The sound of boots echoed all around them, multiple pairs, moving fast. Jess had led them straight into a trap.
“Fuck,” Elliot snarled, and dragged her against his chest, pressing the knife to her throat, keeping himself between Rue and the threat.
Six armed men flooded the corridor, rifles up.
“Drop the knife,” one of them ordered. “Down on your knees.”
Elliot assessed their options in a fraction of a second. Six operatives in a narrow corridor. No cover. No weapons except his knife, which wouldn’t do much against body armor and automatic rifles. Rue was injured, exhausted, and in no shape for a fight. He wasn’t in much better shape.
The math was brutally simple: they were caught.
He released Jess and raised his hands slowly, dropping the knife. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Rue do the same.
Jess rubbed her neck where he’d pressed the knife, then walked to the nearest soldier, who handed her a pistol without hesitation. She checked the magazine, then pointed it at them.
“You wanted to see Moretti? Fine.” She gestured with the barrel of the pistol. “Move.”
twenty-nine
The plane’sengines screamed against the Antarctic wind as Dom pressed his face to the window, searching for any sign of life in the endless white below.
“There,” Griffin called from the cockpit, banking hard to the left. “GPS coordinates match Elliot’s last transmission.”
Dom’s stomach lurched—not from the sudden turn, but from what he could see taking shape through the swirling snow. A building squatted like a metal tumor against the ice, its prefab walls battered by decades of polar storms. Dark windows stared back at them like dead eyes.
“Looks abandoned,” Sabin muttered, checking his rifle for the millionth time since they’d lifted off from Chile. The Cajun didn’t get anxious often—normally, he had nerves of solid titanium honed from his former career as a thief—but Dom saw his knuckles whiten as he gripped the seat in front of him. There was a tightness in his accented voice that hadn’t been there during the mad scramble to get to Chile or the briefing with Griffin. But now that they were on the white continent…
Yeah, Sabin was rattled.
Dom couldn’t blame him. His own stomach clenched with each bump of turbulence, though he couldn’t tell if it was the rough air or the sick dread that had been eating at him since Elliot’s comms went dark.
The plane touched down with a bone-jarring thud, skis scraping across the packed snow. Before the engines had fully spooled down, Dom was already unbuckling, his hands shaking with adrenaline and something that felt dangerously close to panic.
Please be alive. Please be alive.
He’d been chanting it like a prayer since Davey had tasked him with bringing their middle brother home.
“Easy, Dom,” Sabin called out, but Dom was already pushing toward the exit. He couldn’t sit still another second, not when Elliot might be?—
No. He wasn’t going there. Elliot was fine. He had to be.
The Antarctic air knocked the breath from his lungs as he dropped from the plane and hit the snow. Griffin was right behind him, barking orders that were instantly swallowed by the howling wind.
“Gear up! Form a perimeter! I want eyes on all approaches!”
The WSW team—handpicked specialists who’d dropped everything at Davey’s call—fanned out across the landing zone. Dom pulled his goggles down against the bright sun and trudged toward the station, each step sinking ankle-deep into powder.
“Takahe Station,” Griffin called over the comms in Dom’s ear. “Decommissioned decades ago.”
“Then why would Elliot be here?” Dom muttered, scanning the building for any sign of life. No lights. No movement. Nothing but the wind screaming between the metal panels.
Sabin materialized at his side, rifle held ready. “Look there.” He pointed to a disturbed area in the ice near the side of the building. “Something was recently dug out of the ice.”
Dom’s heart stuttered. “They were here.”
The team approached the station in tactical formation, weapons up, Dom taking point as they lined up on either side of the door. He itched with the need to kick down the door, to tear through every room until he found his brother, but Griffin tapped his shoulder and held up a closed fist.
Hold.
