The two figures flanking him moved differently. Their steps dragged slightly, turning their heads back toward the compound like they'd left something behind. Their body language screamed defeat, but not the sharp-edged panic of men caught in a trap.
The lack of urgency made my skin crawl.
"Why isn't he running?"
No one answered. The comm chatter had died to isolated whispers as other teams repositioned, trying to understand what they were seeing. In my peripheral vision, Marcus's fingers paused on the tablet.
Hoyle stopped at the edge of a small clearing, his head tilted back as if he were studying the stars. He wore an immaculately tailored suit, and there was a casual arrogance in his stance.
The man who'd orchestrated years of suffering, marked me for death, and turned human lives into data points on a spreadsheet, stood fifty yards below us, looking like he owned the entire mountain.
And for one horrible moment, I wondered whether he did.
Marcus and Michael moved in a coordinated pattern. They melted between the trees with the kind of fluidity that came from trust so deep it didn't require thought.
Through my headset, I tracked their descent while keeping Hoyle centered in my crosshairs. He hadn't moved, still standing in that clearing like he was posing for a portrait.
Federal agents emerged from the forest like shadows suddenly turned substantive. In black tactical gear, with rifles raised, they moved in textbook formation toward the three figures. The red dots of laser sights danced across bark and undergrowth.
I held my breath.
Hoyle's mouth moved—too distant to hear, but his posture remained unchanged. He didn't look at the agents surrounding him. He looked directly up at our position on the ridge.
Like he knew exactly where we were.
The first assistant dropped to his knees so suddenly that I thought someone shot him. The movement was graceless in defeat. The second followed, slower and resigned, hands already behind his head before anyone issued an order.
Michael's commentary drifted through an open comm channel. "The tunnel didn't go far enough."
I closed my eyes briefly while the pieces clicked into place. They'd been running. Not toward some grand final confrontation or a glorious last stand—they'd been trying to escape through an underground route that had probably collapsed, flooded, or simply ended fifty yards short of freedom.
Hoyle had been caught like a rat in a trap and was still standing there like he ruled the situation.
When I opened my eyes, he was turning toward one of the kneeling assistants. He spat words that didn't reach us, but the assistant flinched like he'd been struck. Then Hoyle turned toward Michael—now visible among the federal agents—and his mouth curved into a bitter smile.
The sound emerging from Michael's directional mic was too faint to make out individual words, but the tone was unmistakable. Arrogant. Mocking. The voice of a man who thought he was still holding cards no one else could see.
I touched the comm switch to enable my voice. "Control, this is Overwatch. Subject appears non-compliant. Recommend immediate restraint."
It had all happened so fast that it felt like I was watching someone else's memories.
No gunfire. No desperate last stand. No final gambit that would justify the months of fear that had carved hollows undermy ribs. Only federal agents moving with practiced efficiency, zip ties appearing in gloved hands, and Hoyle's wrists pulled behind his back.
He fell to his knees from the firm pressure of a tactical boot behind his legs. And then he started shouting.
"You think this matters?" His voice cracked. "You think you're done? I made kings, you fucking amateurs! I'm not the only one—you've clipped a branch, but the root runs deeper than you will ever reach. I built empires while you were—"
The rest dissolved into white noise. Hoyle's mouth kept moving, and his face twisted with rage and disbelief, but the words might as well have been in a language I'd never learned.
I expected to feel something. Satisfaction, maybe. Relief. Rage. I'd imagined a dozen different endings—Hoyle bleeding, begging, broken.
Instead, I had a hollow sensation. Scraped clean. Like someone had reached inside my chest and removed everything that mattered, leaving behind an echoing, empty cavity.
The man who'd marked me for death, turned my life into a series of safehouses and false names, and orchestrated suffering on a scale I still couldn't quite comprehend was now merely a well-dressed figure bound by zip ties. I watched as agents loaded him into the back of a federal vehicle.
Anticlimactic failed to describe the situation fully.
"He's done."
