Page 5 of Shadow's Edge

“Thanks.”

For a second, just a second, I thought that might be it, but then he asked, “Are you ever going to call me Dad again?”

The question hit the air like a gunshot.

I didn’t flinch. Didn’t look away. My voice was steady, emotionless, as I met his gaze and asked, “Do you think you deserve it?”

Silence stretched between us. He held my stare for a moment longer before shaking his head and walking out, the door clicking shut behind him. A crack formed in the cold stone inside my chest. It happened occasionally, but I wasn’t about to dwell on it.

With a sigh, I kicked off my boots and lay back on the bed. The familiar comfort of the mattress wrapped around me, the pillow top and memory foam molding to my shape. Once upon a time, this had been the best night’s sleep I’d ever had.

The peaceful moment was short-lived.

“K-k-k-k-Kaaaaiiiii,” Smokey sang, drawing out my name like a damn cartoon villain as he dropped onto the couch beside my bed. Mack and Hammer flanked him, grinning like jackasses. Duke had stayed in the room after Preacher had left, but he remained standing, as always, arms crossed like the ever-watchful sentinel he was.

“So, tell me your stories,” Smokey said with a smirk. “We saw some shit from Data, but I wanna hear it from you.”

I smirked back, knowing exactly what would get a reaction out of them. “I’m getting a new rifle.”

“The fuck?” Just like that, the tension eased. The exhaustion was still there, but for now, it could wait.

A girl could never have too many rifles and scopes—fact. And today? Today, I was getting my hands on one of the holy grails of the sniper world. “The Canadians agreed to send over aTAC-50.” The words felt almost reverent as I said them, knowing exactly the kind of reaction they’d get.

“The fuck you say?” Hammer snapped, just as expected. The man had a sixth sense for sniffing out high-caliber firepower, and this was the equivalent of dropping a steak in front of a starving wolf.

Grinning—something I didn’t do often—I nodded slowly. “Arrivesmañana, Chico.”

Duke’s lips twitched as I glanced at him, though I didn’t miss the flicker of green-eyed envy in his gaze. They all knew the unspoken rule: unless the world was burning down around us,no onetouched my weapons. And so far? That level of emergency had never happened.

Before Hammer could work himself up into a proper tantrum, Duke cut in, his voice shifting into that no-bullshit tone I’d known my entire life.

“Right, fill me in. What the fuck happened to your ribs?” Straight to the point, as always.

I exhaled sharply, rolling my shoulders as I filled them in on the incident that had been gnawing at me since it happened. I laid it out, how we had just barely caught sight of the soldier setting up with an RPG, and how we had managed to dive for cover at the last second. But the part that wouldn’t leave my mind—the part that felt like acid burning a hole in my gut—was what I said next.

“They shouldn’t have known we were there, Duke. There was no way they could have known our location. If we hadn’t noticed him before he fired, he would’ve hitusinstead of that mud wall.”

Duke’s gaze darkened as he stared at the blank wall in front of him, his mind clearly racing in the same direction as mine.

“Unless someone told them,” He mused.

“Exactly.”

That was the conclusion I’d come to the moment it happened. The idea that there was a rat in my unit—in myteam of men I had handpicked myself—made my blood boil. Not knowing who I could trust outside of Indigo made it worse. While I was here working with the Knights, I had another mission of my own: to find the leak. Someone had tipped off the enemy, and I was going to find out who.

The familiar burnof whiskey slid down my throat as I sat at the bar, lost in thought. Around me, the guys carried on with their usual banter and nonsense, but I had long since tuned them out. After years of hearing the same bullshit, I’d mastered the art of selective hearing. Instead, I focused on the bottle in my hand, a gift from one of the Irish guys before we’d left. When he’d handed it to me, Match and I had practically cried laughing at the name—Bushmills Black Bush.

“I didn’t peg you for a whiskey drinker.”

The deep voice pulled me from my thoughts. I glanced over my shoulder and found Jagger leaning against the bar, watching me with that unreadable expression he seemed to favor.

Wordlessly, I turned the bottle so he could read the label. His reaction was priceless.

“The fuck is that?”

“A gift from an Irishman.” I smirked, lifting my glass. “Not bad, actually. Once you get past the initial shudder of drinking something calledBlack Bush.”

Jagger’s throat worked as he threw his head back and laughed, the deep rumble of it sending an unexpected shiver down my spine.

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