Page 153 of Jax
Quinn started scanning the files, photos, and manifests, his mouth tightening into a shape I’d only seen once before, after the failed raid on a contractor-owned weapons lab outside Fallujah. Same posture. Same stillness. Same low-burn fury. But this time, it wasn’t just rage.
It was recognition.
“Jesus,” he muttered, dragging a hand through his hair as he leaned in to read a customs clearance form. “This is… this is international arms trafficking. Through a domestic node. Withfederal identifiers. This isn’t just an operation. It’s a sanctioned pipeline.”
“Unofficially sanctioned,” I said. “Official enough to have documentation. Ghosted just enough to make denial plausible.”
Carrick slid a black binder toward him, already flagged with page markers. “Foreign buyers. Weapons routed out of decommissioned US stockpiles. Some labeled aid, some as ‘surplus disposal.’ All of it passed through Kansas City for one reason, distribution efficiency. No red flags on the freight lines. No audit trail.”
“Nothing within fifty miles of DC,” I added. “Nothing that would trigger oversight protocols. They built it where no one looks.”
Quinn didn’t speak for a long beat. His hand hovered over the open file, fingers splayed like he wanted to press down hard enough to erase what he was seeing. Or steady it. Or maybe just keep it from becoming real.
“They’ve been using our own systems,” he said at last, voice low. “Our clearance tiers. Ournames.”
Niko turned from the screen, eyes hard behind the pale gleam of blue light. “And that’s just what we found in the first ten minutes.”
He tapped a key, switching monitors. Another window opened, this one populated with timestamps from satellite routing logs. I recognized a few of them. So did Carrick. Quinn leaned closer, his brow furrowing.
“These line up with outgoing shipments from three weeks ago. Fromourside,” Niko said. “Check the labels. Shipping documentation matches the crate numbers we found in the cache. Which means these aren’t historical. They’re current.”
Carrick narrowed his focus to a circled set of coordinates on the printout. “Satellite logs confirm point of departure from amunicipal airstrip west of here. Not military. Not commercial. Private charter. Could’ve been anything.”
“And the warehouse wasn’t dormant,” I added. “Every terminal was still warm. Updates hitting every ninety seconds. Which means there are more. This isn’t the endpoint.”
Quinn didn’t ask for verification. Didn’t protest. He just reached into his coat pocket, pulled his phone, and turned his back to us as he stepped two paces away. Not for privacy, just for clarity. The kind you need when what you’re about to say will change the course of ten different people’s careers. Maybe more.
The call connected on the first ring.
“We have the girl,” he said, voice clipped, professional. “Safe. Stable. Medically cleared on site. Evidence recovered. High-volume. Confirmed arms movement. Domestic distribution node. I need a team to secure the location immediately.” He listened, nodded once. “Yes, sir. I understand. I trust you.”
I closed my eyes briefly. Let the variables reorder—the solo arrival, the silence on comms, no extraction team, no precinct logs. This wasn’t structured like an op. It wasn’t even close.
When I opened my eyes again, I zeroed in on his hand. Still holding the phone like a weapon, two fingers low, thumb across the grip, index along the edge. Not nervous. Trained. That was the kind of posture you develop when every call might be a trigger pull wrapped in protocol.
He ended the call with a quiet click. No confirmation. No goodbye. Then he stood there for a beat longer than he meant to—long enough for it to register not as indecision, but forced composure. The kind that hits behind the ribs but doesn’t show in your voice. When he turned, his expression was controlled. Professional. But not clean. Something clouded the edge of his focus, like he already knew what this was going to become, and didn’t yet know who he’d have to be when it did.
“They’re mobilizing a retrieval unit,” he said. “ETA sixty minutes. Full lockdown.”
“What’s the cover story?” I asked, curious how they were going to spin this once it got out to the media. This kind of thing couldn’t be kept under wraps forever.
“Unmarked arms cache discovered by anonymous tip,” he said. “Solo hostage situation. No signs of federal involvement. Suspects fled before authorities arrived.”
“So we’re ghosts for now, I assume?”
Quinn gave a wry, humorless smile. “We’re not on the record. That’s the safest position right now.”
It made sense. We weren’t here to fix this. We were here to buy time. To contain damage. To keep the situation from collapsing faster than the cleanup crew could get boots on the ground.
I returned the smile and nodded. “We’re used to it at this point. Just keep us in the loop if our names turn up anywhere.”
“You know I will.” He replied.
“Good. I’m going to get some fresh air for a minute. This room is feeling stuffy.” I said, loudly enough that the other guys could hear me as well. I needed a minute to process the storm of information that was flooding my brain. Sometimes there were so many thoughts, it took effort to organize them.
I turned and walked out of the office, boots muted against concrete, the air still thick with the tang of gun oil and storm. The distance didn’t quiet the noise in my head. It only gave it shape. We’d pulled Violet out alive. We’d cracked into a warehouse no one was ever supposed to see. We’d proven, in blood and steel, that the Dom Krovi wasn’t untouchable.
It was a win. A big one. But wins like this don’t come free. The cache, the scale, the cover story already forming, every piece screamed that we hadn’t just rattled their cage. We’d put ourselves on their map.
