Page 91 of Echo: Burn
The words Kessler said outside the burning facility come back with brutal clarity: ‘I'll take her from you like you took Hart from me. I'll make you watch her die. Make you feel what he felt.’
But he didn't come for me. He didn’t come for Willa. He came for Mercer instead.
"Why Mercer?" Khalid asks quietly. "Why not go after Willa like he threatened?"
"Because Mercer was easier to isolate," Rourke says grimly. "And because taking one of Kane's team hits just as hard as taking the woman he loves. Maybe harder. We're his responsibility. His brothers. This way Kessler gets revenge AND a high-value prisoner to interrogate."
The tactical display shows the last known positions. Mercer's thermal signature disappearing into the trees. No sign of struggle. No indication of where Kessler took him.
Just gone.
"Mercer's been taken." The words stick in my throat. Making it official. Making it real.
The operations center goes silent. Twenty-seven Committee casualties. Fifteen wounded.
But they got what they came for.
They got Mercer.
And now they have everything he knows. Every operation. Every contact. Every secret we've kept buried.
Twenty-four hours until the attack.
We just lost our window.
19
KANE
Countdown: 23 Hours
The Montana dawn breaks cold enough to burn.
I stand at the cabin's north window, thermal mug warming my scarred hands, watching frost patterns crawl across the glass like artillery maps drawn by winter itself. Four-thirty in the morning. The mountains are still dark, but the sky bleeds from black to deep purple, that precise moment when night admits defeat but day hasn't claimed victory. This is my favorite time. The world holds its breath, and for twenty minutes, I can pretend I'm the only person left in it.
Except I'm not at the cabin anymore. I'm at the staging facility that just became a battlefield. And one of my team is gone.
The staging facility looks like a war zone in the grey predawn light.
Spent brass casings litter the ground like copper snow. Bullet holes stitch patterns across concrete walls. Blood—too much blood—darkens the frozen earth. The acrid smell of gunpowder hangs heavy in the air, mixed with something chemical that makes my eyes water even through the dissipating smoke.
Twenty-seven bodies. I count them myself, methodically moving through the perimeter with Stryker while Rourke maintains overwatch from the roof. Committee operatives in full tactical gear, most of them dead before they hit the ground. Professional soldiers carrying out orders under the banner of national security.
Now they're just casualties in a war most people don't know exists.
"They came prepared for a siege," Stryker says, crouching beside one of the bodies near the southern perimeter. He's examining the operative's gear with the careful efficiency of someone who's stripped enemy combatants more times than he can count. "Night vision, thermal scopes, breaching charges. This wasn't a reconnaissance mission."
"No," I agree, studying the tactical formation they'd used to assault the building. "This was an extraction. They knew exactly where the staging facility was and came with everything they needed to dig us out."
Or to make us think they were trying to dig us out while they grabbed Mercer from the perimeter.
Six hours. Mercer's been in Committee custody for six hours now, and every minute that passes makes recovery less likely. Enhanced interrogation techniques. Chemical persuasion. Sensory deprivation. I've done worse myself when the mission required it. The kind of methods that break even the strongest operators if applied long enough.
But Mercer's not just any operator. He's Echo Ridge. My team. My responsibility.
My failure.
"Strip the bodies of anything useful," I order, forcing my mind back to the immediate problem. "Weapons, ammo, intel devices. Anything that might tell us where they've taken him. Then we sanitize the site and move out."
