Rain and Revelation
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.
Hereford – Safehouse
The main floor had transformed into a staging area by 0615. Dar stood in the doorway to the dining room, coffee in hand, watching the controlled chaos unfold. The dining table was covered with equipment—weapons, vests, various devices, medical kits. Everything organized with military precision.
Rhys worked through the comms instruments, testing each unit, checking frequencies. His fingers moved with practiced efficiency across the equipment.
Logan emerged from his suite, already dressed in tactical clothing. He nodded to Rhys and began checking the weapons laid out on the table, his movements automatic, fluid.
In the living room, Callum’s fingers moved across his laptop keyboard, finalizing coordination details.
This was their world, not hers. She would be safe in her office later, watching screens—if she could bring herself to watch at all.
Sean surfaced from the basement carrying a large case. He spotted her and grinned. “Morning, boss. Come to watch the professionals at work?”
“Something like that.” She moved to let him pass.
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.”
“O’Rourke.” Rhys’s voice carried a warning, but there was no actual heat in it.
“Yes, Dad?” Sean grinned, then his eyes flicked back to Dar. Something in his expression shifted—he’d read something in her posture, the way she held herself. 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 announced as Malik appeared from downstairs. “Questions?”
Silence. Malik moved to the table, assessing the equipment. Dar remained just inside the room, sipping coffee. They were the ones taking the risk, the ones doing the actual work.
The doorbell rang.
Everyone froze.
Dar watched hands move toward weapons, bodies shift into defensive positions. They weren’t expecting anyone this morning. Not even Pam.
Sean checked the security monitor. His shoulders dropped. “It’s Pam.”
Logan’s hand stilled on the weapon he’d been checking. Sean gave him a quick look and opened the door.
“Christ on a cracker, why is the door always locked now?” Pam’s heels clicked across the hallway before she stopped short. “…Sean.”
He hesitated. “Yeah?”
Pam shifted the bakery box to balance on her hip, freeing a hand, which she laid softly on his cheek. Dar watched her give him a concentrated once-over.
“Well, honey. That’s the wonderful thing about hair. It grows back.” Pam offered him a brilliant, sympathetic smile—the kind a mother might give before sending a son off to boarding school.
Then Pam’s eyes swept the dining room. The tactical bags. The body armour. The weapons arranged on the table. Her expression hardened slightly.
“Oh. Well.” She ignored the men watching her and continued straight through to the kitchen. Sean followed. “This is definitely not a regular Tuesday at the office.”
Sean moved aside as Pam set the pastry case down with deliberate care. “I’m guessing the protein bars are for after, not before?”
Logan appeared in the doorway. Sean’s eyes met Pam’s with what looked like newfound respect before he made his exit without securing a croissant.
Pam unpacked croissants, Danishes, and muffins with steady hands, focused on her task. “I might have stress-baked a bit. Seems appropriate for whatever this is.”
Logan waited behind her, watching, then placed his hands on her shoulders.
Pam turned, eyes sharp and assessing. “You look ready for something serious.”
“Just a work thing, like we discussed.” His voice was low, quiet, neutral. “Nothing to worry about.”
“Understood.”
Dar felt Rhys move beside her as they both came into the kitchen. Logan’s hands dropped from Pam’s shoulders.
Pam turned, and her eyes found Dar’s. The unspoken question hung between them—will he be safe?
Dar felt the weight of it settle in her chest. The impossible position. She wanted to reassure Pam, but she couldn’t. Their next step involved danger with zero guarantees. She held Pam’s gaze, unable to offer the lie.
Pam took a deep, centering breath. She turned her full attention back to Logan. “Just… be careful.”
“I will.”
Dar watched the exchange, aware of Rhys beside her mirroring her own puzzled expression. Something in the air between Logan and Pam felt different. Changed.
Pam walked toward the hall, pausing only for a second. “All of you. Come back safe.”
She said nothing else. The rhythmic tap of her heels marked her departure, disappearing as quickly as she had arrived.
Sean caught Logan’s eye. Something passed between them before Logan returned to inspecting his rifle with what looked like too much focus.
Dar plucked a Danish from the plate—welcome comfort from Pam’s night owl baking habits—and retreated to her office, compartmentalizing the scene she’d just witnessed between her stepbrother and her best friend. Something’s changed.
From her doorway, she watched them return to their tasks. An unfamiliar weight settled over their preparations. Pam’s visit was a reminder that their actions rippled outward, touching people who loved them, who waited.
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 terminals, 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 in smaller PiP views here. Everything necessary to watch the operation unfold in real-time.
She sat in her chair and stared blankly at the displays for a moment. The difference between pulling a trigger and giving the order felt razor thin.
She pulled up Kozlov’s file; the screen illuminating a web of trafficking routes mapped across three countries. She scanned the witness statements, each one ending abruptly—vanished or turned up dead. Then she opened the surveillance folder. Children. Twelve, fourteen. Hollow-eyed faces stared back, moved like cargo.
‘Some people are beyond arrest,’ Callum had said. ‘They can only be stopped.’ Was that true, or just what they told themselves before crossing a line? Her pulse beat in her throat. She didn’t know. But she knew the alternative: Kozlov would continue. More routes. More silenced witnesses. 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 black box truck. Different load. Professional. Ready. She realised that today was the first time she had ever been 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 door. “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.”
Hereford – Running Trail
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. “You?”
“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.”
He was staring straight ahead, but his focus was miles away, his jaw tight with a tension that had nothing to do with their run. They’d touched on this before—the edges of his past—but he never went into detail, and she never pushed.
“We all have those,” she said quietly.
His stride faltered. Recovered. His breath came harder now, not from exertion. “Yeah,” he said, his voice rough. His shoulders hunched forward as if bracing against something. “But some of us have more than others.”
Afghanistan – 2018
Dust. Heat pressing down like a hand. Binoculars steady on a village square, sweat stinging his eyes.
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.
Calder’s voice in his ear, measured and certain: “HVT confirmed. You’re cleared to mark.”
“Negative. Pattern’s wrong. Civilians in the blast radius. Request abort.”
A pause. Then: “There are always civilians, Stroud. Mark the target.”
“Major, I’m telling you—”
“That’s an order. Mark it.”
He stopped running altogether, hands clenched. He looked at her, but his eyes were seeing something else.
“The sound arrives first—a whistle. And then… just dust.” He swallowed hard. “The boy with the flatbread. The woman with the water. Gone.”
She saw it in his face—so much that she felt a sting at the back of her own eyes, something specific and terrible behind his words. This wasn’t abstract regret; it was a memory he was reliving.
She understood then. Why he insisted on the run. Why he wouldn’t 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. The rain came all at once, as if the sky had simply given up holding it. 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.
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. Water streamed from his hair, and his eyes caught hers as the laugh came again, louder, uncontrolled.
Dar felt it catch in her own chest. A hiccup of surprise, and then her mouth was open and sound was coming out of it, breathy and undignified, and her ribs hurt with the effort of it. She pressed her lips together. It kept coming anyway.
“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.
Their eyes met. 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.
Hereford – Safehouse
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 looking, he smiled again—that same unguarded expression from the river path. Her stomach did something she couldn’t quite account for, and she looked away.
“Go change,” he said. “I’ll make coffee.”
She nodded and headed upstairs, the ghost of laughter still warming her chest. The weight would return. The operation was still waiting. The decisions were still hers to make.
But as she climbed the stairs, her steps felt lighter than they had in weeks.
It would have to be enough.