“Let’s see how tough you really are,” the sergeant sneered as the clippers cut through my hair—but the moment Captain Hale discovered a metal tag linked to a dead soldier’s belongings, someone sent me a photograph that revealed a terrifying secret: Emma Castillo’s death was only the beginning.

The double doors of Sub-Basement Depot Four stood slightly ajar. A sliver of sulfurous, blue-white light flickered from the deep interior of the cavernous warehouse, accompanied by the high-pitched hum of high-voltage transformers and the sharp, chemical stench of magnesium.

Thermite.

Riley moved low, her back pressed against the corrugated metal wall. Hale slipped through the threshold first, his Beretta M9 held in a two-handed combat stance, checking his corners with deliberate, lethal precision. Sofia followed directly behind Riley, holding a heavy steel wrench she had pulled from a maintenance cart near the corridor entrance.

Depot Four was massive—an underground staging floor measuring nearly two hundred feet square, filled with rows of twelve-foot-high military wire-mesh cages. Inside the cages sat hundreds of olive-drab shipping containers, all stamped with alphanumeric inventory codes.

At the far end of the warehouse, beneath a bank of flickering fluorescent tubes, Sergeant Cole Mercer was furiously working at an open electronic server cabinet.

He had stripped off his uniform blouse; his olive-green training shirt was soaked through with sweat. On top of the main server chassis sat a rectangular metal brick the size of a hardback novel, glowing cherry-red at its corners. A chemical timer clicked with a rhythmic, mechanical cadence.

Beside Mercer on the concrete floor lay three opened duffel bags stuffed with hard drives, tactical night-vision monocles, and stacks of banded hundred-dollar bills.

Mercer was talking into a headset. “I’m telling you, Lawson, it’s done. The thermite core is primed. It’ll reach five thousand degrees in three minutes. It’ll melt the entire motherboard array and the paper filing cabinets into slag. Have the transport truck ready at Bay Three!”

He paused, listening to an angry, distorted voice barking back over the comm-link.

“I had to run!” Mercer snapped back defensively. “Hale showed up in Barracks C with one of the bypass keys! Quinn was there—she saw the tag! I don't know who tipped them off, but Hale was carrying the evidence envelope from CID!”

Riley caught Hale’s eye. She signaled with three fingers: *flank left.* Hale nodded, easing silently along the perimeter of the wire cages, using the towering stacks of ordnance containers as cover.

Riley moved right, deliberately brushing her combat boot against a stack of empty aluminum packing crates.

The metal clattered sharply in the cavernous silence.

Mercer spun around instantly, ripping his headset off. His right hand went to his holster, drawing a compact Glock 19.

“Who’s there?” Mercer barked, his voice bouncing off the high concrete ceiling. “Pike? I told you to bring the hand truck, you idiot!”

Riley stepped calmly out from behind a row of steel lockers, walking into the pool of harsh fluorescent light.

“Pike’s indisposed, Cole,” Riley said.

Mercer froze. His eyes flared with genuine shock. He looked at Riley’s face, then at her shorn, uneven hair. The arrogant, smirking bully from Barracks C tried to resurface, but the gun in his hand was trembling slightly.

“Quinn?” he breathed. “How the hell did you get down here?”

“You should have finished cutting my hair, Sergeant,” Riley said, taking another steady, unhurried pace toward him. Her hands remained open at her sides, projecting no posture of attack, which unnerved Mercer far more than a drawn weapon would have. “You said I should learn who owns this room. But this room doesn't belong to you. And it doesn't belong to Major Lawson.”

Mercer leveled the Glock directly at her chest. “Stop right there, Quinn. I swear to God, I’ll drop you where you stand. You don't have a weapon.”

“Go ahead,” Riley said, taking another step. “Pull the trigger. Add the murder of a female non-commissioned officer inside a secured depot to your list of achievements. You think Lawson is waiting for you at Bay Three with a transport truck? You really believe that?”

Mercer’s eyes flickered toward the overhead timer on the server rack. *01:45.*

“Lawson is taking care of it,” Mercer snarled, though doubt poisoned his tone.

“Lawson just initiated an all-hands MP muster at headquarters,” Riley said with absolute clinical precision. “He pulled every guard away from the perimeter. Not to help you escape, Cole. To make sure there are no witnesses when his contractor security team seals the freight elevator from the top and lets that thermite block cook you alive down here.”

Mercer’s breath hitched. “You’re lying.”

“Think about it, Cole,” Riley said, stepping closer. Ten yards. Eight yards. “Emma Castillo knew about Tag 317. What happened to her? A fatal car crash on Highway 44. Now you know about Tag 317. You’re holding the physical bypass key, you’re standing over the incinerator, and Lawson is sitting comfortably in the command headquarters with an ironclad alibi. Who do you think CID is going to blame for the missing twenty million dollars in ITAR tech? The decorated major? Or the rogue sergeant who died in an underground fire?”

Mercer’s jaw worked. His gaze darted frantically toward the freight elevator at the rear of the depot. The call light on the elevator panel was dark.

The power had been cut from above.

Lawson had already severed the line.

“No...” Mercer whispered. “He wouldn't...”

“Drop the weapon, Mercer!” Nathan Hale’s voice rang out like a rifle crack from the flank. Hale stepped from behind a pallet of Pelican cases, his Beretta locked onto Mercer’s temple. “Step away from the server rack! Hands where I can see them!”

Mercer panicking, swung his pistol toward Hale.

In that half-second of split attention, Riley closed the distance.

She didn't hesitate. She lunged inside Mercer’s reach, her left palm striking his weapon wrist upward, knocking the barrel off-axis as a deafening gunshot ripped through the depot, the bullet pinging harmlessly into the ceiling concrete.

With her right arm, Riley drove a brutal palm strike directly into Mercer’s chin, snapping his head back. She hooked his lead ankle with her right boot, leveraging her entire center of gravity, and drove him violently into the concrete floor.

The Glock skittered across the floor, stopping at the feet of Sofia Castillo.

Sofia looked down at the weapon, then looked at Mercer, who lay groaning on his back, gasping for air as Riley planted her knee squarely into his sternum, pinning him to the earth.

“The thermite!” Hale shouted, sprinting toward the server cabinet. *00:42.*