Page 5 of Hardline Torque
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Tane had clocked himthe second Victor entered the forest.
Not because Victor was careless—far from it—but because Tane had been watching for him.
The command center still smelled like fresh timber and scorched metal.The structure had been repaired with brutal efficiency in the aftermath of the last fight.Cables snaked across the floor, and large screens glowed with live feeds.Tane barely registered any of it.His attention had been locked on one feed in particular from the moment Luca had brought the drones online.
“There,” Luca had said casually, fingers flicking across a translucent display.“Got movement back in the woods.Heat signature looks ...deliberate.”
Tane hadn’t answered.He’d leaned in instead, eyes narrowing as the feed sharpened.As Luca left to check his drone mapping.
He’d watched him move through the trees with the kind of quiet that came from long practice and hard lessons.No wasted motion.No rush.Victor had chosen his tree carefully—far enough back to stay unseen, close enough to see everything that mattered.Tane had felt something low and tight settle in his chest as he watched the man climb, disappear into the canopy, and set up his gear with methodical precision.
Victor was watching them.
But he wasn’t coming in.
Tane stood now on the balcony outside the command center, forearms braced on the railing, gaze fixed outward.From here, the site looked almost peaceful.Contractors moved with purpose across the grounds, fortifying fences, reinforcing structures, turning a battlefield into something that might survive another night.
He could go to him.
The thought came unbidden, sharp with instinct.Tane imagined striding into the trees, closing the distance, putting a hand on Victor’s shoulder and saying, ‘you don’t have to do this alone.’
He didn’t move.
Victor wasn’t ready for that.Tane knew it as surely as he knew how to read a fight before it turned ugly.
Because if Victor were anyone else—if he were an unknown threat, an unvetted hostile moving in the tree line—Tane would already be moving.
He would be calculating distance, wind, cover.He would be marking the man’s posture, the way his weight settled, the way he used stillness instead of motion.Victor would register as dangerous within seconds.Not because of size—though he had that—but because of restraint.The kind that came from discipline learned early and paid for in blood.
Tane had seen men like that before.Operators who could kill quietly and walk away without needing the noise.The fact that Victor had chosen a vantage point instead of an approach said more than any weapon ever could.
Which meant one thing, clear as daylight.
Black Tide was safer with Victor inside the wire than watching from the trees.
And that was a problem.
Because Victor was stubborn and had no intention of seeking help.
And he was planning to go to war by himself.Too much, too soon, and Victor would bolt.He’d already proven that.
Still, it was hard not to.
The man needed help.
Tane exhaled slowly, lifting his right hand to his eye.The contact lens slid into place with a practiced motion, the world shifting subtly as Luca’s feed overlaid his vision.Data flickered at the edges—range, wind, heat signatures.And there, tucked back among the branches, was Victor.
Watching.Listening.
Tane frowned.
He caught snippets of conversation drifting across the yard as he waited.Kael barking orders at a contractor who’d cut a corner.Luca swearing grumpily about drone overlap and blind spots.Keanu humming under his breath as he laid wire that was a targeted explosive.Niko’s laugh—short, sharp, familiar—cut through it all.
Tane glanced back at the feed just in time to see Victor smile.
A real one.Brief.Unguarded.
