He moves toward the door, then pauses. Looks back at Diego and me one final time.
“Halo. You know what you’re asking. Nevada is a black hole. Sending my operators into the field is dangerous enough—they come back as lovesick puppies.”
A ripple of laughter goes through the room. Even Diego cracks a smile.
“The odds?—”
“Are terrible.” Diego stands, pulling me up with him. “But we’ve been beating terrible odds for ten days. Because Phoenix can calculate everything except what people do for love.”
Something shifts in Ghost’s weathered face. The cold assessment cracking, just for a moment, to reveal something older and warmer underneath.
“Forty-eight hours.” His expression hardens again. “Rest while you can.”
He leaves. The door closes behind him.
Brass is smiling—a wide, genuine grin. “Well. That’s the most emotion I’ve seen from Ghost since Chicago.” He gathers his tablet. “Thorne, I’ll set you up in the guest wing. Everyone else, get some rest.”
“Don’t argue with him, Fuse.” Torque heads for the door. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”
“I’m fine,” Fuse grumbles, but he steers himself toward the break room couches. “Just need—five minutes.”
Torque claps Diego on the shoulder. “Good to have you back, Halo. I was starting to think you’d gone soft, running around with a civilian.”
“She’s not a civilian anymore.”
“No.” Torque looks at me, and the humor fades into something more serious. “No, she’s not. Welcome to the team, Counselor.”
The room empties slowly. Fuse limping toward the break room. Torque disappearing toward the pilot’s ready room. Whisper melting back into his screens. Thorne follows them out without a word.
And then it’s just us. Diego and I, standing in the operations center of an organization I barely knew existed two weeks ago.
“You okay?”
“I don’t know.” I lean against him, suddenly exhausted. “I just got assigned to Intel and Ops for a mission to assault an AI’s fortress. That’s not something they cover in law school.”
“They should add it to the curriculum.”
“Diego?”
“Yeah?”
“Take me somewhere quiet. Somewhere I can process all of this.”
He pulls me close. Kisses my forehead.
“Come on.”
---
The quarters are small but clean—a room barely larger than a hotel suite, with a bed, a desk, and an attached bathroom. Military-functional. Impersonal.
But when Diego closes the door behind us, it feels like a sanctuary.
He doesn’t speak. Just pulls me into his arms and holds on.
I breathe him in—gun oil and road dust and something underneath that’s just him. My hands flatten against his back, feeling the tension slowly drain from his muscles. The constant vigilance of the last ten days releasing, finally, in a space where someone else is watching the perimeter.
“You did good in there.” His voice vibrates against my hair. “The way you presented the evidence. Ghost doesn’t impress easily. You impressed him.”
