Click.
Empty.
She didn’t lower it.
She leaned forward, eyes locked on them, daring them to try.
Gunfire erupted behind them.
The Covenant arrived like judgment made flesh.The last two men never reached her.Hands grabbed her from behind—strong, familiar—pulling her back just as Luca groaned.
His eyes cracked open.“What the fuck,” he rasped, then focused on her face.“You okay?”
That was when she broke.
Mara collapsed into him as the Covenant hauled them both free, tears spilling hard and fast now that there was space for them.Luca wrapped an arm around her despite the pain, crushing her against his chest like he needed to feel her there.
“That’s my girl,” he murmured hoarsely, voice rough with pride and pain.“Mine.”
No one argued.
He pressed his mouth into her hair, breath shaky.“I’m so fucking proud of you.”
Mara held on, shaking, as the world finally caught up.
****
“Ihave no heat signatures, but there is a room at the top of the house that is completely isolated.I can’t see through it.If he is home, that’s where he is.”
Mateo’s voice was barely more than breath over comms, the kind of quiet that came from habit rather than fear.He crouched beside the van, tablet balanced against his knee, the screen washing his face in cold blue light.Thermal imaging painted the house across the street in muted colors—walls bleeding dull blues, pipes faintly warm, and one stubborn heat signature pulsing on the top floor like a heartbeat that hadn’t realized it was alone.
Luca lay flat behind the low stone wall opposite the property, the grit of gravel pressing into his forearms.Every breath tugged at the damage along his ribs and side, his head throbbed, the aftershock of twisted metal and blunt force still burning under his skin.The medics had wanted him benched.He’d ignored them.The street was quiet in that artificial, suburban way—trim hedges, identical mailboxes, porch lights left on out of habit rather than need.The kind of neighborhood designed to look harmless.
“Just one room?”Luca asked.
“Just one,” Mateo confirmed.“No movement.No outgoing signals.”
Across town, Mara was safe.
Luca locked that thought into place like a brace around a cracked bone.He pictured her at his house—Slayer leaning against the kitchen counter like a carved thing, solid and immovable.Cypher near the windows, still as shadow.Kaiser seated where he could see every entrance at once, back to the wall, eyes everywhere.A perimeter inside a perimeter.
He trusted them.
That realization sat heavier than the night air.
Mateo shifted, glancing sideways at Elias.“So,” he murmured, keeping his voice low, “who exactly are the three men at Luca’s place watching Mara?”
Elias didn’t take his eyes off the house.“Nothing that needs to be shared at this moment.”
Mateo huffed.“That usually means dangerous.”
“In this case it means separate,” Elias replied calmly.“And dangerous.”
They moved when the street finally went dark.
Dominic crossed first, slipping through the side gate with the ease of someone who’d broken into houses like this his entire adult life.He paused just long enough to scan, then lifted two fingers.Clear—for now.
“House is wired,” Dominic murmured a moment later.“And I don’t mean hobbyist nonsense.Full coverage.Motion sensors, pressure plates, trip lines in the walls.Whoever lived here wasn’t just cautious.He was prepared.”
