Page 48 of Echo: Burn
I turn. Willa stands in the doorway, wrapped in one of my shirts, hair loose around her shoulders. She's barefoot on cold concrete, but she doesn't seem to notice.
"Couldn't sleep," I say.
"Neither could I." She moves closer, studies the photos on screen. "That's the one that bothers you most, isn't it? The parking lot photo."
I don't answer. Don't need to.
"It bothers me too." Her voice is quiet. "Not because someone saw us. Because someone made us a target for being together. Like what we have is something that needs to be weaponized."
"It is weaponized now." The words taste bitter. "Whoever took these knows what we are to each other. Knows how to get to me."
"Through me," she says.
"Through you."
She's silent for a moment, studying the photo from the parking lot on screen. Then: "My father used to say that the most dangerous thing in combat wasn't the enemy who wanted to kill you. It was the enemy who wanted to make you watch while he killed everyone you cared about first."
I look at her. "Your father was right."
"So what do we do?"
I pull her close, feel her warmth against me. Real and solid and alive despite someone out there documenting her existence like she's already dead. "We find him first. We make him understand that photographing us was the last mistake he gets to make. And then we end it."
She leans her head against my chest, and we stand like that for a long moment. Two people who've survived too much to be scared by surveillance photos. Two people who've decided that whatever comes next, they're facing it standing side by side.
The stalker wanted to send a message with those photos. Wanted us to feel exposed. Hunted. Vulnerable.
He miscalculated.
People like us don't run from threats. We identify them. We track them. We eliminate them.
And then we go back to living on our own terms.
Willa pulls back, meets my eyes. "When we find him—and we will find him—what happens?"
I think about the parking lot photo. About someone watching while Willa and I had a moment together after surviving an ambush. About the invasion of privacy, the weaponization of intimacy, the calculated cruelty of documenting our vulnerability.
"What happens?" I pull her closer. "I show him exactly why photographing the people I protect was the worst tactical decision of his life."
She nods once. Satisfied. Then: "Good. Because I want to be there when you do."
This woman. This stubborn, fierce, damaged woman who should be running but instead wants front-row seats to violence.
"Wouldn't have it any other way," I tell her.
And I mean it.
11
KANE
The operations center feels too exposed after Willa leaves to grab coffee. Too many screens showing surveillance photos of her at the clinic, walking to her truck, existing in spaces where someone watched without her knowledge. Every image reminds me I failed to detect the threat before it documented her vulnerability.
I'm still studying the parking lot photo when she returns, barefoot on cold concrete, wearing nothing but my shirt and carrying two mugs. The sight of her in my clothes makes every nerve ending fire.
"You're still staring at it," she observes, handing me coffee.
"Can't stop." I take the mug but don't drink. "Someone was there, Willa. Watching while we had that moment. While I touched your face. While you looked at me like...”
