CHAPTER 193
SKYLAR'S POV
The instinct hit me like lightning as we approached the first facility - something was wrong. The compound in eastern Thailand looked exactly like our intelligence had described, but my gut was screaming that we were walking into a trap. After fifteen years of legitimate operations, I'd almost forgotten how sharp that survival instinct could be when properly honed.
"Stop," I said into my comm, freezing our four-person team fifty meters from the perimeter fence. "Something's not right."
"Define not right," Harry's voice crackled back from his position covering our eastern approach.
"Too quiet. Too clean. Where are the guards we spotted in yesterday's surveillance?"
Through my scope, I could see the facility that was supposed to house at least forty trafficking victims. The buildings were intact, the electrical systems appeared operational, but there was no movement anywhere in the compound.
"Could be shift change," Jax suggested from his position on the western approach.
"At three in the afternoon? That's not how these operations work."
Lucas's voice cut through the comm channel from his overwatch position. "Thermal imaging shows heat signatures in the main building, but they're stationary. Too stationary."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning either everyone inside is asleep at the same time, or those heat signatures aren't coming from living people."
The realization hit all of us simultaneously. This wasn't a rescue operation anymore - it was a message.
"Bodies?" Harry asked.
"Unknown. Could be decoys, could be victims killed to deny us the rescue, could be a setup to draw us inside."
I closed my eyes and tried to think like the enemy we were facing. Someone had known about our operation, had anticipated our approach, and had prepared this facility specifically for our arrival.
"We abort," I said, though every instinct screamed against leaving potential victims behind.
"Skylar," Jax's voice was urgent. "If there are living people in there..."
"Then they're already dead or they're bait for a trap that will kill us without saving anyone."
"You don't know that."
"I know that our children are at home expecting us to come back. I know that walking into an obvious trap serves no one except our enemies."
Through the comm, I could hear the others wrestling with the same impossible choice that had defined our entire relationship - duty to innocent strangers versus responsibility to our family.
"Movement," Lucas reported suddenly. "Three vehicles approaching from the south, moving fast."
"How fast?"
"Fast enough to suggest they were waiting for us to arrive."
"Weapons?"
"Military-grade, by the look of the hardware. This isn't local security - this is professional opposition."
I felt the familiar cold calm settling over me as tactical thinking replaced emotional response. We were outnumbered, outgunned, and positioned exactly where our enemies wanted us.
"Extraction plan?" Harry asked.
"Same as we briefed. Rally point Alpha, then secondary rendezvous if that's compromised."
"What about the facility?"
"We come back with proper backup or we don't come back at all."
The approaching vehicles were close enough now that I could hear their engines over the ambient jungle sounds. Professional drivers, coordinated approach, exactly the kind of response that meant someone had been expecting us.
"Move," I ordered. "Now."
We began withdrawing from our positions with the practiced efficiency that came from years of working together. But as we moved through the dense vegetation toward our extraction point, my comm crackled with a voice I'd hoped never to hear again.
"Skylar Mitchell," the voice was electronically distorted but unmistakably familiar. "Did you really think we wouldn't be ready for you?"
Claire. My old classmate who'd betrayed us to my father, who'd supposedly died in Henry's compound, who'd apparently survived to continue the family tradition of using my past against me.
"Hello, Claire," I said into my comm, knowing she'd be monitoring our frequency. "I was wondering when you'd surface."
"You always were too sentimental for this work. Too willing to risk everything for people you'd never met."
"And you were always too willing to sacrifice innocent people for personal gain."
"Personal gain? Skylar, I'm trying to save you from yourself. This crusade of yours is going to get your entire family killed."
Through the vegetation, I could see Jax moving parallel to my position, his weapon ready but his attention focused on my conversation with the voice from our shared past.
"The children in that facility," I said. "Are they alive?"
"What children? Oh, you mean the thermal signatures? Those are mannequins rigged with heating elements. Very convincing on surveillance equipment."
"So this whole operation was designed to draw us out."
"This whole operation was designed to demonstrate that your legitimate approach isn't as secure as you think. Someone's been selling information about your foundation's activities to people who have good reasons to want you eliminated."
The implication hit like ice water. Our legitimate organization had been compromised from within, our humanitarian work used as cover for tracking our movements and predicting our operations.
"Who?" I asked, though I dreaded the answer.
"Someone close enough to know your travel schedules, your security protocols, your target selection criteria. Someone who's been feeding information to trafficking networks for months."
"That's impossible. Everyone in our organization has been vetted."
"Has they? Or have you been so focused on external threats that you missed the enemy within?"
Rally point Alpha was just ahead - a defensible position we'd selected for exactly this kind of situation. But as we approached, Lucas's voice cut through the comm with news that changed everything.
"Multiple heat signatures at the rally point. Armed personnel in defensive positions."
They'd known about our extraction plan too.
"Rally point Beta?" Harry asked.
"Compromised," Lucas reported after checking his long-range surveillance equipment. "They're covering all our predetermined positions."
"Then we improvise," I said, falling back on the skills that had kept us alive before we'd become legitimate. "Like the old days."
"The old days didn't include someone who knows all our methods and has had months to prepare countermeasures," Jax pointed out.
Through my earpiece, Claire's voice returned with what sounded like genuine regret. "Skylar, there's still time to walk away from this. Take your family and disappear. Stop trying to save the world and focus on protecting the people you love."
"And let trafficking networks operate without interference?"
"And let other people fight battles that don't have to be yours. You've done enough. You've saved enough people. You've earned the right to just be happy."
It was exactly the choice I'd been avoiding for years - the mission versus the family, duty versus love, protecting strangers versus protecting the people who meant everything to me.
"What's it going to be?" Claire asked. "The mother or the warrior?"
As enemy forces closed in from multiple directions and our extraction options disappeared one by one, I realized that this moment would define not just our survival, but the kind of people our children would grow up to be.
But looking at the faces of the three men who'd followed me into this impossible situation, I knew there was really only one choice that made sense.
The same choice we'd been making since the day we met.
We'd face this together, or not at all.
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