Jake and Damian left before dinner. They’ll do the handoff in an airport parking lot about two hours from here, at a designated location, and stash a cloned encrypted copy in a storage unit somewhere along the way.
I roll my shoulders once and feel the dull pull of the workout I did earlier—lats, traps, the kind of work that should’ve eased off this revved-up feeling. Instead it’s just a reminder that my body can’t outrun my head.
Max is upstairs taking a nap. I think her nervous system’s been cashing checks it can’t cover. The shit she’s gone through…plus five days of reliving it all, staring at Silas’s archive. Jake told me there was an entire drive with just her name on it and I almost burst an artery. That fucking little creep. I’m consumed with both wanting to know what’s on it and wanting to destroyit before anyone can find out—especially her. But it’s Max’s call. Her footage, her agency. She didn’t get to decide what he collected about her, the little actions he took to try to own pieces of her, but she at least gets to control what happens to it now.
I take a sip of my whiskey, set the glass down, and listen to the house. The humming of the fridge, the clicking of the furnace, the couch creaking as I lean back on it. So quiet.
I pick up my phone and check it, but it’s too early to have heard anything. Jake and Damian won’t even be at the handoff point yet.
After a few minutes, the front door opens and closes, and I hear the familiar sound of Wyatt’s weight shifting, his boots dropping on the floor. He’s been out doing an unnecessary perimeter sweep, just an excuse to go for a walk, now that his ribs are feeling better.
He steps into the living room, hair windswept, a little more color in his face than he’s had for weeks.
“All clear?” I ask.
“All clear, boss,” he says, a dry joke you wouldn’t catch if you didn’t know us. I was the boss, technically, of our unit. But Wyatt is older than me, more experienced, wiser. There was always this sense of equality between us.
He crosses into the kitchen and pulls a glass from the cupboard, coming back with it in one hand. He sits in the armchair across from me and I nudge the whiskey bottle on the coffee table toward him with my foot. He pours and takes a sip, and then lets out a long breath.
“Getting easier?” I ask, jerking my chin toward his chest.
“Yeah.” He lifts a shoulder, testing it. “Still feels like someone tried to cave me in with a bat, but…yeah.”
“That’s because someonedidtry to cave you in with a bat.”
Wyatt’s mouth twitches. “Details.”
A comfortable silence settles between us, a kind we’ve earned by living through things together. We’ve sat through worse waiting rooms. Cold jungle nights when you worried you wouldn’t be able to hear approaching footsteps over the insects screaming, staging tents where command argued for six hours and you just sat there with your kit on, sweating, pretending you weren’t imagining every possible way it could go wrong, hours on overwatch in the worst possible conditions where speaking at all could be a liability.
“Heard from Jake?” Wyatt asks after a bit.
“No.”
“What’s the window again?”
“Nine to nine-fifteen. Then they’ll probably message once they get to the hotel after that.”
“And the clone? They stash it yet?”
“Damned if I know.”
“You love it when they don’t tell you shit.”
I huff a laugh. I fucking hate it when they don’t tell me shit. Damian’s the worst for it.
Wyatt shifts in the chair, and I notice he adjusts without wincing. A good sign. Another marker. For months, I was him in this same house. Sitting in that chair, itching to get to the point where I could just fidget without my entire chest feeling like the bullet was going right through it again. The thought brings back memories of those nights, sitting here waiting. Waiting to get better. Waiting to hear from Wyatt. Waiting for any sign, anywhere, that Max was okay, and hoping she didn’t turn up dead somewhere.
“She still asleep?” he asks, as if I’d said her name out loud.
“Yep.”
Wyatt’s gaze flicks toward the staircase and I catch the shimmer of concern and protectiveness in it. There’s a beatwhere I feel something tighten, low and private, and I try to ignore it.
Wyatt and Max.
There’s still a part of my brain that treats that like a problem to solve. A threat to manage. And then there’s another part of my brain now, new and inconvenient, that sees Wyatt’s care for her and doesn’t flinch at it. That thinks,of course. Because Wyatt is my brother, because I trust him more than anything, because I want him to be happy.
A part that…doesn’t mind at allwhen I picture them together.
