Page 79 of The ARC Unit: Breach

My instincts tightened.

Then Kade said, finally louder than before, “Südweg.”

The name landed cleanly, and Raven responded at once. “Got it.”

That should have been enough, but a second later the signal broke and static filled my ear, cutting Raven’s voice into pieces.

“Mia... move... losing...”

Wolf came through once, colder than I had heard him all day.

“Mercer, get the fuck out of there.”

Then the audio vanished completely, leaving a sudden silence that felt enormous after having ARC pressed into my ear all afternoon.

No Raven breathing quietly over a laptop, no Wolf ordering me around, no Hawk confirming another angle and no Viper telling me he was moving closer. There was only the music above us and Sofia talking beside me while the men around the cabana had no idea I had just lost every person positioned to protect the lie I was standing inside.

I became acutely aware of the transmitter against my hip with Kade only a few feet away and the security man looking at me again. I forced my shoulders to stay loose when Sofia asked whether I lived in New York full time and answered her as though nothing had changed.

Luca made a joke about Americans pretending Connecticut was not New York when it was convenient. I told him Italians were not allowed to criticize geography while calling everything north of Rome “Milan adjacent.”

He laughed, and my body kept performing even while my pulse climbed. Kade watched me through the exchange, then let his gaze drop briefly toward my right hip. The transmitter was hidden well enough that there was no reason he should know it was there, but the look still made my skin go cold.

I decided I had enough.

“I’m finding the bathroom before you people start another argument about logistics.”

Luca smiled. “Come back.”

“Convince me.”

I turned toward the path and kept walking toward the entrance I came in from with the silence still filling my ear.

Now completely out of the property, I walked further down, around the first hedge before a hand closed hard around my upper arm and pulled me off the visible path. I reacted on instinct, twisting toward the grip.

Wolf’s eyes met mine from inches away.

He had come up through the service side in full dark gear with the plate carrier stripped down enough to move quietly and the same black mask covering the lower half of his face. His other hand caught my waist before I could stumble into the hedge. Relief hit first, followed almost immediately by anger because his grip hurt.

“Let go.”

“Move.”

His voice was low enough that nobody above us would hear.

“I was moving.”

“Forty-eight seconds late.”

“I got Südweg.”

His fingers tightened around my arm.

“I don’t give a fuck what you got. Move.”

The words shocked me into silence. He had been mean to me from the moment we met but this was different. There was something underneath the anger that made his eyes look almost black.

“You’re hurting me.”