Page 32 of Sentinel of Talon Mountain
“Who posted it?” I ask. “Where?”
He bares his teeth in something that wants to be a smile. “You think they hand us a return address. We are contractors. You know how that works. There are places you go if you want to buy a job. You pay to see the details. You get a window. You take the shot.”
“Channels,” I say. “What channels.”
“Old ones. New ones,” he says. “Some that live in the dark where you pay in crypto and some that move in rooms you only enter if someone vouches for you. You know the type. All I know is it is not local. She is marked.”
I shove him back on the crate and straighten. My hands want to finish it now, end the threat in front of me and worry about the rest later. That urge is simple. It is also the one that gets people killed when the real danger sits three moves away. I breathe once through the center of my chest and let the urge pass.
I look at Wren. “You heard him.”
Her chin lifts. “I did. And I am not running.”
Her voice is even. The vow inside it is not small. I catch the way her mouth goes tight after the words land, the way the muscles along her jaw draw inward then hold. She crosses her arms harder. Not just bracing. Fortifying. I know thelook. People wear it when they speak louder than they feel. Admiration sparks hot in my chest for how she stands there anyway, furious and afraid and refusing to bend.
“Not running,” I say. “But you are not staying alone out here either. Till this is over you stay in my cottage. I can keep eyes on you there.”
“Excuse me,” she says.
“You want to breathe tomorrow, you do it under my watch.”
She steps in until we are nose to chest. Her eyes are glacial blue in the dim light. “I have survived five years without a former SEAL barking orders in my life. I take care of myself.”
I smooth the steel into my tone. “This is not pride. It is survival. There is a contract and professionals lining up to collect. Solitude and traps do not hold against the kind of money that draws the wrong men across state lines.”
Her eyes sharpen. For a long beat neither of us gives an inch. She blows out a breath through her nose, then shakes her head.
“You do not get it,” she says. “Moving in with you is not only losing quiet. It is giving up control. That is not something I hand over.”
“Then do not call it control,” I say. “Call it strategy. Call it stacking the odds in our favor. Because I will not stand here and watch you bleed just to prove a point. If it is not me on your porch, it will be Caleb, and you already know that truth.”
Her lips part. No words come out. The fury is still there because it keeps her upright. Under it I catch something raw that looks like the first thread of trust, thin and bright. My pulse kicks hard then steadies. The room feels narrower than it did a minute ago, not because of the walls but because the decision has started to close.
A distant chop builds under the branches, blades beating air into a low rhythm that reaches the shed a second before the wind does. Snow whips in a sideways curtain, driven hard asthe helicopter drops toward the clearing beyond the back line of spruce, rotors turning the night into a frenzy of white. I shift, one hand on Wren’s lower back, and we move to the door as I hear boots hit the ground outside.
Zeke appears first in the doorway with his hood up and his goggles pushed to his hairline. Travis is a step behind him with zip cuffs looped through two fingers and a transport blanket over his shoulder. The wash from the rotors pushes a thin drift across the threshold and flakes catch in Wren’s hair. I curl my fingers slightly against her back to steady her against the wind. She does not lean in. She does not step away.
“Well, hell,” Zeke says when his eyes land on the prisoner. “You really went and gift wrapped him.”
“He talked,” I say. “There is a bounty. Wide net.”
Travis moves to the man and starts work without a word, checking ties, checking circulation, checking for hidden flex blades or wire. He knows where to look. The man tries to talk and Travis shuts him up with a small squeeze under the jaw that keeps the tongue still. Zeke’s eyes go from me to Wren and back again.
“You kept Caleb out of the loop,” he says, tone neutral.
“For now,” I say. “Until we have a name and a plan.”
Zeke does not argue. He never has to be the loudest voice to be the one that carries. He gives me a single nod and claps my shoulder once. “We have him. Get back inside. Save your heat.”
We step aside as they haul the prisoner up between them. He tries to drag his feet and earns a knee that buckles him and a curt order to move. The rotor wash rises as they cross the clearing. The helicopter lifts into the black, a rising hammer that shakes loose snow from the branches and then fades as the trees swallow the sound.
The quiet that follows is not peace. It is the kind that comes before something breaks. The kind that tightens the wire just enough.
We cross back to the cottage. The door shuts with a low groan that the falling snow eats. I throw the bolt. The wall heater ticks as it cycles. Wren stands near the table with her palms braced on the edge, head bowed, hair falling forward. The cut on my forearm from the earlier fight has started to sting as feeling returns, a straight line of heat under the skin.
I set the med kit on the table, flip the latches, and work. She does not tell me to leave it. I do not ask permission. I clean and tape, check for swelling, check the tendon glide, then rewrap. When I look up, she is watching my hands the way she watched my grip on the prisoner. There is a tiny furrow between her brows that smooths when I flex my fingers to show her it holds.
“You are in my cottage,” I say, stating a simple fact. “Caleb will call in the morning. He will ask where you are. He will expect to speak to you. We are not going to hide you from your own people, but we are going to control what anyone outside this mountain knows.”
