Page 56 of Cipher: Lethal Algorithm

She makes a desperate sound, her fingers digging into my shoulders as she drags my mouth back down to hers. We devour each other in the center of the living room, stripping away the impending tactical reality. I want to walk her backward into the wall and take her right here.

“You promised me a night. A real night. When this is done, I’m going to ruin you.”

“When this is done.” She pulls back, but her fingers remain hooked in my shirt. Her eyes are dark, promising me everything I want to hear. But neither of us believes she’ll keep her promise.

The security perimeter warning pierces the silence from my terminal.

The sound hits like ice water. My training snaps back into place, cold and rigid, shattering the heat. I drop my hands with a groan of frustration. I’m hard and aching for her. Definitely not ready to face the man who’s about to walk through the door.

“That’s Wraith.”

Wraith moves without displacing the air around him, a ghost wearing black tactical gear and carrying a suppressed MP7. I requested additional security the moment Hutch dropped the mandate. Boyd sent his best hammer.

Wraith clears the porch stairs in two strides. He offers no greeting. His pale, flat gaze sweeps the room, maps the exits, and stops immediately on Ivy.

I track the exact second Wraith parses the space between us. The proximity. The volatile, heavy air of two people devouring each other thirty seconds ago.

Wraith stops in the doorway. His pale, flat gaze drifts from my flushed face down to the MP7 at his side, then back up to me.

“I can pull a perimeter sweep on the porch if you need five minutes. Or I can sit in the SUV so you don’t have to listen to me judge you.”

“We’re good.” I clear my throat and step firmly between his sightline and her. “Ivy, meet Wraith. He’s our physical security.”

Ivy assesses him right back, holding the stare of an apex predator without a single flinch. “I thought Boyd would send an entire strike team.”

“Budget cuts.” Wraith pushes off the doorframe. “You just get little ole me.”

“There is absolutely nothing little about you.”

The dry exchange underscores a stark physical reality. “Little ole me” happens to be six-foot-four and two-hundred-twenty pounds of tightly coiled muscle—a massive phantom capable of snapping a spine without displacing a single breath of air.

The introduction ends. Mutual recognition of utility achieved.

I grab the go-bag and toss Wraith the keys to the SUV. “Twelve minutes to the south airfield. The contact is prepped. We move the HSM to the plane, they fly it to Hutch’s desk, and we burn the transport out of Macau.”

“I’ll take the lead. You cover the asset.”

“The asset has a name.” Ivy glares at Wraith.

“Noted.” He turns and disappears out the front door.

We hit the night air moving fast. The dense tree cover swallows the moonlight entirely, leaving the winding coastal road a treacherous black ribbon. Wraith takes the wheel. I ride in the back with Ivy.

I keep my arm braced across the back of the seat behind her shoulders, maintaining physical contact. The brutal geometry of an extraction usually enforces a clean mental compartmentalization.

Today, the firewall fails.

Half my brain plots escape routes; the other half is consumed by the heat radiating through her jacket, dragging my focus straight back to the memory of fucking her thirty minutes ago. The raw, unprotected reality of what we crossed into.

Her spine is a rigid line of tension against my ribs. She doesn’t seek comfort. She tracks the dark brush through the window, her thumb rhythmically tracing the frame of the compact Glock I handed her at the safe house. Every curve of the road eats away at the countdown.

The ten-minute mark arrives in a flash of blinding headlights and the screech of tires.

Two heavy utility trucks roll out from a blind access road directly into our path, sealing the corridor entirely.

Someone was in place, waiting for us to enter the kill box.

“Brace.”