Page 27 of Damian
Outside, the van coughed to life—old diesel, no flair. The road ahead tasted like rain and rust. The team climbed in with the silent coordination of men who’d practiced this particular dance too many times. As the farmhouse slipped behind us, I felt that tug I always feel when leaving the only place that made noise into the dark: the part of me that keeps promises even when promises break.
And there, half a cough, half a whisper, in the rearview mirror—Morgan’s silhouette at the window—was a thing I could not file under mission priorities.
32
Damian
The road to Caldwell took us through a patchwork of farmland and old highways that tried to pass for progress. Headlights cut through the rain the way a blade cuts fabric—clean lines, brief. Cyclone kept a feed open on his laptop, static and numbers and the occasional voice. River drove like he’d been born in the driver’s seat: efficient, eyes never settling.
I replayed the intel in my head, the little discrepancies that made a map look wrong. Hemsley liked noise where others preferred shadow. That meant we could predict his mistakes. That also meant we’d be stepping into the kind of gamble that had bitten men before us.
“Entry plan?” River asked, calm as a rifle, his tone the kind we use to keep adrenaline in a bottle.
“Perimeter first. We wait for the shift change—Hemsley runs a handler rotation at 0200. Quiet approach from the north. Cyclone, you’ll have eyes on the west access, Raven’s drone angle. River and I go in. Two doors, sweep straight through, get the manifest, get the kids if they’re there, pull out clean.” I didn’t say the part where I pictured Ruby’s facewhen she saw her sister, or the way Morgan’s voice changed when she said the name like a vow. Mission focus forced that out of my mouth; memory made it stack behind my ribs.
Cyclone’s fingers danced. “Thermal shows movement in three spots. One looks like storage—could be a holding area. Another is vehicle access. Third—possible office. Cameras looped, but there’s a blind near the southwest corner for exactly ten minutes at 02:05 am. We hit at 02:02.”
River clicked his tongue. “That’s precise. You sure you want the ten-second window?”
“Exactly,” I said. “They’re sloppy, remember? Precision makes them sloppy too.”
We parked a good distance away, swapping boots for silence. The air smelled of wet earth and diesel. My chest beat a slow drum in cadence with feet on gravel. The team moved like a shadow made of men—quiet and efficient and impossibly close in that way that makes strangers feel like kin.
When we breached, it was surgical. No noise, only the soft click of locks and the whisper of feet across concrete. A man started—too slow—and River’s hand ended quieted him before his eyes finished the surprise.
Inside, the place smelled like bleach and fear, the kind that clings to the back of your throat. Cyclone’s headset told me the room layouts, River’s fingers pointed to exits. My rifle swung on instinct, flawless and cold. We found the storage bay first: empty boxes, the echo of footsteps that had been there before. The office was a different story—receipts, passports, a ledger with names—people’s lives catalogued in ink.
Then we heard it: a muffled sound behind a false wall—a scrape. My heart bit a little too hard.
“Two targets,” River whispered. “North wall, three steps in.”
We cut the panel. Kids huddled inside sleeping bags like small islands in a bitter sea of cardboard and dust. Eyes blinked, bewildered and bright. The world makes room for that moment: the sick twist in your gut loosens because someone smaller than you is safe again.
And then, another sound—nearer. A stick of boots, heavier this time, and the low murmur of a man’s voice with a tone that said trouble was still breathing.
“Get the kids,” I ordered. My voice landed where it needed to. River scooped the nearest child into his arms like the world had always expected him to. Cyclone called the extraction route open.
We retraced our steps—slow, methodical—until a door banged behind us. Someone had tripped the alarm, or luck had finally shown its teeth. Shots sprayed metal; the air thundered with it. I smelled gunpowder and the hot, metallic tang of fear.
I moved like I always move: fast and certain. I covered River as he cleared a door jam. I cleared the corner where a handler tried to make a stand. My fingers brushed a kid’s shoulder as I hoisted him toward the exit; the contact was electric in the way only small human things can be: an anchor to the world I refused to let burn.
We pushed out into the night. The van’s engine coughed awake like it knew to expect blood and wind and the ragged inhale of victory. Cyclone’s comms were a web of static and relief. River drove like a man with everything to protect.
Back at the farmhouse, Morgan was waiting on the porch, rain streaking her hair into dark lines, recorder clutched like a relic. For half a second she looked like she’d been waiting forever.
When I set the child in her arms—tiny, limp, eyes heavy with sleep—she didn’t ask questions. She simply took the small body like a benediction and began to hum under herbreath. Something in me loosened so far it might have been dangerous.
“Everyone accounted for?” I asked, not because I doubted River’s headcount but because my voice needed the ritual.
River nodded. “All kids are accounted for. Hemsley’s runners circled out—but didn’t see us. We got what we needed from the ledger. There are directions. Money routes. Holloway Trust appears as a cut-out. Luthor—” He broke off, eyes meeting mine. “Luthor’s name’s on a transfer. Clean, but it links to a shell company. It’s a thread.”
I felt it then: the map unrolling under my hands, the smell of wet paper and the sleep-deprived clarity that follows success. We’d scored a hit. We’d taken a breath that wasn’t swallowed in a panic.
Morgan looked up at me then, eyes red-rimmed but steady. Her voice, when it came, was a rasp. “Did we—did you find Ruby?”
The question was small and enormous at once. I’d been trained to answer with facts. Facts land like blunt instruments. But the truth is messy. So I kept my voice even, let the soldier in me pick the words.
“Not yet,” I said. “But we’re closer. We have names. We have routes. We’ll follow them.”
