Files line up on the screen. Names arrange themselves into problems. Men move where I direct them. The mountain morning sharpens into noon. Through it, the image of Sage remains, the look that I hated, and the hunger I hated more.
15
SAGE
Morning tears me from sleep like tape ripped from skin. Cold air kisses my cheeks. A pale strip of light sneaks around the curtains and lies across the quilt. For a few seconds, I forget where I am. Then the scent of cedar and coffee reaches me, the low hum of the cabin, and the steady thud of boots somewhere down the hallway.
Vega stretches by the bedroom door, his paws drumming lightly as he rises. When I swing my legs to the floorboards, he pads over and noses my palm, his warm breath fogging the thin morning chill. His brown eyes hold an alert patience, as if he understands that the day already holds more than it should.
I dress quickly in jeans, a sweater that still carries a whisper of coffee beans from the life that burned, and my hair pulled into a low knot. In the bathroom mirror, my face looks leaner, worn down at the edges, with dark smudges under my eyes that no amount of sleep could erase. I force a breath in and hold it until my ribs protest, then release it slowly. One thing at a time. First, the café. I have to see it. I have to know what can be saved, even if the answer is nothing.
Murmurs rise through the cabin when I step into the hall. Voices from the kitchen. Metal clinks. A chair scrapes. I follow the sounds until the room opens around me.
Luka stands near the counter, a mug steaming in his hand, his suit jacket undone over a charcoal-gray shirt. His presence sharpens the air. Misha leans against the butcher-block island, a phone in one palm, his pale eyes scanning some report with surgical focus. Kolya is at the window, shoulders angled toward the glass, his attention hooked on the trees.
All three turn slightly. Vega goes ahead of me and plants himself at Luka’s side.
“I need to go into town,” I announce, bracing my elbows on the back of a chair to keep my hands steady. “Bean & Bloom.”
Kolya’s brows lift a fraction. Misha’s gaze slides to Luka like a quiet signal.
“It is not secured,” Misha observes, his voice flat as a blade laid against wood.
“I know.” I meet Luka’s eyes. “I’m going anyway.”
The silence stretches long enough to feel like a line has been drawn in the sand. Luka lowers the mug and sets it down without a sound. “You will not go alone.”
“I wasn’t asking for permission,” I murmur, the fight still there, just buried under fatigue.
He studies me without blinking. “I understand why you want to see it,” he replies, his voice low but threaded with command. “We’ll go now, under escort.”
Misha pockets his phone, and Kolya pushes away from the window. The decision is already in motion before I can argue. Vega swishes his tail once and looks up at me as if this is settled, and perhaps it is.
Ten minutes later, we walk into the freezing morning. Frost needles the porch rail, and the sky carries that thin, almost-winter brightness that promises nothing. Kolya opens the rear door of the black SUV, and I climb in, sliding across the leather. Vega follows and folds into the footwell, his head angled so he can watch both me and the doors.
Misha takes the driver’s seat and checks the side mirror, the rearview, and the feed on the dash camera. Kolya claims the passenger seat. Luka slides in beside me, his shoulder inches from mine, heat radiating through the layers of winter fabric.
When Misha pulls out, gravel crunches under the tires in a slow grind. The cabin shrinks in the side mirror, swallowed by pine.
Vega presses his head under my hand, and I stroke the coarse fur between his ears, the touch anchoring me to the leather under my thighs, the cold seeping through the glass, and the faint scent of Luka’s cologne.
The mountain road curves like a ribbon caught in the wind. Misha drives as if the road answers only to him, while Kolya scans the trees, his mouth set in a hard line. Luka moves once, not a fidget exactly but a recalibration of space, the way a man adjusts before a fight.
I watch the world pass and try to smother the ache inside my chest. The café rises in my mind the way it used to look. Amber light in the early hours. Ceramic cups lined up in neat rows along the shelf. Jenny humming under her breath as she frostedmuffins. The bell over the door chiming. Steam clouding the big front windows in winter. How a room keeps a town’s small joys alive through the hands that never stop tending it.
We roll into town in under twenty minutes. Misha takes a back street, then another. He parks at the end of the block, two doors down from what’s left of my café.
No one speaks at first, we just look. Bean & Bloom stands draped in black and mineral gray, a ghost of what it was. The glass of the front windows is gone, the frames torn open, the insides charred with twisted metal. A strip of police tape sags from one corner of the door, bright yellow against soot-stained brick. The hand-painted sign that used to hang over the entrance lies tilted near the curb, the letters warped by heat, my mother’s elegant curves bruised but not erased.
My throat locks, and the breath breaks past it in a shudder.
“Clear it,” Luka instructs.
He doesn’t raise his voice. He doesn’t need to. Misha and Kolya move at once. Kolya sweeps the sidewalk, his eyes ticking like a metronome.
Misha strides to the door and peels the tape aside, disappearing into the dark interior for a breath. When he reemerges, he nods once. “No eyes,” he reports, then gestures to the empty storefronts across the street. “Two cameras there. Already on loop.”
Luka steps out of the SUV. Vega hops down after him, then pauses to glance back at me. For one suspended second, my legs hold the line, refusing to move toward what waits beyond the threshold. Then I climb out and close the door softly.
