Page 76 of Death Valley

Cole moves to my duffel bag, pulling it out from under the bunk and rummaging through it with increasing frustration. “I don’t see any?—”

He falls silent suddenly, and when I look up from Red’s wound, I see Cole holding something in his hand. Something that catches the light, metallic and familiar.

A gun.

My fucking gun.

“What is this?” Cole asks, turning it over. “Why do you have a gun in your bag?”

The room goes still, all eyes turning to me. I keep my hands steady on Red’s arm, refusing to show the panic rising in my chest.

Stay cool, stay cool, stay cool.

“Why do you think? For protection,” I say evenly. “Put it back and get me the hand sanitizer.”

But Cole is already digging deeper into my bag, pulling out my wallet. I watch, helpless with my hands covered in Red’s blood, as he flips it open.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I yell at him. “That’s my wallet! Put it down and get me the fucking hand sanitizer.”

“Cole,” Jensen practically growls with warning, stalking toward him.

But Cole’s fingers are fast as he examines everything in my wallet. I had the foresight to leave my badge in my glove compartment but when he pulls out a business card that was stuck beneath others and gasps at it, my stomach sinks with dread.

“FBI?” Cole reads my card, disbelief coloring his voice. “Special Agent Aubrey Wells? Sacramento Bureau.”

The silence that follows is deafening. Jensen stares at me, shock and something else—betrayal—written across his features. Eli’s expression is more calculating, as if pieces of a puzzle are suddenly falling into place. And Red, despite his pain, despite being fucking bitten by his friend, looks at me with new wariness.

“You’re a fucking Fed?” Cole demands, anger rising. “A fucking Fed!? You’ve been lying to us this whole time?”

I meet his gaze steadily, refusing to flinch from the accusation. “I’m on leave. This isn’t an official investigation. I came looking for my sister as a private citizen.”

“Bullshit,” Cole spits. “You’ve been watching us, haven’t you? Gathering evidence? What is this, some kind of sting?”

“Cole, that’s enough,” Jensen says, voice tight. “Put it away and bring us the hand sanitizer. We need to focus on helping Red.” He pauses, looking at Red. “We’re running out of time.”

“How can we trust anything she says now?” Cole demands, waving my gun around. “She could have agents waiting to swoop in, arrest us all!”

“For what?” I ask, wishing he would put it down. “I told you, I’m here for my sister. Nothing more. And, you know what, I’d welcome them. We need all the help we can get with Red right now.”

But Cole’s panic has taken on a life of its own, feeding on the shock and terror of what happened to Red, the brutality and absurdity of Hank’s attack. “This is a setup. Has to be. Why else would a Fed be up here with us?”

I look to Jensen, hoping he’ll understand, hoping he’ll see that this changes nothing about why I’m here, about what I need to find. But his expression has closed off, the tentative trust we’d built once again shattered by this new revelation.

“You lied to me,” Jensen says quietly, the words falling between us like stones. “From the beginning.”

“Like you lied to me,” I counter, unwilling to accept his hypocrisy. “About Lainey. About Adam. About what happened three years ago.”

We stare at each other across Red’s bleeding form, the truth of our mutual deception hanging in the air between us. Outside, the wind picks up, howling around the corners of the hut like a hungry creature seeking entry. Somewhere in the darkness, Hank is out there—changed, dangerous, and hunting.

And inside, we’re already fractured by suspicion and fear, the tenuous alliance that brought us to these mountains crumbling just when we need it most.

They may have just discovered I’m an agent.

But I’ve never felt less prepared in my life.

22

JENSEN

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