Warning: mild spoilers for Rogue, and for the ending of Iris, ahead.
Travis West has been hanging around the edges of Eden Finley's books for years without ever getting to explain himself.
He turned up as Brix's boss in Pop Star, ran the show from the sidelines in Iris, and in both books he was little more than a name, and occasional nuisance and boss at the very expensive security firm.
Rogue, the second book in the Mike Bravo Ops series, was originally released on July 13, 2022, six months after Iris and finally hands Trav the microphone. It turns out the boss of Finley's black ops crew has spent seven years quietly obsessed with a DEA agent who once put him in handcuffs.
Who are Trav and Dylan?
Trav is the founder of Mike Bravo Ops, the private security and confidential operations firm he set up to give LGBTQ+ veterans somewhere to work after he finished his own service as a US Army Ranger, leaving as a Sergeant Major.
For Sadenverse completists, he is also the cousin of Gideon, the manager who looked after Harley Valentine in Pop Star and later took on Eleven. Gideon does get the occasional mention in the Mike Bravo Ops series.
Dylan Rodriguez is the son of Mexican immigrants and grew up in East Los Angeles, where his parents still live. He joined the police straight out of high school and moved to the DEA a few years later, where he is a Special Agent.
His family took a while to come around to his coming out, and they are still not sold on the law enforcement career.
The two men first met seven years earlier at Aqua, a gay bar, in what Trav calls "one sweaty encounter I'll never forget".
The second meeting went less well: "The second time we met, he arrested me."
Spoiler alert: Dylan is eventually given the codename “Rogue”
Trav does not need flirting lessons
My copy of Rogue came with a message from Finley that reads: "Trav needs flirting lessons."
Trav's whole approach to Dylan is overconfidence as a love language. He calls Dylan his future husband to his face, long before Dylan has agreed to so much as a drink, and the cockiness of it is perfect.
The blurb has Trav admit that Dylan's main goal in life is to forget they ever met, while his own goal is to make Dylan his. "Turns out, I'm better at this game than he is," he says, and the book really does proove him right.
What makes it work is that Dylan is not a pushover. His side of the story opens with his career falling apart in front of him, no one he can trust, and people hunting him down.
Asking Trav for help is a last resort, and Dylan knows exactly what he is walking into. As his half of the blurb puts it, "my heart wants what my brain doesn't".
Watching Trav slowly lure him in, one terrible line at a time, is the most fun I have had with a Finley couple since Talon and Miller.
More Mike Bravo, please
The thing that surprised me most about Rogue is how little I actually knew about Trav going in, given how many of Finley's books he has appeared in.
The book fixes that, and it also opens up the rest of the team. Atlas and Zeus also get more room here than they did in Iris, which bodes well for a series that is clearly building towards their own books.
And yes, Princess Smooshey Face is back. Iris and Saint's German Shepherd, who we first met at the very end of Iris, gets a mention or two.
Readers seem to agree. Rogue sits at an average of 4.11 stars from more than 7800 ratings on Goodreads - my own review now included!
What's next
Mike Bravo Ops has kept growing since Rogue. Atlas followed in June 2023, Zeus in 2024. A fifth book Hazard and a mini-book called Angel is also on my to-read list.
That answers the question I asked at the end of my Iris review about whether Atlas, Zeus or Ghost would be up next. It is Atlas, and after his extra screen time in Rogue, I am ready.
Rogue is available now via EdenFinley.com.
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