Page 1 of Raven's Claw
Prologue
Operation Silent Veil
Catskills Mountains — seven months ago
“Are you insane?We need to go!”
Ember glanced at the asset as he paced the room, eyes wide.Skin blanched white.A dead man walking if she was being honest.Because despite her skills, she had little confidence she’d be able to keep him breathing.Not with alarms already sounding inside the room — an increasing number of men converging on their location within the compound visible via a flickering camera feed.
She snagged his arm on his next pass, locking her gaze on his.“You need to calm down.You gave me the footage.You know the caliber of enemy we’re about to make.If we’re going to stab Scythe, and more importantly, Rook Donovan, in the back, we should be damn sure the intel’s fully uploaded.Otherwise,” she pointed at the dots on the security feed, “we might as well just wait for them to find us and save ourselves the gauntlet run out of here because either way, we’ll be dead.”
She pushed down the searing impulse to shoot the guy in the head and complete her mission as if she hadn’t just discovered the past twenty years of her life had been a lie.That Rook was far from the man she’d thought he was.
He was the real monster hiding in the shadows.
Former tier-one operator and current Scythe handler, Rook Donovan was Scythe’s senior Shadow Asset Acquisitions Specialist and head of their Asset Operational Division.He believed in control through precision.He didn’t send an army.He sentghosts — the kind who slit throats, erased fingerprints, and vanished before sunrise.There were only two acceptable outcomes to every mission — success or death.
With his record thoroughly scrubbed, Rook operated with complete anonymity.He was the man Scythe sent in to clean up any of the agency’s messes before they became visible.And she’d just risen to the top of his termination list.
Her asset, Bart Conrad, inhaled, his gaze darting to those dots on the screen.The wet squad slowly closing in on them.“Oh, god.You don’t think we’re gonna make it out, do you?This is insurance.”He shoved his hand through his unruly ginger locks.“Where are you sending the intel?Some secure server that forwards it to a dozen newspapers if you don’t put in some kind of code in the next twenty-four hours?Maybe to some of your other operatives?Are you even going to try to help me?”
Ember fisted her hands, pinning him to the far wall with nothing more than a stare.“If I was going to kill you, I would have put a bullet in your head instead of listening to you hyperventilate for the past ten minutes.But if we’re going to have any chance at getting out of here in one piece, you’ll need to do exactlywhatI say,whenI say.So, stand there, shut up, and wait for my next set of instructions.”
She turned when the computer pinged.“There.Now we can?—”
The room went dark, the hum from the air exchanger in the far corner slowly winding down.
Bart gasped, the panicked sound excessively loud in the oppressive silence.“Shit!Did they cut the power?”He wheezed out a couple more raspy breaths, tapping on something in what she assumed was an effort to get the thing to pop back on.“How can they do that?I have backup generators.Batteries.An entire grid that’s completely isolated.”
Ember secured the decryption drive Conrad had made to decipher the intel, her comms unit nothing but dead weight in her ear.“They didn’t cut the power.They hit it with an EM pulse.”
“They have electromagnetic pulse weapons?”
“They have everything.”
“That means they can breach the doors.Bypass all my magnetic seals and encrypted codes.Just waltz right in.”More tapping, as if he thought hitting the damn unit harder would have a different outcome.“Christ, I never should have trusted you.I’m outta here.”
Ember snapped her head toward him, his labored breathing the only means she had of tracking him in the utter darkness.“Don’t move, and don’t open that other door.It’s likely rig?—”
The explosion hit hard, lifting her off her feet and blasting her over a desk and into the far wall.Thick smoke curled through the room, distant shouts rising above the ringing in her ears.She blinked against the dust and debris, willing the room to stop spinning, when footsteps sounded off to her left.
Two scouts, searching the rubble.Laser sites mapping out their location as they scoured the room.
She pushed onto her hands and knees, staying below the top of the overturned desk beside her — judging their progression by the slight scuff of their boots.How the smoke swirled around them, making patterns in the air.
They stopped, those red beams skimming the top of the desk before she jumped up and over, kicking one in the chest as she caught the other in the throat.The first guy tumbled back, landing on something nasty because he started flailing — arms and legs shaking as if he was having a seizure — before stilling.
The other asshole managed to get his rifle braced in front, but she simply used it to smash his face, dumping him on his ass with a sweep of her feet.A boot to the head and neck, and he was out — head lolled to one side and foot twitching.
The rest of his squad must have heard the commotion because they fired a second later.Short controlled bursts punching through the smoke — cutting down everything in their path.Ember hit the ground, covering her head as wood splintered around her, raining down like bits of confetti.Sparks lit up the darkness, yellow muzzle fire flashing against the eerie gray.
More dots appeared amidst the smoke, fanning out across the room.The last man drew closer, AR-15 ghosting into view — laser site sweeping the far wall a good three feet above her.She counted it down then caught him in the knee, buckling his leg with a second kick to his ankle.
That got everyone moving.
Gathering together in the center to minimize any crossfire — keep her on the fringes.
She snagged a mag light and a couple frags off the guy writhing on the ground then tossed one of the grenades into the fray.She didn’t know if it was smoke, incendiary or a light and sound show.Didn’t care if it gave her a chance to make a break for the door.
