Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 52851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
I swallowed, my throat tight, my voice barely above a rasp. “I love her.”
Duke nodded, his expression grim. “Yeah. That’s why you’re gonna do what she asks.”
He gave me a quick, hard shake, then let go, stepping back as I turned toward Preacher.
The man who had always been our fearless leader wasn’t pacing anymore. He wasn’t shouting. He wasn’t anything. He just sat at the table, his shoulders sagging, his hands limp in his lap, his eyes staring blankly ahead. The fight was gone. The weight of what had just happened had crushed him completely.
I knew that look because I felt the same fucking way.
Kyle was gone, and I had just lost the only world that mattered to me.
Six weeks later….
I was going crazy not knowing how she was. I knew from Duke that shortly after leaving here, she’d gone out to the Middle East to do something with the military. Since then, he said there had been radio silence from her. His exact words.
I was struggling to sleep at night and had found myself going into her room just to feel close to her so that I could get a couple of hours. I spent most of my time helping fix up the Compound again after the attack, the first area being where she had been and where they’d focused their attention. Every time I saw the damage and thought of what could have happened, I felt sick. Preacher wasn’t doing much better, and Duke was a foul tempered son of a bitch.
I’d just rolled out of her bed and was headed toward my room when Duke came running up to me with Preacher behind him. “Get your shit together, we’re leaving in five,” Duke barked as he ran past me in the direction of his room.
“What the fuck?”
It was Preacher who stopped, and I noticed that his hands were shaking. “Kyle’s hurt!”
Those two words made the bottom drop out of my world. What the fuck had happened?
KYLE
There are moments in life that burn themselves into your soul, searing into your memory so deeply that no amount of time or distance can fade them. Some are good—ones you cling to when everything else falls apart. But then there are moments like this. The kind that haunts you and that turn into living nightmares.
I had been in this line of work for years, had faced death more times than I could count, but never—not once—had I lost a member of my team. Until now.
Now, I was lying on a stretcher, my body bruised and battered, staring at the pine boxes lined up before me in the belly of the transport plane. The air inside the cargo hold was cold and stale, but it couldn’t touch the fire burning beneath my skin.
Three of my own. Gone.
I tried to move, but the pain was like knives stabbing through my body, reminding me that I was still alive while they weren’t. My hands curled into the thin blanket over me, trying to keep the rage at bay, but it was useless.
How the fuck had it gone so wrong?
It had been a routine recce—a sweep of an area we’d cleared two days ago. There had been no warnings, no signs of trouble. Hell, we hadn’t even known where we were being sent until the last minute. It was a strategy to prevent leaks, to keep our movements unpredictable.
Except, it didn’t fucking work this time.
I should have been the one flying the helicopter, but lately, I’d been spending more time on the ground, burning off the frustration and anger that had been eating at me since everything fell apart. I needed the numbness that came after pushing my body past its limits—needed the exhaustion to keep my mind from wandering where it wasn’t supposed to go.
Because the one time I let myself feel it, I’d done something I hadn’t done in years. I’d cried and I wasn’t letting that happen again.
Yesterday, everything had been fine. The team had been talking shit, the mission had been simple, and Data had even sent me one of his new signal interceptors after I mentioned how some previously quiet areas were suddenly turning hot for no damn reason.
I’d had a gut feeling, and gut feelings weren’t something I ignored.
We were hunkered down, taking a break, passing around water bottles when the device suddenly pinged. A message had been sent from somewhere close—too close.
I’d checked the readout and saw that our coordinates had just been transmitted. My stomach dropped, and I’d done a headcount—one missing.
Then the first explosion hit.
Heat scorched the air as the blast rocked the ground beside me, and before I could react, another detonated. Then another. Precision strikes, meant to wipe us out. We’d never stood a chance.
By the time I was loaded onto the plane, my body wrecked, I could barely keep my eyes open. But I had one last thing to do before they took me home. As they wheeled me toward the ramp, I reached out, my fingers locking weakly around the wrist of the Camp’s General Administrator—the man signing off on the bodies.