"Hell yeah." She leaned into his touch, drawing strength from his presence. "I’m sorry your house is getting a beating."
"It’s just a house." He knelt down beside her chair and cupped her face in his hands. "You’re doing great. I know you must be freaked out but you’re holding it together and I’m so proud of you."
She liked hearing that, but before she could respond, her monitoring equipment chimed with new activity.
"They're regrouping," she announced, studying the intercepted communications. "And they're bringing in someone called 'Executive One' for the next attempt."
Vincent's expression darkened. "How long do we have?"
"Based on their coordination patterns? Tonight. Maybe tomorrow at the latest." She pulled up the intelligence she'd been gathering. "They're done with subtle approaches. The next attack will be everything they have."
"Then we'd better get ready," Agent Bates said grimly.
As the day progressed, Yvette found herself working deeper into RareCore's network, uncovering layers of corruption that made her stomach turn. Financial records, equipment specifications, casualty reports—the scope of the conspiracy was staggering.
"Vincent," she called from her workstation that afternoon. "I found something you need to see."
He appeared at her shoulder immediately, and she caught the familiar scent of his soap mixed with gun oil and sweat from coordinating the defensive preparations.
"What am I looking at?"
"Body armor contracts. Batch failures cross-referenced with deployment records." She pulled up the data, her voice tightening with anger. "They've been substituting substandard materials for years. Ceramic plates that can't stop rifle rounds, vehicle armor that might as well be cardboard."
Vincent leaned closer, studying the technical specifications. "How many people?"
"Thousands of casualties that should have been survivable." She scrolled through the data, each entry representing lives lost. "But there's a pattern. Going all the way back to Afghanistan deployments. They show the highest failure rates."
"Afghanistan?" His voice went flat.
"Helmand Province specifically. 2014." She turned to look at him, catching the change in his expression. "Vincent?"
He was staring at the screen, his jaw working. "What kind of failures?"
"Vehicle floor panels rated as hardened steel, actually made with mild steel plating. IED impacts that should have been survivable..." She trailed off, seeing the recognition in his eyes. "Oh God. You were there."
"First Reconnaissance Battalion." His voice was barely above a whisper. "March 15th, 2014. Routine patrol outside Helmand."
Yvette's fingers flew over the keyboard, pulling up specific batch numbers, deployment records, casualty reports. "Vincent, I need you to tell me what happened."
"We hit an IED. Standard explosive, nothing we hadn't handled before. But the blast came up through the floor." His hands clenched into fists. "The armor plating just disintegrated. Like it was made of paper."
She found the report, her heart sinking as she read the details. "Batch 47-Alpha. Floor panels certified for blast resistance up to forty pounds of explosive."
"The IED was maybe twenty pounds. Should have been nothing." His voice cracked slightly. "But it killed four of my men."
"Camacho, Kim, Washington, and Reeves," she read from the casualty report, her voice soft.
Vincent's head snapped up. "How do you know their names?"
"Because they're right here in RareCore's internal files." She turned the screen toward him, showing him the classified report. "Along with a cost analysis showing how much money they saved using substandard materials."
He stared at the document, his face cycling through shock, grief, and finally rage. "They knew. They knew their equipment would fail and they sent it anyway."
"Twenty-three percent cost savings per unit," Yvette read, her voice hollow. "That's what your Marines' lives were worth to them."
Vincent stood abruptly, pacing to the window. "I blamed myself. For three years, I blamed myself for not seeing the IED, for not taking a different route, for not somehow protecting them."
"Vincent..."
