Rain and Revelation in the Eye of the Storm
As preparations intensify for their high-risk mission, Logan treads unfamiliar waters while
Dar’s conscience wrestles with the burden of her role until a sudden rainstorm delivers revelation and something more.
Gear Up
By 0615, the main floor had transformed into a staging area. Rhys was surveying the dining table that was covered with equipment—weapons, vests, comms devices, medical kits. Everything organized with military precision.
Dar stood in the doorway to the kitchen, coffee in hand, watching. She felt like an observer, separate from the controlled chaos of preparation. This was their world, not hers.
Logan emerged from his suite, already dressed in tactical clothing, moving with quiet efficiency. Entering from the front hall, he nodded to Rhys and began checking the weapons laid out on the table. His movements were practiced and automatic. This was familiar territory for him.
Rhys worked through the comms instruments, testing each unit, checking frequencies, and ensuring encryption protocols were active.
Callum sat in the living room with his laptop, reviewing final coordination details, still in his regular clothes. He glanced up periodically as the operatives moved about, tracking their progress without needing to kit up himself.
Sean surfaced from the basement carrying a large case. He spotted Dar and grinned. “Morning, boss. Come to watch the professionals at work?”
“Something like that,” she moved to let him get by her.
Sean set down the crate, opened it to reveal additional wireless hardware and what appeared to be a portable server. “Callum and I will be in the basement running comms and monitoring feeds since Hawk is going with Calder and Ward. You coming down or staying upstairs in your office?”
“I’ll go back and forth. I think.”
“Right then.” He pulled out a flashbang, holding it up like a sommelier presenting wine. “Party favours for Kozlov’s retirement celebration. I’m thinking we go with the classic ‘surprise’ theme.”
“Kennedy.” Rhys’s voice carried a warning, but there was no actual heat in it.
“Yes, Dad?” Sean grinned, but his eyes flicked to Dar, reading something in her posture. He moved closer, voice dropping. “You look like you’re about to sit an exam. Stop overthinking it.”
“I’m not overthinking it.”
“You so are, Montgomery. It’s what you do. It’s what makes you good at this.” He squeezed her shoulder briefly. “But right now, let us do our jobs.”
Despite herself, Dar felt some of the tension ease. “When did you get wise?”
“I’ve always been wise. You’re just now noticing.”
“Last check. We move at 0800,” Logan said as Malik appeared from downstairs. “Questions?”
Only a headshake and silence as Malik moved in to assess the table.
Dar remained between the two rooms, sipping coffee and watching them work. She felt useless and unnecessary. They were the ones taking the risk, doing the actual work. She would be safe in her office, watching on screens. Or not watching. She still wavered.
The doorbell rang.
Everyone froze.
They weren’t expecting anyone. Hands moved towards weapons; bodies shifted into defensive positions. Dar stationed herself within reach of the panic button. Sean checked the security monitor.
He relaxed. “It’s Pam.”
Logan’s hand stilled on the weapon he’d been checking. Sean gave him a quick look—I’ve got this—and opened the door.
“Christ on a cracker, why is the door always locked now?” Pam’s heels clicked a few steps across the hallway before she stopped short, turning back to face him.
“…Sean.”
He hesitated. “Yeah?”
Pam shifted the bakery box to balance on her hip, freeing a hand, which she laid softly on his cheek, giving him a concentrated once-over.
“Well, honey. That’s the wonderful thing about hair. It grows back.” The brilliant, yet sympathetic smile she offered reminded him of the one his mum had given him when he was sent off to boarding school.
Pam proceeded into the dining room where her eyes swept over the tactical bags, body armour, and weapons arranged on the table. Her expression hardened slightly.
“Oh. Well.” She ignored the men who had been watching her and continued straight through to the kitchen, Sean following. “This is definitely not a regular Tuesday at the office.”
She set the pastry case down with deliberate care. “I’m guessing the protein bars are for after, not before?”
With Logan’s arrival, Sean made for the exit without securing a croissant, his eyes meeting Pam’s with newfound respect.
Pam unpacked croissants, Danishes, and muffins with steady hands, focussed on her task. “I might have stress-baked a bit. Seems appropriate for whatever this is.”
Logan waited behind her, watching, then gently placed his hands on her shoulders. Pam turned, eyes sharp and assessing. “You look ready for something serious.”
“Just a work thing,” he kept his voice carefully neutral. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Understood.”
As Dar and Rhys came into view, Logan swiftly let his hands drop.
With a turn, Pam looked at Dar, her eyes asking an unspoken question.
Dar felt the weight of it—the impossible position. She wanted to reassure Pam, but she couldn’t. Their next step involved danger with zero guarantees.
Pam, now understanding and taking a deep, centreing breath, turned her full attention to Logan. “Just… be careful.”
“I will.”
Rhys and Dar mirrored each other’s puzzled expressions as they watched the exchange.
Pam walked toward the hall, pausing only a second. “All of you. Come back safe.”
“It’s just the case we’re on,” Logan sought words carefully, treading in unknown waters, needing her to depart so he could fully commit to the mission.
She said nothing; the silence broken only by the rhythmic tap of her heels as she left, disappearing as quickly as she had arrived.
Sean caught Logan’s eye—a moment of understanding, watching him return to inspecting his rifle with perhaps too much focus.
A fresh Danish, welcome comfort from Pam’s night owl baking habits, was plucked from the plate as Dar retreated to her office, compartmentalizing the scene she’d just witnessed between her stepbrother and her best friend. Something’s changed.
For the others, Pam’s visit had added weight, reminding them that their actions rippled outward, touching people who loved them, who worried, who waited.
Departure
By 0750, Dar’s office offered a comforting sense of security, a familiar haven buzzing with the glow of screens and the hum of equipment. She had powered up the displays, logged into the secure network, and begun checking the feeds Malik had set up. Building schematics. Traffic cameras. The bodycam feeds from each team member. Comms channels. The basement’s monitoring was replicated here. Everything necessary to watch the operation unfold in real-time.
She sat in her chair and stared at the blank screens. The difference between pulling a trigger and giving the order felt razor thin.
Kozlov’s file occupied a space in her mind like a photograph she couldn’t unsee. The trafficking routes mapped across three countries. Witness statements that ended abruptly—people who’d vanished or turned up dead. And the children. Twelve years old. Fourteen. Faces in surveillance photos, hollow-eyed and thin, being moved like cargo.
Some people, Callum noted, were beyond arrest or reason. They could only be stopped. Was that true? Or just what they told themselves before crossing lines? Her pulse beat steadily in her throat. She didn’t know. But she knew the alternative: Kozlov would continue. More routes. More witnesses silenced. More children sold.
That was the equation. Simple. Brutal.
She heard movement outside her door—the team was loading up to leave. She checked her watch. 7:55. Five minutes until the line disappeared behind her.
At 0800, Dar stood at the door and watched Storm, Anchor, and Hawk—all geared up, all focused, load into the dark SUV. Professional. Ready. She realised that today was the first time she had ever been so deeply intertwined with their actions.
The vehicle pulled out of the driveway and disappeared down the street. Heading toward Kozlov’s location. Heading toward violence.
Dar returned to her office; the house suddenly felt hollow. Sean was in the basement, monitoring chatter and doing his part in the operation. The cat wandered past her door, unconcerned with human drama.
A knock on her doorframe. Callum stood there in his running gear.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go for a run.”
Dar blinked. “Now? But—”
“Doesn’t start for hours. The team needs to get there, meet with Veyr’s guys, get into position, stage. We have lots of time.” He gestured toward the stairs. “You need to clear your head. I do too. Let’s run.”
She felt an urge to protest, to say she should be at her desk, monitoring, preparing. But he was right. She was wound too tightly; she needed to move, to breathe, to centre herself before this began.
“Okay,” she said. “Give me five minutes to change.”
Let It Rain
They fell into their usual rhythm within the first hundred metres, feet hitting the pavement in synchronised cadence. This had become routine over the past weeks—every morning since Callum had moved in with the team, they’d run the Wye River path together. Sometimes they talked. Sometimes they didn’t. Either way, it worked.
The morning was grey and cool, the sky heavy with clouds that looked like they might break open at any moment. The air smelled of rain and river water, that scent of spring in the Marches. Dar focused on her breathing, on the familiar pull in her calves as they descended towards the river path, on anything but the operation waiting ahead.
They turned onto the trail that ran alongside the Wye, the water dark and swift beside them. A dog walker was out, and a single cyclist passed them going in the opposite direction. Normal people doing normal things on a normal morning.
“You’re thinking too much,” Callum said, not breaking stride.
“I’m always thinking too much.”
“Fair point.” He adjusted his pace slightly as they navigated around a puddle. “But you’re thinking about Kozlov specifically. I can tell.”
She glanced at him. “How?”
“Your jaw’s tight. And you’re running faster than usual.”
Dar consciously loosened her jaw, forcing herself to ease back slightly. He wasn’t wrong. She was pushing too hard, burning energy she’d need later.
They ran in silence for a while, following the familiar curves of the path. The trees were just beginning to bud, that tentative green of early spring. Everything felt suspended, waiting. Like her.
“You ever regret it?” Callum asked suddenly. “Getting into this work?”
Something about running together seemed to loosen the usual professional boundaries, making space for questions they wouldn’t ask while they worked.
“Sometimes,” Dar said. “When it gets heavy. When I can’t sleep.” She paused, breathing hard as they climbed a slight incline. “But then I think about what happens if people like us don’t do it. If we leave it to people who don’t care about the cost.”
“People like Ashford.”
“Yeah. And people like Kozlov.”
They crested the hill and picked up speed on the descent. Dar welcomed the burn in her legs, the way her lungs worked. Physical sensation. Something real and immediate, not abstract moral calculations or operational planning.
“I don’t regret the work,” Callum said after a moment. His breathing had gone uneven. “I regret some of the choices I made doing it. Things I can’t take back.”
Dust. Heat pressing down like a hand. Binoculars steady on a village square, sweat stinging his eyes.
She looked at him, but he was staring straight ahead, jaw tight.
Men with weapons, yes. But civilians threaded through them—a boy carrying flatbread, a woman hauling water, an old man arguing. Routine. A place, not a staging ground.
They’d touched on this before—the edges of whatever had happened in his past, whatever had brought him to her team. He never went into detail. She never pushed.
“We all have those,” she said quietly.
Calder’s voice in his ear, measured and certain: “HVT confirmed. You’re cleared to mark.”
Callum’s stride faltered slightly. Recovered.
“Negative. Pattern’s wrong. Civilians in the blast radius. Request abort.”
A pause. Then: “There are always civilians, Stroud. Mark the target.”
His breath came harder now, not from exertion.
“Calder, I’m telling you—”
“That’s an order. Mark it.”
“Yeah,” Callum said, voice rough. His pace dropped suddenly and became uneven. His shoulders hunched forward as if bracing against something, and his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “But some of us have more than others.”
The sound arrived first—a whistle, high and thin, cutting through the heat. Then impact. The square erased. Dust blooming upward in a column that blotted out the sun. Debris fell like rain – stone, wood, fabric, things that had been part of the square settling back down in a slow, terrible drift. Dust hung in the air, thick and choking, refusing to clear.
Silence after. The kind that rang in your ears.
The boy with the flatbread. The woman with the water. Gone.
Dar saw it in his face—something specific and terrible behind the words. The way his shoulders had gone rigid, the muscles jumping in his jaw. The way he couldn’t quite meet her eyes. This wasn’t abstract regret. This moment remained etched in his memory, tangible as dust upon his skin.
She understood then. Why he insisted on the run. Why he wasn’t going to let her sit alone in that office, watching screens, carrying the burden of orchestration by herself.
He knew what it felt like. Either give the command or refuse it, accepting whatever follows.
“Callum—”
He shook his head once, sharply. Kept running.
Before she could respond, the sky opened up.
Not gradual—no warning drops. A wall of water hit them like a bucket upended from above. Cold shocked through her shirt, her skin, down to her ribs. Within three strides she was drenched, water streaming into her eyes, her trainers already sodden and heavy.
She stopped. Had to. Gasping at the shock of it.
Callum had stopped too, arms out slightly, staring up at the grey sky with his mouth open. Water poured down his face, dripped off his nose, his chin. His shirt clung to his shoulders, darkened and heavy.
Then his shoulders started shaking.
Not from cold. From laughter—silent at first, then breaking through in a sharp bark that made him double over slightly. He looked at her, water streaming from his hair, and the laugh came again, louder, uncontrolled.
Dar felt it catch in her own chest. A hiccup of surprise that turned into something else entirely. Her breath came out in a huff that became a laugh, then another. Her stomach muscles clenched. She couldn’t stop it.
“Of course,” Callum managed, wiping uselessly at his face. “Of bloody course.”
“We should—” Her voice broke on another laugh. She tried again. “We should get back—”
“Yeah.” He was grinning now, wide and helpless. “We really should.”
As the rain hammered down, they took shelter under a large, fairly leafless tree that offered a small measure of comfort from the downpour. The river beside them had gone grey and choppy. Water ran in rivulets down Dar’s neck, pooling in the hollow of her collarbone. Her lungs ached—from running, from laughing, from something loosening in her mind that had been locked tight for weeks.
Callum dragged both hands through his hair, slicking it back. It made him look younger somehow. Unguarded. The careful distance he usually kept had washed away with everything else.
She caught his eye. He was still grinning, breathless, and something in his expression—open, present, here—made her ribs hurt in a different way.
The rain eased to a steady drizzle as the dark clouds moved on. They kept standing there, soaked and ridiculous, while the rest of the world carried on around them.
Eventually, Callum’s breathing steadied. He blinked water from his eyes. “We look like drowned rats.”
“Speak for yourself. I look ruggedly weathered.”
His eyebrows shot up. Then he laughed again, shorter this time, surprised. “Did you just steal my line?”
“You were taking too long.”
The grin he gave her was worth every second of standing in the downpour.
Still slick with moisture and beaming, they started a more leisurely jog back to the house. The rain had finally stopped by the time they stepped onto the driveway, with the sun peeking through the retreating clouds.
Sean, a croissant in hand, had the door open before they reached the stoop, took one look at them, and raised an eyebrow.
“Don’t ask,” Dar said, still smiling.
“Wouldn’t think of it,” Sean replied, stepping aside to let them in. “But you kids make a mess, you clean it up.” He let out a chuckle and ambled back to the kitchen, still chewing on his snack.
Dar glanced at Callum. He had taken off his shirt and was wringing it out over the threshold, rainwater spiralling down onto the flagstones of the patio. His shoulders were broad and tanned, with a thin white scar tracing the curve of his left shoulder blade. When he caught her eye, he grinned again—that same unguarded expression from the river path. Something electric shot through her, and for a moment, she forgot to breathe.
“Go change,” he said. “I’ll make coffee.”
She nodded and headed upstairs, still feeling the ghost of laughter in her chest. The weight would return—she knew that. The operation was still waiting. The decisions were still hers to make.
But for just a moment, she’d felt light.
And that would have to be enough.