Page 68 of Deadly Sins

But as he watched her, he couldn’t shake the feeling of unease that settled in his gut. Hawk was still out there, still a threat. And until they caught him, none of them would be truly safe.

He just hoped they’d get another chance to bring him down.

Before it was too late.

Fenn watched as Rog and the rest of his ad hoc posse said their goodbyes, their voices jovial and teasing despite the gravity of the situation. They headed back to the settlement, leaving Fenn, Kate, and the team with Jimbo to escort back. The group congregated in the relative warmth just inside the doorway, their breaths fogging in the frigid air.

Graham and Mason stood outside, their eyes scanning the horizon for any sign of Steele or his reinforcements. The urgency to leave was palpable, hanging heavy in the air. They needed to go. Now.

Bridger assessed the situation, his brow furrowed in thought. “There’s room in the Airbus for four. That leaves two to take snowmobiles back.”

Fenn stepped forward, his voice firm. “I’ll do it.”

With any luck, Steele would show himself.

Mason shot him a knowing look. “I’m in, too. Moon’s good for hunting.”

Kate’s head snapped up, her eyes flashing with anger. “No way. I can handle Hawk if he reappears.”

Fenn growled. “Not with a dislocated shoulder.”

“Safer to have you in the copilot seat, anyway,” Bridger added. “I could use a good backup.”

Kate opened her mouth to argue, but then closed it again, her shoulders sagging in defeat. “Fine,” she muttered, her tone sheepish.

Bridger made certain Fenn and Mason had sat phones and active comlinks. Unfortunately, Tai’s surveillance drones couldn’t fly in the subzero weather, the batteries wouldn’t last five minutes in the cold. So Bridger and the team couldn’t provide aerial surveillance, but Kate and Bridger planned to doa quick aerial reconnaissance before they headed back to base to ensure that Steele didn’t have reinforcements on the way.

Fenn was more than okay with that plan. Anything that got Kate back to base quickly and gave him another possible chance to take down Hawk Steele. With any luck, the man would follow him and Mason.

He stood next to the helicopter, his fingers fumbling with the straps of his suit as he prepared for the ride back to Endurance. Kate stood beside him, her eyes distant and her face a mask of blankness. Their conversation was stilted, surface-level, and it made Fenn’s heart ache.

She was trying to be brave, he could see that, but the devastation was written all over her face. She was uncharacteristically withdrawn, tentative even, and it made his chest burn with anger.

He wanted to pound Steele unconscious for shaking her world so badly, for making her withdraw into herself. That most of all.

And just when he thought the two of them were building a solid bridge, a connection that went beyond just teammates or friends.

Mason’s voice crackled over the comlink, pulling Fenn from his thoughts. “I disabled Steele’s ride. Mount up, Fenn. It’s time to go.”

Fenn nodded, pulling on his helmet and jogging over to the snowmobile. The moon was just slipping over the horizon, casting a silvery glow over the frozen landscape. Stars glittered overhead, so bright and close that he felt like he could reach up and touch them.

It was a fairytale setting. The kind of place where magic happened and dreams came true.

Too bad he and Kate seemed destined for the opposite.

As he climbed onto the snowmobile Jimbo had ridden out on, Fenn cast one last glance over his shoulder at Kate. She was climbing into the helicopter, her movements stiff and pained. His heart clenched at the sight.

He wanted to go to her, to wrap her in his arms and tell her that everything would be okay. That they would get through this, together.

But he knew that wasn’t what she needed right now. She needed space, time to process everything that had happened.

And he needed to focus on the mission at hand, on getting them all back to base safely.

And capturing Steele.

So he revved the engine of the snowmobile, the sound echoing across the frozen expanse, and set off into the dark, Mason on his six.

The wind whipped at his face, the cold seeping into his bones, but he barely noticed. His mind was on Kate, on the look in her eyes as she’d climbed into the helicopter.

---