“And now you don’t.”
“Now I don’t.” Her fingers traced the edge of the paper. “But the physical letters are still there. In Montana. Proof. Something to anchor the memories to, before they slip away completely.”
Lincoln understood. He also understood what she wasn’t letting herself ask.
“You want to go to your apartment in Montana.”
“Yes.” Her hands curled into fists. “I know it’s dangerous. Randall’s people are probably watching. Maybe the feds too.” She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. There’s no way?—”
“Morgan.”
She stopped. Looked at him.
He’d already pulled satellite imagery of her property. Already mapped the layout of the converted barn, the sight lines from the tree line, the nearest neighbor half a mile down the road. He’d done it days ago, looking for threads that might lead back to Randall. He knew the terrain.
The risks were significant. Probability of detection wasn’t trivial. The smart move was to wait, to find another way, to solve this problem without walking into hostile territory.
But he looked at her face. At the grief carved into every line. He thought about her laugh on the stairs, breathless against his mouth. The way she’d arched into him like she couldn’t get close enough. How his brain had finally gone quiet because she was the variable that made silence possible.
The math stopped mattering.
“We’ll get them.”
Morgan stared at him. “You’d do that? Go to Montana?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t hesitate. Didn’t calculate. Didn’t run the probability models or weigh the costs against the benefits. He just knew—with a certainty he’d never felt about anything that wasn’t code—that he would walk into whatever waited in Montana if it meant bringing her back those letters.
“We’ll plan carefully,” he continued. “Map their surveillance patterns. Identify the gaps. Create a diversion if we need one.” He reached for her hand. She let him take it, her fingers wrapping around his immediately—cold, trembling, holding on like he was the last solid thing in her world. “We won’t go in blind.”
“Lincoln…” His name broke in her mouth.
“You’re not going to lose yourself.” He tightened his grip. “I won’t let that happen. We’ll get the letters. We’ll figure out how to fix this.” He didn’t know how. Didn’t have a solution, a plan, a guaranteed outcome. But he had certainty, and he offered it to her like a gift. “Whatever it takes.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Then she unfolded from the chair, crossed the space between them, and climbed into his lap.
Her arms wrapped around his neck. Her face buried in his shoulder. Her whole body shook with the tears she’d been holding back.
Lincoln held her.
He didn’t say anything. Didn’t try to fix it with words or logic or plans. Just held her while the dawn light strengthened around them, while her grief poured out against his skin, while the house stayed silent and the world stayed distant and the only thing that mattered was the woman in his arms.
He would get her those letters.
He would burn down anyone who tried to stop him.
Chapter 20
Five months ago:
Mercury: What’s the worst code you’ve ever written?
Binary: Define worst.
Mercury: The kind you’d be embarrassed for anyone to see.
Binary: I don’t experience embarrassment about code.
