Page 82 of Buried Past

Matthew's arm brushed mine as he checked his equipment. The touch grounded me. His presence was the only steady thing in a world that had been spinning off its axis for months.

Static burst through the comm unit clipped to my vest. "Alpha in position. East perimeter clear."

Danny Ho's voice followed, sharp and clean: "Copy. All teams, hold ready. T-minus twenty-two."

Marcus crouched ten feet to my left, tablet balanced on his knee as he monitored thermal readings. His face was all hard angles and focused intensity. Michael moved behind us, adjusting his tactical gear.

Everyone waited. I felt like a blade balanced on its edge—all potential energy with no particular target.

The comm unit crackled again. "Control to Overwatch. Any movement on the primary target?"

The answer, "Negative. Interior remains static."

My pulse pounded so hard against my collar that I thought Matthew could hear it.

While we waited for the raid to begin, my vision blurred momentarily, and the green-lit compound dissolved into a memory.

Vienna. Eight months ago.

Rain hammered the hotel windows in sheets, turning the city lights into watercolor smears. The room smelled of takeout containers and stale cigarettes. Farid sat cross-legged on one narrow bed, chopsticks working through cold noodles while he squinted at messages on his laptop screen.

I paced the strip of carpet between the bed and the bathroom. "We walk away." Sleep deprivation made everything feel brittle, like the world might crack if I pushed too hard. "We take what we have and disappear. New names, new lives, new everything."

Farid looked up from his screen, and the expression on his face stopped me cold. It wasn't surprise or disagreement. Only bone-deep weariness. "They'll never stop unless we end the game, Dorian. We don't have the strength to do that."

His voice had the slight accent that always got stronger when he was tired, vowels stretched just enough to remind me he'd learned English as his third language. The chopsticks clicked against a ceramic bowl as he set them down.

"You know this. I know this. We can run for years, but men like Hoyle—they don't forget. They don't forgive. They wait."

I'd wanted to argue. I opened my mouth to tell him he was wrong, and we could vanish completely. I wanted to insist therewere places even men like Hoyle couldn't reach, but something in his eyes stopped me from speaking.

The memory shattered as Michael's voice cut through the comm chatter."Movement on the south access road. Single vehicle, approaching fast."

I blinked hard, with the present rushing back in a flood of green light and adrenaline. Farid had been right, of course. They never stopped. Not until you made them.

The countdown timer on my watch read nineteen minutes.

The comm unit erupted in overlapping voices—too many people talking at once, half-swallowed in static.

"Hold position, hold position—"

"Contact bearing two-seven-zero, multiple subjects—"

"That's not the exit vector, repeat, not the expected—"

I swung my view away from the compound, scanning the tree line to the west. Something was wrong. Operations this clean didn't develop wrinkles fifteen minutes before execution.

Three figures broke from the forest like ghosts materializing in the real world. Even through the night vision distortion, their movement was deliberate and unhurried. No desperate scramble toward freedom. No panicked flight from an operation going sideways.

"What the hell..." Matthew whispered beside me.

Michael dropped to one knee beside Marcus, fingers flying over his tablet. The thermal overlay shifted, zoomed, and clarified. When the image stabilized, my stomach clenched.

"That's him." Michael's voice was firm and confident. "That's Hoyle."

Through the scope, I watched Magnus Hoyle walk across the uneven ground with the measured pace of someone strolling through his garden. His posture was straight, shoulders back, hands loose at his sides.

He looked like he was heading to a board meeting, with a detour through the woods, not fleeing a federal assault. He paused once to adjust a cufflink—like a man dressing for his own execution.

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