Kael grabbed a mug and leaned over his shoulder.“Anything moving?”
“Nothing that shouldn’t be there.Weather’s clear, no signals bouncing from the east ridge.We’re boringly safe.”Luka paused, then frowned.“You ever think about how that’s the scariest sentence a man like me can say?”
Kael smiled faintly.“Yeah.Feels like the universe setting us up for a punchline.”
He made his rounds, listening, watching, cataloguing every small detail—the rustle of leaves, the faint smell of oil, the soft scrape of metal.Everything in its place.Everything normal.But his gut wouldn’t settle.
By midmorning, the compound had come alive.Niko and Luca were arguing over who could gut a truck engine faster.Keanu had music playing—something lazy and island-slow while he tinkered under the hood of a van fit out they were working on.Auntie’s voice carried from the kitchen, bossing everyone around with affectionate irritation.Drew’s laugh joined in, low and rough, the kind of sound that still caught Kael off guard.He wandered down to see what had his lover laughing.
He found Drew leaning against the workshop door, sleeves rolled, grease smudged across his jaw.
“Morning,” Drew said, the word softened by the sunlight.“You look like a man trying to make peace with paradise.”
Kael stepped close enough to smell the faint citrus soap on his skin.“Paradise makes me twitchy.”
Drew smiled.“You and peace have never exactly been on speaking terms, either.”
“Too quiet,” Kael muttered, eyes scanning the distant horizon.“It feels like the island’s holding its breath.”
“Even the island is allowed to exhale once in a while, you know,” Drew said.“Nobody’s shooting at us.”
“Yet,” Kael grunted.
Drew tilted his head.“That’s my man’s optimism that I know and love.”
Kael almost smiled.Almost.“I prefer to call it experience.”
They stood side by side, watching the waves break in the distance.Kael could feel the weight of everything they’d survived pressing into the silence.“You ever think about what we are?”he asked suddenly.
“Alive?”Drew said with a small grin.
Kael smiled at that, but shook his head.“Assassins, mercenaries, whatever label you want.We’ve both killed more people than I care to count.And now we’re building fences and arguing over who makes the best coffee.Doesn’t feel real.”
Drew looked at him, thoughtful.“Maybe that’s the point.Maybe this—this in-between—is where we start figuring out who we are without the blood.”
Kael’s throat tightened.“You think we get that chance?”
“No, I don’t think that chance is just handed to us,” Drew said simply.“I think we have to make it for ourselves.”
A long silence stretched between them, filled with the sound of the distant surf and the faint buzz of music from Keanu’s speakers.Kael’s gaze caught movement out near the edge of the cliffs—a glint of light, quick and sharp, like the sun flashing on glass.Gone as soon as it appeared.Had he imagined it?
“Luka,” Kael called over comms.“You picking up any reflections or metallic interference from the ridge?”
Silence.Then Luka’s voice.“Negative.You see something?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe’s how horror movies start, boss.”
Kael frowned, eyes narrowing at the empty horizon.“Double the sensor sweep.I want everything running until sundown, then we move to infra-red.”
“Copy that.”
He stayed there a moment longer, the breeze ruffling his hair, before turning back toward the compound.Drew fell into step beside him.“You think it was nothing?”
Kael didn’t stop walking, but turned his head to level a gaze at Drew.“I don’t believe in anything being nothing.That’s how I’ve kept my team alive.”
“Of course you don’t,” Drew said, bumping his shoulder lightly against Kael’s.“Guess that’s why we work.”
