the endless rows of data exposing the monster who hunted me. "Is it enough to break them?"
"You didn't just find a leak." Mitzy's voice is thick with genuine awe. "You handed us the entire plumbing system. We have their logistics, their payroll, their international transit routes. With this intel, we can permanently dismantle the Ares syndicate. Not just a branch of it. The whole damn tree."
Mitzy shares a heavy, meaningful look with CJ.
"It's exactly what we need." CJ's deep voice carries absolute authority. He pushes off the table, turning his gaze to me. "The real work begins now. Guardian HRS will tear their infrastructure apart piece by piece. They won't have the resources or the manpower to hunt anyone ever again."
"But is it enough to keep Wyatt safe?" The question tears out of me, jagged and desperate. "None of this matters if he doesn't come back."
A sharp, sudden burst of static crackles from the heavy military radio resting in the center of the conference table.
The entire room goes dead silent.
Hawk crosses the command center in three massive strides. He grabs the heavy handset, his thumb depressing the mic button. "Actual, this is Overwatch. Go ahead."
