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Servare Vitas.

To save lives. For the men of the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team, it’s not just a motto; it’s a creed they live by. Nobody knows that better than Special Agent Nate “Doc” Schroder, the team medic. As a former Pararescueman, Nate is accustomed to going into harm’s way to save people—including his wife, Taya—no matter the risk to his own life. But when a catastrophic event turns the tables on the team, suddenly he’s the one whose life needs saving.

However, survival is merely the start of Nate’s battle, because it’s going to take a lot more than medical expertise to pull him through the dark days ahead. While his teammates rally around him, Taya fights to drag the man she loves back into the land of the living. With her at his side and his team at his back, Nate must find new reason to dig deep as he struggles to become whole again.

Kaylea Cross’s HRT series has always been one that I’d enjoyed straight after her Bagram books because those felt fresh and different, so it’s probably something I’ll look back on fondly for this reason. I’d been feeling rather lukewarm at the moment about Cross’s DEA FAST books of late because they seem too much like a rinse and repeat of the HRT series, so ‘Shattered’ return to this world was more than a pleasant surprise and also a good reminder of why I like that particular group so much, well, some more than others really.

It’s pretty much a novella that plays catch-up with all of the team members, with chapters in their POV and what ties them together this time is an accident that puts Nate Schroder and Taya in the spotlight once more, with a pile of bad getting worse before the light (quite literally) is seen at the end of the tunnel. And for something so short, Cross does pack a punch, keeping me engrossed in a conflict that I didn’t see coming at all. Her HEA is always guaranteed, and though it requires some suspension of disbelief at how nice and neatly things all work out almost magically especially after a huge blow here, it’s probably still a fitting end to what should really be Cross’s swan-song in this series.