Page 141 of Specter Bred

Kill box.

I knew enough about what had happened to his old unit to understand why those two words changed something in him. They’d walked into that compound believing the intelligence was good. Helix had hidden their numbers, let the Specters seek shelter in the compound, then closed the trap around them.

And Mathias had just told us exactly who supplied the explosives.

“Who took delivery?” Grizzly asked.

His voice had gone frighteningly calm.

Mathias finally seemed to notice the change in him. “The guy in the photograph.”

Grizzly stared at him.

“Voss?” I asked.

“I thought you had no clue who he was," Maeve hissed.

Mathias shrugged like the lying rat he was.

There it was. Not a theory anymore. Not another thread we were trying to connect. Warren Voss had ordered the explosives used to build the trap that killed Grizzly’s unit. And Mathias Claybourne had supplied them.

Grizzly didn't say another word. His pistol cleared its holster in a blur. One shot echoed as Mathias dropped where he knelt, a neat hole punched through the center of his forehead. Neither Maeve nor I flinched.

"He supplied Helix with the explosives that killed your team, didn't he?" Maeve asked, nudging Mathias's body with the toe of her boot to make sure he was dead.

Grizzly stared down at the corpse for a long moment before answering.

"Yes," he said as he holstered his pistol. "But I'd already decided on killing him long before I knew that."

Maeve arched a questioning brow.

“He was dead the moment he called you a bitch.”

Then he turned and walked away, leaving the body cooling at our feet.

Chapter 19: Maeve Archer

Hours passed in a blur as we made our way back toward the old fire lookout. Grizzly moved through the woods with relentless purpose, driven by something I now knew for what it was.

Unfinished revenge.

He was hunting the man responsible for killing his entire unit, along with anyone who had helped him do it. And if Hayes and I joined Grizzly’s unit, that purpose would become ours too. I wondered whether that was something I wanted.

I knew what revenge could do to a person. It could become obsessive, blinding, and destructive. It could hollow someone out until there was nothing left except the need to settle a score. And for a moment, I wondered which unit Graves was more committed to. The ghosts of the one he had lost, or the one he was trying to build now.

Then I reminded myself who he was.

When I first met Graves, I thought he was simply an asshole. Cruel because he could be and hard because he enjoyed watching people struggle beneath him. But the more I got to know him, the clearer the picture became.

Graves was a good man.

Perhaps that’s the reason I always found myself drawn to him, even though I couldn’t explain it. Maybe even why I respected him despite every brutal drill, every punishment, and every cutting word.

Yeah, he was a difficult one and a damaged one. Sometimes an infuriating bastard! But a good one.

Because beneath all that cruelty and control, nearly everything he did came back to the same thing: protecting the people he considered his.

As the fire lookout came into view, Grizzly finally slowed his relentless pace.