PART 2:

For one second, nobody moved.

The ocean kept breathing against the shore. The wind kept tugging at the white wedding canopy. Somewhere near the reception tables, a violinist missed a note and quickly corrected it.

But all I saw was the flash.

A camera lens.

Too far back among the guests to be accidental.

Admiral Hale saw it too.

His hand dropped to the radio clipped beneath his jacket. “Black team, eyes west. Possible surveillance. Civilian crowd. No panic.”

No panic.

That was what people always said seconds before panic arrived.

Vanessa grabbed my wrist. Her fingers were cold. “Rebecca, what is happening?”

I looked down at her hand on mine.

An hour ago, she had been embarrassed that I existed at her wedding. She had whispered that I looked like a warning sign in family photos. She had asked me to stand farther back so I wouldn’t ruin the pictures.

Now she was holding on like I was the only solid thing on the beach.

I gently pulled free.

“Stay behind Dad,” I said.

Her face twisted with hurt, confusion, fear. “Rebecca—”

“Now.”

This time she obeyed.

Admiral Hale moved closer to me. “Commander, we have a secure route through the service entrance behind the resort.”

“Too obvious.”

He gave me a sharp look.

I nodded toward the dunes. “Whoever leaked my location expected you to pull me toward the SUVs. That access road is the first place I’d watch.”

A faint, grim smile touched his mouth. “Still thinking three moves ahead.”

“Trying not to die sharpens the mind.”

My father inhaled sharply, but I didn’t look at him.

Two agents in dark suits began moving through the wedding guests, polite but urgent. Their eyes scanned hands, bags, cameras, faces. Most guests had no idea what was happening. They only sensed the shift. The sudden tightening of air. The way trained people stopped pretending to be relaxed.

Then I saw him.

A waiter near the champagne table.

He was too still.

Every other staff member had reacted to the officers spreading out. They glanced around, whispered, hesitated. But he didn’t. He stood with one hand resting on a silver tray, his gaze fixed not on the Admiral, not on the agents, but on me.

Our eyes met.

He smiled.

My blood went cold.

“Down!” I shouted.

The waiter dropped the tray.

The beach erupted.

Not with an explosion. Not yet. But with screams, glass shattering, chairs overturning, people running in every direction at once.

May you like

Admiral Hale grabbed my arm, but I was already moving. I shoved Vanessa behind one of the overturned banquet tables and pushed my father down beside her.

“Stay low!”

My father stared at me as though he had never seen me before.

Maybe he hadn’t.

The waiter cut through the chaos toward the rear of the resort, moving fast but not running. That was how professionals escaped. Running drew eyes. Purpose vanished into noise.

I chased him.

Pain burned down my left side with the first hard step. Old injuries woke up like angry ghosts. I ignored them.

“Commander Reed!” Hale shouted behind me.

I didn’t stop.

The man ducked through a staff gate beside the kitchens. I followed, shouldering past a stack of linen carts. The resort’s service corridor swallowed the wedding music behind me. Suddenly there were fluorescent lights, polished concrete floors, the smell of bleach and baked bread.

The waiter was twenty yards ahead.

He looked back once.

Still smiling.

Then he rounded a corner.

I slowed before reaching it.

Rule one: never follow a threat around a blind corner at full speed.

A metal rolling cart sat beside the wall. I gripped it, shoved it hard around the corner, and dropped flat.

Two sharp cracks split the corridor.

The cart jerked as rounds punched into it.