Rusher.

Holtz had avoided looking at his old friend as long as possible. Not just because of the gunshot wounds that stood out in livid marks against the old scars, but because he couldn’t believe his eyes—Dominic had survived so much. They’d served together for four years, and worked here, side by side, for another three.

And all that time, Holtz had never known what Rusher was.

Rios was always telling them not to make assumptions, that EOs weren’t ducks—they didn’t have to walk like one and talk like one and smell like one to be one.

But still.

“It’s crazy, isn’t it?” he murmured. “Makes you wonder how many are out there. And here. If I was an EO, you better believe this is the last place I’d be.”

Briggs wasn’t listening.

He couldn’t blame her.

EON was in a state of emergency. They’d gotten the place back under lockdown pretty quickly, but they’d still lost four EOs in the process, a third of the soldiers were in medical—five had died. The gala mission had been a total disaster, EON’s first unkillable EO was dead, possibly from the efforts of their own ex-employee, and the director hadn’t even bothered to come to work today.

Holtz needed a drink.

Briggs sealed the doors to cold storage and they climbed back to the main levels.

Holtz swiped through security and stepped outside, grateful that his shift was finally over.

His car sat waiting on the employee side of the lot. It was a sleek

yellow speedster, the kind that took on an animal grace—it didn’t just drive. It prowled and growled and rumbled and purred, and the other EON soldiers loved to give him shit for it, but Holtz hadn’t craved many things since he’d gotten out of the army—just fast cars and pretty girls—and he was only willing to pay for one of them.

He climbed behind the wheel, engine revving pleasantly as he jacked up the heat, still trying to shake off the chill of cold storage, the lingering shock of the last twenty-four hours. As he pulled through the gate, Holtz cranked up the radio, trying to drown out the sound of the gravel drive. He shook his head—EON, he assumed, could surely afford to have paved their private road, but apparently they didn’t want to encourage any traffic. So if you were a civilian, hitting gravel in this area was a sign you’d gone the wrong way.

Though some people didn’t get the message—like this asshole, Holtz thought, looking down the road.

A car had parked on the shoulder, a low, black coupe, its taillights glaring and its hood raised.