Lark looked around the destroyed motel room—at the bodies, at the broken furniture, at the friends who'd risked everything to save her. At Specs, who'd found the courage to pull the trigger when it mattered most.
"It's really over?" Specs asked.
"The fighting part," Lark confirmed. "There'll be investigations, debriefings, probably a congressional hearing or two. But the dying part? Yeah, that's finished."
As the team began preparing for the arrival of local authorities, Lark caught Kawan's hand and squeezed it tight.
Some things were ending tonight. Others—the most important ones—were just beginning.
And for the first time in longer than she could remember, Lark wasn't afraid of what came next.
Military hospital—North Carolina
The fluorescent lights in the hospital room buzzed with that particular frequency that made Kawan's teeth ache. He'd been sitting in the uncomfortable plastic chair beside Lark's bed for the better part of two hours, watching doctors and nurses come and go, checking her pupils, examining her ribs, taking X-rays—the works.
The diagnosis was what he'd expected. Mild concussion, three cracked ribs, extensive bruising, and a black eye that wouldtake weeks to fade completely. She'd been lucky. They both knew it could have been much worse.
Specs was two rooms down, getting her own collection of bumps and bruises looked at. Nothing serious—some scrapes from the zip ties, a bruised shoulder from when she'd hit the floor during the chaos, fat lip and black eye from being smacked around a bit, and the kind of emotional exhaustion that came from taking a life for the first time. But she was alive. They were all alive.
That had to count for something.
"You don't have to stay," Lark said quietly, shifting on the narrow hospital bed with a wince. "I'm fine."
"You have a concussion," Kawan pointed out. "Someone needs to wake you up every couple of hours to make sure you don't slip into a coma."
“Now you’re exaggerating.”
“Maybe. But I’m not going anywhere."
She looked at him then, really looked at him, with those sharp eyes that missed nothing. "You've got scratches on your face."
"Mina had claws." He touched the bandages on his cheek where her fingernails had raked across his skin. "Nothing a little Neosporin won't fix."
They sat in comfortable silence for a while, listening to the distant sounds of the hospital—monitors beeping, conversations in the hallway, the soft squeak of wheels on linoleum. It was peaceful in a way that felt almost foreign after the last few hours of violence and chaos.
"Dustin called," Kawan said eventually. "They found Lorre."
Lark's head turned toward him, careful not to move too fast. "Where?"
"Trying to catch a flight to Mexico City. Had a passport with a different name, about fifty thousand in cash, and a thumb drivefull of classified information." Kawan leaned back in his chair. "He's not getting away with it. Court-martial, prison time, the whole thing. Justice."
"Good," she said simply, but there was something distant in her voice. Something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
"You okay?"
"Define okay." She attempted a smile, but it didn't reach her eyes. “Two of my own betrayed me, I've got a face that looks like I went ten rounds with Mike Tyson, and one of my commanding officers, as it turns out, was a fucking prick. So yeah, I'm peachy."
The words were classic Lark—sarcastic, deflecting, designed to push people away before they could get too close. It was exactly the kind of thing she said when she was thinking about running.
"Lark," he said carefully. "What's really wrong?"
She was quiet for so long, he thought she wasn't going to answer. Then she sighed, the sound heavy with exhaustion and something else he couldn't quite identify.
"I'm worried about Specs."
That wasn't what he'd been expecting. "She's going to be fine. A few bumps and bruises, some emotional processing to work through. Nothing that can't be handled."
"That's not what I mean."
