Page 95 of Searching for Valor

Callahan stepped into the doorway, her tall frame backlit by the flashlight one of the thugs had left in the lobby. Her partner, a quiet man by the name of Stevenson, followed. Both were armed and intensely focused. Callahan’s sharp eyes scanned the scene before landing on Izzy.

“Ms. Delgado,” she called out. “Step back. We’ve got this.”

Izzy broke free from Julian’s grasp and moved toward the agents. It was almost over. Mateo would be safe. Rylan would be safe. Monica and the kids?—

“Ah, the cavalry,” Julian drawled. “Right on schedule.”

Wait.

What?

She froze halfway across the space and looked back at Julian. He wasn’t worried at all. He hadn’t ordered his thugs to shoot. In fact, he looked… amused.

She turned to stare at Callahan, and her gaze dropped to the woman’s arm. The sleeve of her jacket was pushed up slightly, and there on her forearm was a fresh, angry dog bite.

Valor’s bite.

Her blood ran cold.

Rylan had been wrong. It wasn’t two men who had attacked him. It was a man and a tall, muscular woman with a smoker’s rasp of a voice.

Callahan noticed her staring, and her lips curled into a smile. She moved faster than Izzy could react. Her gun came up, the muzzle trained on her partner. Agent Stevenson barely had timeto look surprised before the shot echoed through the ruined lobby, and he crumpled to the floor.

Izzy gasped and ran toward Mateo, her pulse roaring in her ears. They had to get out of here.

Callahan turned toward Julian, her expression full of disgust. “The boss is done with your fuckups, Graves.”

Julian’s eyes widened as he raised his hands and backed away. “Wait. You fucked up, too. You didn’t grab Cross.”

“I wouldn’t’ve had to grab him if you had killed him the first time he started poking around. Pills and booze? Really?” Callahan scoffed. “Why even go after him at all? You just made more problems for us.”

“H-he was looking for me. He had the tech guy of theirs run a search on me. I had to make sure he didn’t find anything.”

Callahan growled softly. “Then get rid of the tech guy, you fucking idiot.”

Julian looked genuinely confused by that idea. “But he’s blind. He wasn’t going to see anything. But Cross… I thought he was going to be a problem, so I tried to get rid of him.”

“Then you should’ve just shot him and gotten it over with. Like this.” Without hesitation, she pulled the trigger again. Julian staggered, his eyes wide with shock as blood blossomed on his chest.

“Why—” he choked out, his voice faint as he collapsed to his knees.

“Because you’re incompetent,” Callahan replied coldly. “The boss needs someone who can clean up loose ends, so you’ve just been demoted.”

She shot Julian between the eyes, and then the gun swung toward Izzy.

The abandoned resort loomed like a specter in the mist, its crumbling walls and broken windows showing years of neglect. According to Sawyer, Izzy was in that building somewhere. And it made sense—Noah was found on a road less than a mile downhill from here.

“Stay sharp,” Zak said, leading the way through the warped double doors of the lobby. Rylan was right behind him, their boots crunching loudly on broken glass. The rifle in his hands felt too heavy, his gloves too tight, too loose—wrong.

It was too familiar.

The scent of salt and mildew tickled his nose, mixing with phantom memories of scorched flesh and cordite.

No.

He was not going back there.

His chest tightened as he scanned the lobby. It had once been grand, its vaulted ceiling now stained with water damage, streaks of rust trailing like bloody fingers down the walls. A shattered chandelier hung precariously above the cracked marble floor, its broken crystals scattered across the room. The reception desk to the left of the entrance was a battered husk covered in graffiti. Straight ahead was a grand staircase with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ocean. The windows were broken, and the sound of the waves below echoed up through the building, sounding like distant artillery.

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