a dozen assault-weapon-toting mercenaries with his bare hands.
But he didn’t need to. He had Nina, who assessed him critically as he staggered back to his feet, his knife gripped in one hand. He flipped it in a showy move, caught it nimbly by the blade, then flipped it again before baring his teeth in a feral smile. “Let’s do this.”
After a cautious glance at Ava, the mercenary who’d caught Nina’s knife slid it back across the floor. Nina bent slowly to retrieve it, never taking her eyes off Knox.
She straightened just as slowly, stretched her shoulders, and rolled her neck. “Remember what you’re fighting for, Captain.”
The same words she’d offered him before he stepped into Boyd’s grimy cage. He’d thought then that he was fighting for his men, but he had started to wonder if he was partly fighting for her.
The truth seemed incredibly, starkly simple now. He was fighting for all of them, because that was the only way to fight for himself.
“I don’t forget,” he murmured, then lunged.
His body moved with exhilarating efficiency. He’d forgotten how easy it was supposed to be. The world sped by in a dizzy blur, and he had all the time in the world to contemplate the angle of his attack and Nina’s reaction. She was as fast as he was, and her deflection and counterattack were perfectly timed to make a careful feint look like a vicious clash.
They were putting on a show again, but this time the audience was a ghost from her past. So Knox followed her lead as she broke apart and closed again, pushing his body to top speed to keep up.
The first time their fight trailed toward the side of the room, the mercenaries braced, swinging their weapons up at the ready. But Nina launched from Knox’s next attack into an acrobatic roll that returned them to the center of the room, and the men relaxed.
He caught on and steered the fight in the other direction. When it was his turn to lunge to the floor to escape a slash that would have opened him from shoulder to shoulder, he twisted and came up facing his men.
Conall was breathing hard, his eyes glazed with adrenaline no doubt enhanced by the temporary implant. Gray was holding himself rigidly still. Rafe caught Knox’s gaze and barely inclined his head.
At full strength, Rafe could snap those zip ties like useless string. They just needed the right moment.
Nina closed with him in the next heartbeat, their bodies slamming together, their violent dance bringing them in a circle before they broke apart. She drove him back toward the bulk of the mercenaries again, and he caught sight of Dani out of the corner of his eye. In his heightened state of awareness, the gentle tensing of her arm muscles told another story—behind her back, her hands were moving in the steady rhythm of someone sawing through plastic.
Almost ready.
The mercenaries scattered as Knox and Nina barreled toward them. But they didn’t tense as much as they had the first few times. They were professionals, but even professionals could be lulled into a state of complacency.
Knox slashed close enough to slit the side of Nina’s tank top, and she tumbled away again. He was there when she bounced to her feet, and she retaliated by slicing across his chest with such fine control that her knife split his shirt and stirred the hair on his chest.
He felt every move she was going to make before she made it, as in tune with her now as he’d ever been in bed. It was like the betrayal hadn’t happened, like he’d never lied to her. They were the eye of their own private hurricane of flashing steel, and—for one painful second—he let himself hope.
They circled once more, each wordlessly angling the other to give them a chance to check in on their team members. Dani’s furtive movements had stopped. Rafe’s muscles were tensed. Gray seemed poised on the verge of exploding into movement.
Nina’s gaze met Knox’s. They didn’t need to speak. He pivoted slightly and let the natural momentum of their fight drift toward the tightest knot of mercenaries again. Slash, dodge, retreat, spin, duck, parry—
Now.
Neither of them said a word, but they might as well have screamed it in unison. Because the room erupted into chaos.
Whatever Luna had done to configure his implant had jacked his cognitive processing speed up to maximum. Even as he flung his body toward the nearest mercenary, Knox marked the