Still, I check.
I make it through the first four days on nothing but coffee and adrenaline. Landon adapts quicker. He takes to the schedule without complaint, rising late but eager, eating whatever I set in front of him, never asking for more than he thinks I can handle. He doesn't mention the way I always sit facing the doors, or the way I keep a loaded Beretta on the kitchen counter.
On the fifth morning, I find him on the terrace, breathing in the cold. His breath fogs the air, curls up and around his head. He has a notebook—spiral-bound, creased from his pocket. The pages are a mess of crossed-out lists, reminders, phrases I can’t make out from where I stand.
He hears me and looks back. His hair is a black tangle, eyes wide and hungry. He’s not afraid. He’s at peace.
He closes the notebook. “How’s the perimeter?” he asks, like we’re talking about the weather.
“Frozen solid,” I say. “No tracks.”
He nods, then opens the notebook again and writes it down. He’s building a log, tracking my security runs, the intervals, the way I rotate the checks. At first I think it’s suspicion, but after a few days, I realize he’s just trying to memorize the patterns.
He wants to learn the rules. He wants to play by them.
The routine is simple. After morning checks, we make breakfast. Sometimes eggs, sometimes whatever the supply staff restocks in the cold room. Landon always eats, even if my cooking is shit. He sits across from me, knees bouncing under the table, hands cradling the coffee mug like it’s the only heat source in the world.
He talks, but never about the city, or the program, or the world we left behind. He tells stories about his mother, or the first time he saw snow, or the worst hangover he ever had. They’re trivial, almost meaningless, but I know what he’s doing. He’s filling the silence with things that can’t hurt us.
After breakfast, we split up. I walk the property again. He reads, or writes, or takes long, scalding showers. Sometimes, he watches me through the glass, his breath leaving a mist on the window. He’s trying to figure out who I am when I’m not hunting or being hunted.
The answer is:I have no idea.
By midday, the house warms up, the sun turning the snow outside into a blinding field of white. Landon wanders, mapping every inch of the chalet, always curious about the locked door at the end of the hall, but never pushing the boundaries either.
He’s a fast study.
Once, I catch him staring at the bookshelf in the living room, running a finger along the spines of the old, leather-bound volumes. I watch him for a long time before he notices.
“You ever read any of these?” he asks, not turning around.
“Most of them,” I say.
He grins, and for a second, the city boy is back. “Which was your favorite?”
“Whichever one put me to sleep the fastest.”
Landon laughs, quiet and warm. “You’re full of shit, you know that?”
I shrug. He’s not wrong.
The next time we leave the house together, it’s not a tactical training session. Landon just wants to hike. He wants to see more of woods, the sky, the world outside the glass.
I let him set the pace. He is steady for the first mile, asking questions about animal tracks, about avalanche risk, about whether or not the birds hibernate. I answer in a word or two, scanning every line of sight, checking for irregularities in the snow, for the glint of a scope on the ridgeline.
After a while, he stops talking, and just walks.
We make it up to the north lookout, a little flat spot on the cliff where Brooks and I once built a fire pit. Landon sits on the edge, boots dangling over nothing, and I stand behind him, arms crossed, eyes on the valley.
He’s quiet for a long time.
Finally, he says, “I don’t get you, Harrington.”
“No one does,” I say.
He laughs. “Not true. Brooks gets you. That’s why he helps you. Maybe he even loves you.”
I don’t know how to answer that, so I don’t.
