"That's the nicest way anyone's ever described my criminal career," Jack said.
"You're welcome."
"For the record, I was recruited because Marcus needed someone who could punch through a car door."
"That was a factor, yes."
Jack grinned. It was the grin of a man who had found his people and knew it, the grin that Seth was beginning to understand, because he was beginning to feel it in himself. The belonging. The strange, fierce comfort of being surrounded by broken people who had chosen to be useful with their damage instead of destroyed by it.
Nate refilled glasses. Ghost had stopped vibrating. Elijah was watching Jack with an attention that was, for once, openly visible, the cold sniper's habitual distance softened by whiskey and warmth and the night-before feeling that made honesty feel less like vulnerability and more like necessity.
"Tomorrow's going to be bad," Nate said. Not a warning. A statement. The medic's practicality, clear-eyed and unsentimental. "Some of us are going to get hurt. That's the math. But nobody goes in alone, and nobody gets left behind. That's been the rule since the beginning."
"Since the beginning," Marcus confirmed.
"Since the beginning," the room echoed. Even Ghost, quietly, into his glass.
Seth looked at the faces around the table. Marcus, steady and certain. Zain, compressed and burning. Jack, fierce and warm.Nate, kind and sharp. Elijah, silent and watching. Ghost, hidden and brilliant.
And himself. Seth. The rescued who had become the rescuer. The invisible man who had been made visible by the simple, revolutionary act of people giving a damn.
He raised his glass.
"Since the beginning," he said.
And meant it as a promise
CHAPTER 27
The night before the three-site operation, Nate made everyone sit.
The whiskey was Nate's. Good stuff. Woodford Reserve, bourbon that cost enough to suggest that Nate's pre-med pasthad come with taste if not with money. He poured six glasses with the precise measurement of a man who understood dosage, and set them on the table like sacraments.
"Rules," Nate said. "One glass. Nobody gets drunk the night before an operation. This is a ritual, not a party."
"Nate throws the worst parties," Jack said.
"Nate keeps you alive. Drink."
They drank. The bourbon was warm and smooth and tasted like caramel and oak and the amber courage of men preparing to do something dangerous for reasons that the law wouldn't recognize but that mattered more than the law had ever mattered to any of them.
Marcus spoke first. He always spoke first. "Tomorrow we hit three sites. Ghost has the coordinates, the security rotations, and the communication frequencies. Elijah has the overwatch positions. Jack and Zain have the entry teams. Nate has the extraction routes."
"And Seth?" Seth asked.
"Seth has the Hamtramck site. With Zain." Marcus looked at him. That measuring look. "You ready?"
"I've been ready since the cage."
"That's not what I'm asking. Being ready for revenge and being ready for operation discipline are different things. When you're inside, you follow the plan. Not your anger. Not your memory. The plan."
Seth met his eyes. "I understand."
"Good." Marcus raised his glass. "To the sixty-one."
"To the sixty-one," they said. And drank.
This wasn't a briefing. Marcus had handled that, with his usual thorough, unhurried command of detail and consequence. This was different. Nate had cleared the kitchen table, put out bread and cheese and cold cuts and a bottle of whiskey that Jack hadbeen saving, and announced that nobody was going to bed until they'd eaten something that wasn't tactical.
