“I did it.” She was still laughing, giddy with adrenaline. “I can’t believe I actually did it.”
They found a flat rock near the base of the cliff and satdown, both of them breathing hard from the descent. The valley spread out below them, endless and green, and the sky stretched overhead in that particular shade of blue that Wyoming seemed to have patented.
For the first time in days, the data receded. The coordinates and names and military codes went quiet in her head, overwhelmed by simple sensory input: cold stone beneath her, warm sun on her face, the sound of wind moving through distant trees.
She felt like herself again. Not a filing cabinet. Not a server. Just Morgan.
“Thank you,” she said. The words felt inadequate. “Not just for this. For everything. For coming when I sent those coordinates. For not turning me in. For—” She gestured at the valley, the cliff, all of it. “For this.”
Lincoln turned to look at her. His hair was windswept from the descent, and he had a smear of chalk dust across his cheek.
“I’ve never brought anyone here before,” he said.
“Never?”
“This was always my place. Where I came when my brain wouldn’t stop, when the social demands got too loud, when I needed to remember that some problems can be solved with physics instead of people.” He paused, and she watched him search for words—something she’d noticed he did when the thing he wanted to say mattered. “I didn’t realize I wanted to share it until I met you.”
Morgan stared at him. He’d said it the way he said everything—direct, factual, like he was reporting data rather than handing her something precious.
“That might be the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me,” she said. “And you have no idea, do you?”
“I was stating a fact.” He tilted his head, genuinely puzzled. “Is that romantic?”
“Yes.” Her voice came out thick. “Yes, it really is.”
She became aware, suddenly, of how close they were sitting. The warmth of his shoulder almost touching hers. The way his hand rested on the stone between them, close enough that she could see the small scar on his left knuckle—the one he’d said was from a soldering iron when he was twelve.
The air felt different. Charged. Like the moment before lightning strikes.
Morgan turned toward him. Watched his eyes track the movement, watched him go very still. She could see his pulse jumping in his throat, could feel the tension radiating off him—not pulling away, but not moving closer either. Waiting. Letting her decide.
She leaned in.
His lips were warm. Slightly chapped from the wind. He didn’t move at first—just let her kiss him, frozen with surprise or uncertainty or something she couldn’t read. Then his hand came up, tentative, and cupped her jaw, and he kissed her back.
It was clumsy. Unpracticed. Neither of them quite sure of the angle, the pressure, the rhythm. But it was real in a way that made her chest ache—two people who’d found each other through screens and codes finally discovering what touch felt like.
They pulled back at the same time, both slightly breathless.
“I didn’t plan that,” Lincoln said. His voice had gone rough.
“I know.” Morgan was shaking, but not from cold. “That’s why it was so perfect.”
He was looking at her like she’d just rewritten his source code. Like everything he thought he understood abouthimself had shifted three inches to the left, and he was still trying to recalibrate.
“We should head back,” he said finally. “Before it gets dark.”
“Yeah.” She wasn’t ready to return to the compound, to the data, to the endless work of decoding her own captivity. But real life had a way of reasserting itself whether you wanted it to or not. “We should.”
The route back up was slower than the descent—they took a trail that wound around the cliff face since climbing back up was definitely beyond her capacity—and by the time they reached the vehicle, the sun was beginning to sink toward the mountains.
They drove home in silence.
Not uncomfortable. Not tense. Just full—heavy with everything that had happened at the base of that cliff, with the kiss neither of them seemed ready to discuss, with the strange new territory they’d wandered into together.
Morgan watched the landscape scroll past her window and let herself exist in the quiet. The headache had faded. The panic had retreated. The fuzzy edges of Ms. Delacroix’s face were still there, waiting to terrify her later, but for now—just for now—she was okay.
Somewhere along the darkening road, Lincoln’s hand found hers.
