MOVING ON
The duffel bagsits open on the bed. It’s the same bag I’ve lived out of for three years—tactical nylon, fraying at the seams, smelling of gun oil and old airports. Usually, it holds a uniform loadout: Kevlar, ammunition, trauma kits, three changes of black clothes.
Today, it holds a silk blouse. A pair of jeans that aren’t mine. A laptop that contains the secrets of the free world.
“You’re packing it wrong,” Talia says.
She leans against the doorframe, arms crossed, wearing a smile that makes my chest ache. She’s dressed in clean clothes—dark denim, a sweater she stole from my drawer that hangs to her mid-thigh. She looks rested. The shadows under her eyes are gone, replaced by a brightness I haven’t seen before.
“It’s a bag,” I say, shoving a stack of socks into the corner. “Physics dictates that if I push hard enough, the volume expands.”
“That’s not physics. That’s brute force.”
“It’s my specialty.”
She laughs, pushing off the doorframe to join me. She reaches into the bag, rearranging the chaos into neat, logical layers. “Optimization, Jackson. You create space by organizing the variables.”
I watch her hands. Competent. Sure.
I reach out, capturing her wrist.
“Leave it,” I say. “We aren’t deploying. We’re just going home.”
“Home,” she tests the word. “I haven’t had one of those in a while. My apartment is a crime scene.”
“Then we find a new one.” I pull her closer, careful of the stitches in my side. “Somewhere with better locks, and a coffee machine that doesn’t taste like burnt plastic.”
“And a workspace,” she adds, her hands resting on my chest. “I need monitors. Lots of them.”
“Done.”
She rises on her toes and kisses me. It’s light, domestic, a promise of a future I didn’t think I’d live to see.
“The team is waiting,” she whispers against my lips.
“Let them wait.”
“Jackson.”
“Fine.”
I zip the bag. I sling it over my good shoulder, ignoring the twinge of protest from my healing muscles. I grab her hand. We walk out of the load-out bay, down the corridor, toward the hangar.
The Cerberus hangar is cavernous, smelling of jet fuel and rain. The massive bay doors are open to the gray Seattle sky.
Torque is prepping a sleek, black fixed-wing aircraft on the tarmac. Brass and Whisper are loading crates of gear.
And Halo is standing by, checking a tablet. He looks less like a tech genius and more like a kid about to joyride his dad’s car, but there’s a tension in his frame, a vibration I recognize.
The pre-mission jitters.
“You good?” he asks, checking my injuries.
“I’m functional.”
“You’re on medical leave,” he corrects. “At least for a few weeks.”
“Whatever.” I change the subject, turn it back at him. “So—Cassie Brennan?”
