Page 10 of Wraith: Lethal Impact

The phantom weight of an empty magazine settles in my palm, right over the grip of the TAC-338 I'm still holding.

The ghosts of the Afghan desert rise, clawing at the edges of my vision. The choking dust. My spotter bleeding out in the dirt eight hundred yards below my ridge while I watched through a magnified lens, paralyzed by distance. Paralyzed by an empty gun.

Never again.

Distance failed me then. I closed the gap this time, but I was still ten minutes too late to save the other girl.

I am not going to lose this one.

"We do not have time for this." My voice is sharp. Stripped of empathy. "If you want to live, get off the floor."

The shrill wail of the fire alarm vibrates the teeth in my skull. White strobes flash from the vaulted ceiling, lighting the dead traffickers where I dropped them with the .338 Lapua rounds.

She flinches as the strobe light catches the rifle in my right hand.

I shift my grip, letting the barrel drop toward the floorboards. I need her to move, but I can't drag a civilian in deep shock through a hostile extraction. She has to make the choice. She has to find the survival instinct.

"Look at me." Low, almost gentle, the words scraping against the harder register I've been using.

She forces her gaze up from the smoking barrel to my face.

"The men who did this are coming back." I deliver it without sugar. "If you stay on this stage, you will die here."

Beneath the terror in her eyes, a spark flares.

Small, buried beneath the shock, but there. The spark of a fighter. She isn't broken.

Her hand trembles as she lifts it from the blood-slicked wood. She wipes her palm against the white tulle of her costume, and the fabric comes away crimson. My world is staining hers.

Her fingers brush mine. Her skin is ice against the heat radiating off my gloves. Blood doesn't bother me. I've spent my entire adult life covered in it.

I don't give her time to second-guess. I close my hand around hers, grip firm, controlled, and haul her to her feet.

She stumbles. The hardened blocks of her pointe shoes find zero traction on the blood-slicked oak, but she doesn't fall. A lifetime of discipline kicks in, her core locking to stabilize her center.

"Wraith." Hutch's voice sharpens over the comms. "I'm tracking multiple hostiles entering the ground-floor lobby. They're bypassing the police line. Consortium hitters. You have ninety seconds before they breach the penthouse."

"Then I buy us time."

I release her hand, pivot, and draw the suppressed SIG M17 from my drop-leg holster.

I aim at the steel call-box for the service elevators hidden in the wings of the stage.

Crack. Crack. Crack.

Three suppressed rounds punch into the electronic control panel. The console explodes in a shower of sparks and shattered plastic, locking down the elevator cars on this floor. It won't stop them, but it forces them into the emergency stairs.

I holster the SIG and sling the TAC-338 across my back, securing the nylon strap against my chest plate. The rifle is useless in tight corridors. We're entering close-quarters territory.

I turn back to her.

She stares at the destroyed elevator panel, her breathing erratic.

"Rear service exit." I close the distance and settle my hand just above the small of her back, not quite touching, ready to steer her. "Move."

She doesn't hesitate this time. She turns and runs. The hard wooden blocks of her pointe shoes make the sprint ungainly, forcing her onto the balls of her feet, yet she navigates the blood-slicked floor with frantic grace. I follow half a step behind, shadowing her.

The transition from the brilliant stage to the backstage labyrinth is jarring. The strobes cut out, replaced by the dim glow of red emergency bulbs spaced along the concrete walls. The air back here is stagnant, heavy with old canvas and wood polish.