Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 52851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 52851 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 264(@200wpm)___ 211(@250wpm)___ 176(@300wpm)
And then, the third text came through. His face crumbled, and the phone hit the floor again, his entire body rigid as the realization of what was happening fully set in. A moment later, a familiar sound crackled through my headset, playing softly at first before rising in volume—Danza Kuduro.
I nearly choked on a laugh. The same song we had caught him dancing to in the bathroom footage earlier was now blaring from his phone. Data had overridden his phone, preventing it from locking, and the screen flickered to life, looping the footage on his screen—Demingo, shaking his ass, singing into a toothbrush like a goddamn idiot.
“What the fuck?!” he bellowed, stumbling back as if the device had burned him. His rage boiled over, his voice cracking as he roared into the darkness. “Come out, you fucking coward!”
Grinning, I murmured into my comms, "Well, that’s rich. We’re not the ones hiding in the boonies now, are we?"
A soft ping on my screen signaled it was go time. I confirmed my position, my scope steady, my trigger finger light as I waited for the next move. Then, Demingo’s phone flashed again, but this time, the screen split in two. The top half displayed a live feed from his front camera, reflecting his own wide-eyed, panic-stricken face, while the bottom half showed a night-vision feed, a long-distance shot of his property.
His eyes flickered with confusion before a smug expression briefly returned, as if he still believed his walls and reinforcements would keep him safe. But he was wrong. So fucking wrong. And he was about to find out just how badly he’d fucked up.
The weapon we’d seized was a military prototype—something that wasn’t supposed to exist outside of classified operations. Smaller than an RPG but just as lethal, its explosive rounds carried a payload powerful enough to tear through reinforced structures like paper. The fact that Demingo’s men had them made my blood boil. It meant that somewhere, someone high up had either sold these off or let them slip through the cracks. And when I found out who, they were going to fucking suffer. But that was a problem for another day.
Right now, I had a shot to line up.
Lying prone, I adjusted the sight on my rifle, factoring in wind speed, direction, and drop. Every movement was precise, every breath measured. When I was locked in, I double-clicked my throat mic. Tonight, this was Hunter’s call. His fiancée had been taken, his world nearly ripped apart by the same bastards holed up inside that building, so this was his show.
Through the scope, I tracked Demingo’s movements. He was still pacing, still caught up in the mindfuck Data had orchestrated, his phone playing his own humiliation on an endless loop. Then, I heard the click, my signal.
I squeezed the trigger.
The round fired with deadly precision, striking the side of the house just as Jagger and the team detonated the explosives we’d wired minutes earlier. The world fucking shook. A shockwave blasted outward, rattling the ground beneath me, sending debris and smoke into the air.
And then, I fell out of the fucking tree, and the landing was not graceful.
I hit the ground with a hard thud, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs. “Fuck me,” I groaned, coughing as dust filled my throat.
My hand instinctively went to rub my neck, and I realized I’d forgotten about my throat mic. The open line meant my moment of humiliation had just been broadcasted to every single person on comms.
There was beat of silence, then, “Kyle!”
Jagger’s voice, sharp with alarm, cut through my earpiece. I groaned again, half in pain, half in sheer fucking embarrassment. Boots pounded against the dirt as he and Preacher ran toward me, but the real insult was Duke. The big, smug bastard stood near the base of the tree that had just betrayed me, arms crossed, shaking with laughter.
“How much C4 did you use?!” I croaked into my mic, still wheezing from the impact. Duke’s laughter only got louder. “Warn me next time, you dickheads.”
That’s when the pain in my arm registered, a sharp, radiating burn that made me hiss out a string of expletives. Jagger and Preacher reached me then, their hands immediately checking for injuries. I hated being fussed over, hated feeling like I needed help. And I sure as hell hated the fact that I had fallen like a fucking amateur.
Swatting their hands away with my good arm, I grumbled, “Fuck off.”
Jagger scowled. Preacher grunted. And Duke was still laughing his ass off.
That son of a bitch was going to pay for this.
JAGGER
Things had finally started to settle. The Valiant team had returned to their compound, the Ghosts were back at ours, and for the first time in a long time, we had breathing room.
For exactly five minutes, then the shit storm we’d all been waiting for hit. It started with a call from Data, and the news was bigger than any of us could have expected. The leak in the MC was the President of the 412 MC.