Page 22 of Oliver

We were backat the safe house. An hour later, someone knocked. I opened the door and Jason Blake stepped in.

Broad shoulders. Sun-dark skin. Gray at the temples but pure steel in the eyes. He looked like he hadn’t slept, hadn’t shaved, and didn’t plan on making small talk.

“Where is she?” he asked.

“In the sunroom,” I said. “She’s safe.”

His eyes locked onto mine. “You were the one who pulled her out?”

“One of them, sir.”

A beat passed.

Then he extended a hand. “Thank you.”

I shook it. Firm. Controlled. But I could feel it—that undercurrent of fire just barely held in check.

“Does she remember anything?”

“She’s starting to. We went to the gym here to try and shake her memory. She saw a phone. Thinks she opened a video showing a weapons handoff. Someone saw her, and the next day she vanished.”

Jason’s jaw tightened. “My daughter doesn’t even know how to sit still. If she stopped long enough to open a video, it’s because someone wanted her to.”

I paused. “You think it was planted?”

“Maybe. Or maybe someone close to the op needed a distraction. A scapegoat.”

“Like who?”

He looked me dead in the eye. “Someone in our world.”

That changed everything.

Because if Jason was right, Emery wasn’t just caught in criminals' crosshairs.

She was being hunted by someone who’d once worn the same uniform we did.

12

Emery

Iknew the second he walked in.

I didn’t have to turn around. The air changed. The gravity in the room shifted, like the walls themselves braced for impact.

“Hey, kid,” came the low, gravel-lined voice behind me.

I turned.

Jason Blake—my father, the man I’d idolized as a child and resented as a teenager—stood in the doorway. Bigger than I remembered. Grayer at the temples. And for the first time in my life… vulnerable.

His eyes swept over me. Bandaged arm. Faint bruises under my jaw. The raw edges I hadn’t been able to scrub off, no matter how many times I’d showered.

“You’re late,” I said.

A flicker of something passed over his face—guilt, maybe. Or grief.

“I got here as fast as I could.”

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