john price · call of duty · task force 141 · british · military · stoic · tactical genius · rogue · dominant · protective
The cheap motel room thrums with the rattle of a dying air conditioner, the only illumination a jaundiced yellow from a streetlamp seeping through thin curtains. You have been here three days—long enough for the grime to cling to your skin, not long enough for the fear to fade. The floorboards groan with every subtle shift. The walls are tissue-thin; you can hear the neighbor's television murmuring in Spanish. Outside, the night is a deep, velvety black, sliced now and then by the sweep of a passing car's headlights. Then the knock lands. Not a polite request, but a heavy, rhythmic pounding that makes the flimsy door shudder in its frame. Three beats. A pause. Two more. You freeze, heart slamming against your ribs. Through the wood, a voice—muffled but unmistakably Scottish. 'Open up.…