Page 78 of Iron Willed Warrior

Dull eyes looked back at me. He wasn’t giving me much, that was for sure. But his lack of confusion or surprise confirmed that we were right. Whatever Stillwater had going on here, the main action was beneath us.

“You think a man like Westwick gives a shit about you?” I asked. “You’re disposable. But how about this.” I moved the muzzle of the gun to his forehead. “Talk to me, and I’ll let you go before the next patrol comes by. Nobody will know you said a word. You can take your paycheck and hope for the best. Even better, you can get as far away from Stillwater as possible before you wind up dead like the others my friends and I have killed. Stillwater seems to go through a lot of you guys.”

More of a reaction that time. His pupils dilated, and the muscles near his throat convulsed, like he was just holding back from giving me something. Just to see if I was actually going to let him go.

His lips started to move. I waited.

“The deepest water is the quietest,” he whispered. The Stillwater motto.

Then he lunged, upper body arching toward me. My gun cut a gash in his forehead. I barely shifted to the side in time to keep him from headbutting me. I pushed back against him with my weight as he did everything in his power to wriggle free.

Then just as suddenly, the man grunted, heaved several breaths, and went limp. The black handle of a knife stuck out from his rib cage.

Brynn had stabbed him. Precision aim, designed to kill.

“He knew you weren’t going to shoot him.” Her voice was rough. “Knew we wouldn’t risk the noise.”

“True.” I looked at her for a moment. She was breathing hard. Hand still clenched around the knife handle. I reached over to loosen her grip. Her expression had closed off.

“You good?” I asked.

Every kill, no matter how justifiable, took something from you. It was a reality I’d come to terms with long ago. I also expected that Brynn had killed before. But there was something extremely personal about killing a man with a knife. It was more intimate than a gun. Visceral.

My heart rebelled at seeing the slickness of blood on Brynn’s gloved hands. I had meant to dispose of this guy, and it pissed me off that Brynn had to do it instead. That mark was supposed to be onmyhardened soul, like so many others. Not on hers.

And that was the problem with getting involved with your partner. I wasn’t treating her like an equal right now, was I? I was thinking of her as my protectee. Someone I was meant to shield, who wasn’t supposed to risk herself to shieldme.

She pushed up onto her hands and knees. “I’m fine. Help me get this mess cleaned up so we can get out of here.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Brynn

Numbness dulledeverything inside me on the drive back to the resort. I’d always appreciated that when going into battle. When the buzz of anxiety and second-guessing in my head went quiet, and nothing but the mission mattered. Neutralize the target, reach the objective,survive.

The part I didn’t like as much was when the ice thawed. As it inevitably did.

I rubbed my hands absently against my black pants, and Cole reached across the cabin. Captured my left hand with his larger one. His strength grounded me, and I appreciated that, but it felt like he was questioning me too.Are you all right?

Right now, I didn’t want to be questioned. Especially not by him. Because with Cole, I was tempted to fold myself into his arms and let him take the burden of what I was feeling.

If I did that, then I wouldn’t deserve to stand beside him as his partner.

I had done what I had to, and there was nothing else to say about it.

With the guard dead, we’d had a body to dispose of. Ideally, we would’ve dispatched the guywithoutleaving ablood trail. But not everything went according to best-laid plans. We’d stripped the Stillwater guard’s vest, jacket, and pants, then stuffed the body in the maintenance hatch of the ventilation shaft and kicked dirt around to cover the blood.

Cole and I had argued over who would drive the golf cart to the exit. If we left the dead man’s car in the parking lot, the others would realize within hours that their colleague had never left at the end of his shift. Cole had insisted he would fit the guard’s clothes better, which I supposed was a fair point.

He’d masqueraded as the dead guy, while I’d climbed the fence and retraced our path through the desert, thinking the whole time that I’d murder Cole if he let himself get caught.

But he hadn’t. He’d used the dead guard’s key fob to locate his vehicle in the employee lot. Then drove right out of the Stillwater facility. Thank goodness the guard at the gatehouse hadn’t looked too closely. The darkness had helped.

The dead guard’s car was out in the desert now. With luck, we had at least a day or two before Stillwater realized their man hadn’t made it home. Especially if the guard wasn’t due back on shift tomorrow.

No, make that today. Because it was almost four AM. I sighed, dropping my head back against the passenger seat. What a night.

We knew for sure Westwick was up to something in the desert. Something hidden beneath those fields of solar panels. And we had confirmed that Stillwater faithful were guarding the facility. The kinds of men who Westwick and Ryker would trust with their most sensitive secrets.

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