Page 79 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

A massive impact rings out. Flat. Immensely heavy. The unmistakable sound of an open palm slamming against the steel from the other side. Not a closed fist. A palm. The same calloused palm that held me still while his mouth demolished my restraint on a bed in the dark. The same palm that carried my trembling hand to his heart while I asked him to teach me everything.

The vibration travels through the freezing concrete and up through the soles of my bare feet. A dancer feels it the way she feels a partner's weight shift before a dangerous lift—through the vibration, through the underlying rhythm, through the physical grammar of a body she has memorized.

He's here.

I close my eyes. For the first time since the hood came down over my head in the jungle, air enters my lungs without resistance. The breath is slow, deep, complete. The dancer's recovery. The breath that rebuilds a fractured world from a single sustained exhale.

Then a second sound, small and precise beneath the first. Something being pressed flat against the far side of the steel. A strip of something laid along the seam of the frame, worked into place by hands that have done it a thousand times.

I know that sound too.

Four charges. Two cutting, two frame.

I turn my back on the door, and I am already moving, shoulder-first into Andrea, driving her toward the far wall.

"Get down." My voice carries, impossible to ignore. "All of you. Away from the door. Now."

Fifteen women who have not been given a reason to obey anyone in weeks look at a barefoot dancer with her hands tied behind her back.

And they move.

They fold into the corner and put their arms over their heads. Andrea drags the youngest girl down beside her, and I press my forehead to the freezing concrete and count.

One. Two.

The guard at the entry door raises his submachine gun toward the corridor.

The man behind the desk reaches for something in his top drawer.

Andrea's fingers close around my wrist behind my back and grip hard.

The gunfire in the corridor stops.

The silence is complete.

Three.

19

The Rescue

DAX

Hammer blows the door.

The frame charge cuts the hinges, and the steel goes down flat into the room. I’m moving before the dust reaches the ceiling.

The scavenged SIG leads. Fifteen rounds. The last magazine between me and whatever is in that room.

The room resolves in the snapshot of a trained breach: low ceiling, fluorescent lights, concrete walls. Hostile at ten o'clock—the entry door guard, weapon coming up. Hostile at two o'clock—far wall, near a second door, already pivoting. Hostile at twelve—center of the room, between a metal desk and a line of captive women against the far wall. A fourth man behind a desk.

The women are already down, huddled against the far wall with their arms over their heads, clear of the doorway, clear of my line. Somebody put them there. Somebody knew what was coming through that door and had seconds to act on it.

Standing between them and the center hostile, on her feet, alone—Lily.

She's facing me. Bare feet, mud-caked pants, torn shirt hanging off one shoulder. Her wrists are zip-tied. There's dried blood on her shoulder and defiance written into every line of her body.

The dancer stands center stage with nothing but her posture and her refusal to yield ground.