Page 44 of Shadow's Edge

It was only a matter of when.

But while we waited for that bomb to drop, we’d gottensomething else, a location. Demingo had been found. We knew where he was holed up, and if things weren’t already tense enough,Hunter and the rest of Valiant were about to join inon the fun. That should’ve been a win, but there was bad blood between Hunter and Preacher.

Hunter’s prospects had beenon watchthe night Piper was taken, but instead of doing their fucking job, they’d gotten distracted trying to find shelter from a storm. Basically, they’d fucked up, and in this world, fuckups cost lives.

I ignored the tension thickening the room and unrolled anaerial photoof the property Demingo was hiding in. Time to get to work.

“Data ran a search onhigh traffic movementin the area,” I started, voice steady. “Thenisolated the ones tied to Demingo.Twenty minutes ago, we sent drones to three locations and got this shot back fromCharlie Drone.”

I pointed at the massive sheet of paper on the table. The image looked like a generic forest clearing, if you didn’t know what you were looking for, but I knew.

“Atoh-nine-hundred hours, this was taken,” I continued, tapping an area that lookedemptyto the untrained eye. Except it wasn’t. Beneath thenettingdesigned to blend in with the surrounding terrain,a faint outline of rotor bladescould just barely be made out. “There’s a helo here.” I moved my finger across the image, stopping at another spot. “And here,” I pointed at a freshly flattened path in the tall grass, “is where they’ve been parking their vehicles.Poorly camouflaged but camouflaged nonetheless.”

I gave them a second to take it all in.

“They’ve got someone posted here,” Jagger spoke up, tapping at awooded areawhere abarely visible barrel of a long-range riflewas peeking through.

“Oh, goody,” Hunter growled, cracking his knuckles. “They want to play rough.”

I smirked. Ilikedthat look on him and my words coming out of his mouth.

Unrolling a second sheet, I laid it out over the first.

“Charlie Drone is a prototype created by the Ghosts,” I explained. “Wehaven’tpitched it to the government yet.Frankly, we probably won’t.”

I clenched my jaw, reigning in my thoughts before I gottoo sidetrackedwith my own issues on that.

“So,” I continued, clearing my throat, “Charlie Drone is a fucking beast.This was the mostcomplexof the three locations, which is why we sent it in. It’s basically thestealth bomberof military drones. It carriesextra charging cellsdistributed evenly throughout the frame, extending its range. Its camera’sstronger, higher-powered than Alpha or Beta models.It stays at anundetectable altitudewhile still getting us crystal-clear,high-res photos like these.”

I pointed down ateightsharp images. Demingo caught in variousintimatemoments. Two were of him in thebathroom, one of himpeering worriedly out a window. Another two showed him on theporch, smug as hell, eating breakfast whiletwo guards stood watch.

But the next ones were thegolden tickets. One of him lookingnervous as hellas his guards stepped away.

It was the last one that was my favorite. Him, dead asleep in his bed. That was the photo that wouldfuck with his headthe most.

Hunter chuckled—a dark, hungry sound. “I might have a plan,” he muttered.

I loved working with this guy. Unfortunately, Jared was gone,called away on some job, but something about him still feltoff. I’d wanted Hunter’s read on him, but for now, we hadbigger problems.

One of Demingo’sso-called "orgy houses" had contained more than just bodies and secrets—it had housed a stash of weapons, and we had made sure to keep some. In our world, you never knew when something would come in handy, and tonight, we were about to put one to the test.

Hunter and his team were locked in position while Data had us patched into an untraceable system, every feed secure, every line clean. I was stretched out at my own vantage point, watching and waiting, my pulse steady as the cool night air wrapped around me. Overhead, Charlie Drone hovered silently, capturing everything in real-time.

The first text landed on Demingo’s phone, and I watched the moment unfold through my scope. A single photo of him, asleep in his bed. His reaction was instant. He lurched upright, the phone slipping from his grasp and bouncing onto the floor as he scrambled to his feet. Panic flickered across his face as he ran a hand through his hair, pacing, trying to steady his breath. Then another text arrived. He hesitated, staring at the phone like it might explode before cautiously picking it up. His expression shifted as panic gave way to something sharper—rage.

And then, the third text came through. His face crumbled, and the phone hit the floor again, his entire body rigid as the realization of what was happening fully set in. A moment later, a familiar sound crackled through my headset, playing softly at first before rising in volume—Danza Kuduro.

I nearly choked on a laugh. The same song we had caught him dancing to in the bathroom footage earlier was now blaring from his phone. Data had overridden his phone, preventing it from locking, and the screen flickered to life, looping the footage on his screen—Demingo, shaking his ass, singing into a toothbrush like a goddamn idiot.

“What the fuck?!” he bellowed, stumbling back as if the device had burned him. His rage boiled over, his voice cracking as he roared into the darkness. “Come out, you fucking coward!”

Grinning, I murmured into my comms, "Well, that’s rich. We’re not the ones hiding in the boonies now, are we?"

A soft ping on my screen signaled it was go time. I confirmed my position, my scope steady, my trigger finger light as I waited for the next move. Then, Demingo’s phone flashed again, but this time, the screen split in two. The top half displayed a live feed from his front camera, reflecting his own wide-eyed, panic-stricken face, while the bottom half showed a night-vision feed, a long-distance shot of his property.

His eyes flickered with confusion before a smug expression briefly returned, as if he still believed his walls and reinforcements would keep him safe. But he was wrong. So fucking wrong. And he was about to find out just how badly he’d fucked up.

The weapon we’d seized was a military prototype—something that wasn’t supposed to exist outside of classified operations. Smaller than an RPG but just as lethal, its explosive rounds carried a payload powerful enough to tear through reinforced structures like paper. The fact that Demingo’s men had them made my blood boil. It meant that somewhere, someone high up had either sold these off or let them slip through the cracks. And when I found out who, they were going to fucking suffer. But that was a problem for another day.

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