Beside me, Lark exhales. “Wow. Peak murder vibes.”
“This place is off-grid, hardened, and unregistered,” I say. “You want a spa weekend, ask someone else.”
She smirks. “We can do spa treatments with knives.”
I don’t respond to that.
Mostly because my brain doesn’t have room for anything but the last three hours: ditching my car, grabbing a new one, changing routes, cutting through back roads while Arrow, Gage, and Ozzy radioed updates about the bounty network.
Someone posted Knight Hayes and Lark Dawson to an encrypted board with a price tag that made even Render swear.
Face capture. High-priority. Interfered with operations.
We’ve been promoted to “problems.”
Lark swings the passenger door open and steps out. The forest air is cold. Sharp. It smells like pine and damp moss and impending bad decisions.
She stretches, arms overhead, shirt riding up enough to flash a strip of bare stomach.
I do not look.
I look at the cabin.
I grab our go-bags we packed before the mission, our laptops, and Lark’s bat. Lark tromps up the front steps like she’s on a weekend getaway. There’s a key in the agreed hiding place—under a fake-looking rock by the third stair.
“Welcome to Casa Oh-Shit,” Lark says as I unlock the door.
The cabin is… nicer inside than I expect.
Small, yeah, but clean. Living room with a couch and battered coffee table. Tiny kitchen in the corner with a gas stove, fridge humming quietly, a couple of cabinets. There’s a woodstove against one wall, already stacked with kindling and logs. A single hallway leads deeper in.
Someone’s stocked the place.
There’s a crate of bottled water by the fridge, bags of chips and canned soup in the pantry, clothes in the closet, and a handwritten note taped to the cabinet.
I peel it off.
Knight,
Stocked well with everything you need.
No wifi. Just Starlink. Stay put. Lay low. Please don’t blow anything up.
P.S. Yes, there’s only one bed. No, that wasn’t an accident.
— Ranger Cole
Lark appears at my shoulder like a nosy cat. “Only one bed?” she echoes, way too delighted.
I fold the note and shove it in my pocket. “Apparently. I’ll take the couch.”
“That thing?” she says, pointing to the tiny leather loveseat in the center of the living room. It doesn’t look like it could handle Lark comfortably, let alone me.
I can feel my headache forming already.
“It’s fine.” I drop the bags by the couch. “You take the bed. I’ll take the couch.”
“We don’t even know what the bed looks like yet,” she argues. “What if it’s lumpy and murdery and the couch is amazing?”
