Page 98 of The Scout

We were alive.

Dumb luck. That’s all it was.

Dumb fucking luck that some hulking splinter of pier hadn’t impaled us in midair. That we hadn’t been knocked unconscious in the water and dragged under before the boats reached us. That the explosion hadn’t swallowed us whole, leaving nothing but charred remains for the feds to scrape off the sand.

But luck or not, we were back at Dominion Hall, breathing. Battered, bruised, but still in one piece.

The house was on lockdown, but the chaos hadn’t settled. Phones rang. Voices carried. The war room was a constant hum of low, urgent conversation. Local authorities. Federal agencies. They all wanted answers, and none of them were getting the truth.

I’d already dealt with the cops—gave them a version of the story that kept us clean.Private security job gone wrong. A failed ransom exchange. No idea who was behind it, but we’d like to see justice done, officers.That was all they needed to hear. The feds were going to be harder to shake, but I’d deal with them, same as I always did.

The real problem was Will.

He sat across from me in the war room, bandaged and bruised, one eye still swollen nearly shut. The cuts on his face had stopped bleeding, but the damage from capture and torture ran deeper than just the visible wounds.

He was stiff, jaw tight, eyes shadowed. Guilty.

He knew he’d fucked up.

I leaned forward, elbows on the table. “Start talking.”

Will let out a slow breath, running a hand over his jaw. “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” I said flatly. “You went off alone. You didn’t tell me what you were doing. You didn’t take backup. You got yourself snatched, and you almost got me killed.”

Will’s fingers curled into a fist against the table. He knew I wasn’t exaggerating.

“I thought I had it under control,” he admitted. “I was sure I was on the right track. That the people I was following—” He hesitated, then met my gaze. “Ryker, I think they were behind your dad’s death.”

The words hit like a hammer to the chest, but I didn’t react. I just stared at him, waiting for more.

“Youthink?” I said. “You risked your life chasing a fucking hunch?”

“It wasn’t just a hunch.” Will shook his head. “It’s real. Department 77 is real.”

I exhaled slowly, fingers drumming once against the table.

Department 77.

The name had surfaced before. Hushed whispers in classified reports. Unconfirmed accounts from guys whohad seen things they shouldn’t have. A division buried so deep in the intelligence world that even saying its name out loud felt like a mistake. The boogeyman.

Officially, Department 77 didn’t exist. I’d asked.

But unofficially …

I narrowed my eyes. “You have proof?”

“Not concrete,” Will admitted. “Not yet. But I have leads. Witnesses. People who knew what your dad was involved in. I was going to Europe to talk to them.” He paused. “But I never made it out of Charleston. As soon as I pulled the string labeled Department 77 … wham! I was toast.”

My jaw clenched.

“Somehow,” he continued, “Department 77 found out. They knew where I was. They knew what I was after. And instead of just taking me out, they set up a whole fucking operation to get rid of you, too. The whole time they were beating me, they didn’t ask a single question. Not one.”

He wasn’t wrong. The explosion at the pier wasn’t just about tying up loose ends. It was about eliminating aproblem.

Will sat forward, shoulders rigid. “Ryker, they’re not done. They’ll come after you again. And not just you—all of you.”

I didn’t move, didn’t blink. My mind was already spinning through the implications. All of us meant my family.

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