Page 8 of Damián

“Ahh… You do know you’re already on a mission, right? Or is rescuing a hostage too boring for you?”

“Child’s play, amigo.” I laugh, but I don’t stop moving. I stack up against the doorframe, swing my weapon up, and sweep the barrel across the threshold before stepping inside… the room is clear.

I do an extra quick scan for tripwires or pressure plates.

Mmmm, no… all good.

“Dami…” Alexios’s voice is back in my ear, only this time he sounds uneasy. Mierda, he never sounds this uneasy. “Everything in the file checks out.”

“Thank you.”

“…Are you sure about this?”

“Hell no. But I have to try.”

“Then I’m in.”

BZZT. BZZT.

My leg vibrates a second time.

“The decrypted file is on your phone now.”

“Gracias.” I move down the hallway, keeping my gun trained forward with my right hand while I fish my phone out with my left.

I thumb the secure notification open and give it a fast check… handwritten ledgers, shipping schedules, and cargo manifests that could get me killed.

Oh, mierda… yep, this is legit.

CRACK! CRACK!

I duck as bullets hit the concrete wall next to my head, spraying dust into my hair.

¡Madre mía! Rude!

I fire two shots back, dropping the shooter, then glance down to keep reading. An extra guard rounds the corner, raising a pistol toward me, but Logan, our leader, is already there.

The man is a living, breathing GI Joe, with short, honey-blond hair, a well-kept beard, and gray eyes. He fires his rifle multiple times, dropping the guard, plus two other men, before they can reload.

“Clear,” he says. “Damián, we are in the middle of a hostage extraction. Put that phone away.”

“Can’t. Harry sent me an email.”

“What the bloody hell are you doing admin work for?” Law, our attorney/sniper, asks over the comms. His posh British accent is so thick I’ve been begging him for years to ask me, calmly, if I put my name in the Goblet of Fire.

He hasn’t done it… yet.

“It’s not admin work. It’s a file on the worst fucking target we’ll ever get.” I check the notes as I jump over the railing, skipping the last three steps. “Besides, unlike Björn, I can multitask.”

“Hey, fuck you! I’m a four-time F1 World Champion, asshole.” Björn’s laugh echoes in the stairwell as he runs past me.

His long, ashy blond hair is pulled back into a messy man-bun, framing a sharp jawline and blue eyes that are surrounded by the thickest lashes I’ve ever seen. He kicks a door open, checks the room, and keeps moving.

“I could read your damn email while driving two hundred miles an hour in circles around you,” he adds.

“I’d actually like to see that.” Knox shoves a stunned guard into a wall with enough force to knock the wind out of him.

“Oh, please do,” Tae, our medic, says over the comms. “I just bought this new experimental bio-cement online, and I’ve been dying to glue a femur back together and see if it holds.”