“You are not lost,” he replied in accented English. “Men like you never are.”
Aaron muttered under his breath, “Friendly.”
I stepped closer, hands in my jacket pockets, showing no weapon even though I had three. “We’re looking for an old avalanche station. North Face. Heard it’s abandoned.”
He smoked in silence for a moment, studying each of us in turn. Up here, you didn’t live long if you trusted the wrong person. I respected that.
Finally, he jerked his chin toward the ridge. “Old road. No one uses it now. Too dangerous.”
“We like dangerous,” Miles said with a quick, humorless grin.
The farmer’s gaze lingered on me again. “You go up there, you don’t come back.”
I almost saidI don’t plan to leave anyone behind this time,but the words would’ve been for me, not him. Instead, I gave a small nod, a warrior’s acknowledgment.
“Thank you,” I said.
He ground his cigarette out on the railing. “There was a woman,” he added suddenly. “Last week. In a truck with dark windows. She did not walk on her own.”
Every muscle in my body went still.
“Describe her,” I said, my voice lower than I intended.
He shrugged. “I see only her hair when the wind moved the blanket. Dark. Long. Like winter ravens.” His gaze sharpened,like he’d just realized he’d said too much. “They went up. Same road. No one comes down.”
Behind me, the guys went quiet. The only sound was the restless shifting of animals in the pen and the soft hiss of the wind.
Ravens.
Lena’s hair had always driven me insane. In the worst places on earth, it had been the one beautiful thing that didn’t make sense.
My heart kicked hard against my ribs.
“Appreciate the directions,” I said. “Stay inside tonight.”
He gave a harsh laugh. “I always do.”
We loaded back into the truck, wordless until we crested the next hill and the farmhouse disappeared from view.
“You think it’s her,” Aaron said finally.
“I think Ascendancy grabbed a female prisoner with long dark hair and hauled her up to a classified mountain bunker a week after we intercepted a comm mentioning a ‘journalist asset,’” I replied. “So yeah. I think it’s her.”
Miles whistled softly. “Three years, man. I don’t know if I’d be hoping or puking.”
“Both,” I said.
That earned a ghost of a smile from Jase.
Cyclone’s voice crackled in again. “You’ve got maybe four hours before the weather closes in. Storm rolling off the north face. If you’re not inside by then, extraction gets messy.”
“We’ll be inside,” I said.
“Copy that. Sending you the latest thermal. And Pierce?”
“Yeah.”
A pause. “If she’s there… don’t let the objective cloud the mission.”
