I constantly search each gap between the corrugated steel panels, looking for any sign of movement inside.
I don’t know how Raiden does this. Well, I do. He has the patience of a saint, while I have the patience of a leaky asshole experiencing the worst case of explosive diarrhea it’s ever experienced. But I hold tight, not willing to screw this up.
And then I see it—the smallest movement inside a window. A shadow stretches so subtly across the overgrown weeds surrounding the warehouse, distorting on the cold ground. My heart launches into full attack mode, racing like I’d just shot myself up with a vial of pure adrenaline, as I adjust the scope carefully, tightening the focus on the window.
Showtime.
A figure fills the scope—tall, broad shoulders, with a rifle raised, aimed straight at me.
Everything stops, and for a split second, my brain refuses toprocess what I’m seeing. My brows draw together, heart pounding hard against my ribs as instinct overrides confusion. I lock in tighter, adjust my grip, and settle my finger against the trigger with practiced balance.
If he’s seen me, then hesitation gets me killed, but when he shifts slightly, adjusting his stance just a fraction of an inch, his movement sends a flood of moonlight cutting across his jaw. It’s enough to catch the angle of his shoulders—and the exact way he rolls his neck before settling into a shot.
My stomach drops, because I’ve seen that exact movement before. I’ve memorized it, learned it, gotten hot and heavy at the very thought of it.
Raiden.
There’s no fucking way.
The man in my scope comes into perfect focus, and everything inside me falls out of alignment. My stance, my hold on my rifle, my elbows braced against the cold Nevada ground, and I pull back just enough to clear my vision. My heart slams so violently it feels like it might crack my ribs from the inside, my brain insisting that I’m seeing things, that my two weeks of sleepless nights have finally caught up to me, that I’m going crazy.
But there’s no doubt here. No maybes. No tricks of light. It’s him.
Raiden Kane: the Iron Viper, and he has me in his sights.
There’s no panic in his posture like mine, but I’m not surprised. He’s steady. Controlled. Lined up with precision, just as he has alwaysbeen.
Then in a split second, he pulls the trigger.
The shot tears through the night like a lightning strike splitting bone, the crack echoing across the open desert. The bullet slices past my position close enough that I feel the air move against my cheek, and I suck in a breath, my whole world flashing before my eyes.
What the hell just happened?
I flinch, an ugliness spreading through my chest. Horror. Unease. Betrayal. But before I can put the words together to even begin to understand what I’m feeling, another gunshot detonates behind me, and gravel explodes near my elbow as a powerful round slams into the ridge, spraying stone and dirt into my face.
Understanding hits hard and cold.
Raiden doesn’t miss. He doesn’t go wide. He doesn’t fuck up. And that slight shift he took . . . fuck. He wasn’t shooting at me. He was shooting at whoever the hell had already lined up on me.
Return fire rips across the ridge in sharp succession, controlled bursts from at least two positions I never clocked. My pulse spikes into something feral as I roll hard to the side, dragging the rifle with me, scrambling toward the shallow dip in the ridge I’d marked earlier as a fallback plan for if things happened to go south. And right now, there’s no further south than this.
It’s a fucking shitshow.
I’d been so focused on the warehouse. So certain I was the predator. I never even considered someone might already have me intheir crosshairs, and as my heart hammers with undeniable fear, I start putting it all together.
The power surges. The perfect forty-eight-hour pattern. The isolated industrial area.
It wasn’t intelligence. It was choreography—a carefully timed dance with only one motive: to take me out.
I wasn’t hired to kill Lazarus. I was brought here to die.
My phone vibrates against my hip, the sharp buzz nearly lost beneath the crack of gunfire tearing through the ridge. Gravel sprays again, a round biting into the dirt where my shoulder had been only seconds earlier.
I don’t hesitate.
Scrambling for my phone, my fingers clumsy as my pulse pounds so hard it’s drowning out any rational thought. I already know who it is. There’s only one person who would be calling me right now.
Finally getting the phone free from my tight pocket, I swipe to answer as another shot snaps through the darkness, a yelp on my lips.
