On the far edge of the picture, a different inconsistency prickled at her. The grain near the dead contractor’s face—the man on the dock—ran in a different direction than the grain over the sky. Almost imperceptible, but once she saw it, she couldn’t unsee it.
She flipped the photo over.
The handwriting on the back—names, a date—bled in one corner, like it had been added after the fact on a surface that hadn’t fully dried. The ink line wobbled in places where a practiced hand wouldn’t. The date format didn’t match the way their evidence techs usually labeled field prints.
Someone had tried to make this look official.
Someone who didn’t do it every day.
This wasn’t a clean, lab-logged piece of evidence. It was a story, manufactured in a hurry and shoved into her hand with just enough authority to feel real.
This fake had been rushed and sloppy. Never meant for her to study up close. Not run through proper channels. Off-books, start to finish.
Someone inside wanted her to see Blake with Archer and connected to the militia group. Wanted her to see Dan among the contractors. Wanted her to draw the line they’d so helpfully sketched for her.
Her stomach went cold.
Not proof of Blake’s betrayal.
Proof of someone else’s.
Her stomach turned cold enough that motion felt hollowed out. Someone inside had manufactured this. Someone had wanted her to see Blake, Archer, Dan, and the dead man on the dock. Blake and Archer were old friends from their military days, but Dan and the dead man…
“I knew you’d come,” a husky male voice said.
She spun, every fiber taut, before the silhouette in the doorway resolved.
Then he was there.
Blake.
Bruised. Gaunt. Left arm bound in stained bandages. His face looked carved down to its truth—every sharp edge leftexposed. His coat hung open, heavy with seawater and night. He looked like something the storm had spit back out, unfinished but still breathing.
For a second, her body refused to believe what her eyes already knew. Her knees wobbled. The world thinned to the pulse in her ears and the sound of her own breath breaking loose.
He was alive.
A noise came out of her throat—half a laugh, half a sob—and she clamped her teeth over it before it could become either. Her vision blurred, too much motion and memory colliding. She’d watched him fall. She’d heard the gunfire. But now he was standing here, solid and wrecked andreal.
“Don’t shoot,” he rasped. The corner of his mouth tried to lift—an echo of the grin that used to undo her—but it broke halfway. His voice was raw, the scrape of gravel under water, but it was him.
It washim.
Everything she’d held back since the pier came flooding through at once.
Vivian stumbled forward, caught herself on the table’s edge, then reached for him before she could think better of it. Her fingers found the rough fabric of his sleeve, the heat of him beneath it. His pulse was there, hammering, proof that the world hadn’t finished taking everything.
He flinched, a reflex from too many near deaths, then stilled. His free hand came up—hesitant, trembling—and brushed the rain-snarled hair from her face. “I waited to make sure my place wasn’t still being watched, but when I saw you, I couldn’t wait a second longer.”
For a moment, the room dropped away. Air stopped working. The floor tilted under her boots. Her body forgot how to breathe,then remembered all at once in a sharp, breaking gasp that cut her open from sternum to throat.
Vivian’s breath stuttered. “You’re—” The word stuck. Then louder, ragged, disbelieving: “You’re alive.”
He nodded once, slow.
The world crashed back in. She crossed the room in two steps andhit him—a hard, open-handed shove to his shoulder that sent a wet thud echoing off the walls. “You—stupid—” Another hit, this time to his chest. “You jumped! I thought—” Her voice cracked wide open. “I thought you were dead.”
Blake took it, all of it—the fury, the grief, the shaking hands. Then he caught her wrist mid-swing, his grip firm but gentle, and pulled her in until there was no space left between them. His breath was rough against her temple.
