Page 61 of Fang

“No, but we’re talking about Juan Vasquez,” she argues, her voice rising slightly. “The man who kept my brother from me. The man who put us on the cartel’s top ten hit list. He’s hunting both of us. I deserve to be there when you take him down.”

I step closer to her, lowering my voice. “That’s exactly why you can’t come. He wants you, Mina. This could be another trap. I’m not risking you walking right into his hands.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” she says, eyes flashing dangerously.

“It’s mine,” Vapor interjects, his tone brooking no argument. “And Fang’s right. Rory needs you here. More importantly, we need a fallback. If something goes wrong, if we don’t come back, someone needs to finish what we started.”

Her shoulders slump almost imperceptibly as the fight drains from her.

“Fine,” she concedes, though her eyes still burn with frustration. “But you better bring that bastard back alive so I canlook him in the eyes before you throw his lifeless body into the swamp.”

“Good idea,” Diablo says, grinning.“Gator chow.”

“Make sure he’s dead this time,” Tank says.

“Triple tap him,” Ice agrees.

Vapor nods once. “Wheels up in an hour. It’s going to take us at least five hours to get there and we need time to regroup once we arrive.” He dismisses the team, each brother moving with purpose toward their preparations.

As the room empties, Mina grabs my wrist. Her grip is tight enough to leave marks.

“You come back to me,” she says fiercely. “You understand? I didn’t find you just to lose you to Juan Vasquez.”

The raw emotion in her voice catches me off guard. We haven’t put labels on what’s growing between us—haven’t had time amid the chaos of Rory’s recovery and the hunt for Juan. But her words make my chest tighten with something that feels dangerously like love. I’ve never felt anything like this before, but somehow, I know. I’ve fallen for this woman. There’s no doubt about it.

I touch her face, thumb tracing the curve of her cheekbone. “I’ll come back,” I promise. “With Juan in cuffs and every piece of intel we need to burn his organization to the ground.”

She kisses me then, hard and desperate, her fingers tangling in my hair. I moan against her lips, wishing I had the time to take her to bed again so I could show her how much I love her. It’s on the tip of my tongue, but I hold back. Until Vasquez is in the Quiet Room, we’ve got too much to lose. If I tell her now and something happens to me, it will be harder for her to move on. It’s better if I wait.

When we separate, her eyes are glistening with unshed tears. “I’ll be monitoring everything from our office. Don’t you dare go dark on me.”

I nod, already mentally shifting into operational mode, compartmentalizing emotions to focus on the task ahead. My head needs to be in the game one hundred percent. I can’t be thinking about her or Rory or about what we could lose. Focusing on getting Vasquez is the only thing I can care about right now.

Chapter 23: Fang

The night presses close around us as we approach the compound. Stars are smothered by heavy cloud cover, and a new moon offers no illumination—perfect conditions for our operation. I’m wedged in the back of our tactical van, surrounded by screens casting an eerie blue glow across my face, the only light for miles besides the distant yellow squares of the compound windows.

My laptop hums with purpose, establishing connections to the compound’s security network through vulnerabilities I identified earlier. It’s delicate work, requiring concentration that’s hard to maintain as the van jostles over uneven terrain, but I’ve operated under worse conditions. My fingers fly across the keyboard, each keystroke bringing us closer to capturing Vasquez.

“Two minutes to position,” Vapor murmurs through our encrypted comm system. His voice sounds different through the earpiece—stripped of its natural resonance.

I nod though no one’s watching me, focused on breaching the compound’s firewall. Their security is good, but not impenetrable. I’ve been probing their system for hours, mapping architecture, identifying weaknesses. Now I’m exploiting a vulnerability in their remote access protocols, sliding into their network through a maintenance backdoor they never properly secured.

“I’m in,” I report, satisfaction warming my voice as the security dashboard populates my main screen. Camera feeds from around the compound appear in a grid, showing guards moving in predictable patterns. “Accessing camera controls now. East perimeter will go dark in thirty seconds.”

Due to an unexpected network isolation protocol, I need to physically access the network to bypass it—meaning I need to be inside. Not ideal, but adaptable. The portable kit strapped to my chest contains everything I need: specialized tools, a tablet with a dedicated connection with my main system in the van, and enough processing power to override local security measures once I reach the central hub.

The van slows to a stop a quarter-mile from the compound’s east wall—close enough for strong signal transmission, far enough to remain undetected. Ice kills the engine, plunging us into silence broken only by the soft whirring of my laptop’s cooling fans.

“East cameras disabled,” I announce, watching the feed go black on my screen. “You have a two-minute window before their failsafe protocols kick in.”

Vapor’s voice is calm, measured: “Move out.”

We exit the van in practiced formation—Vapor leading, followed by Ice and Bones, with Tank and Diablo taking up rear positions. I’m sandwiched in the middle, protected on all sides. Night vision goggles transform the darkness into shades of green, giving the landscape an alien quality.

We move in silence across open ground, then through a stand of scrub pine that provides additional cover. The compound wall looms ahead, eight feet of concrete topped with security sensors that I’ve temporarily blinded. Bones cups his hands to boost Ice up. Ice reaches the top, confirms the all-clear, then extends a hand to help pull the rest of us up in sequence. Despite his size, Bones scales the wall with surprising grace.

Once inside the perimeter, we split as planned. Tank and Diablo peel off to secure our exit route and eliminate perimeter guards. Vapor, Ice, Bones, and I continue toward the main house where Vasquez should be sleeping, unaware that his sanctuary has been compromised.

---