"You sure you don't want to cancel it?"
"I'm not canceling it." She closes the timer window. Matter-of-fact.
"If they intercept the transmission?—"
"They can't. Not from outside. The server has no public record. The only way to stop it is my thumbprint and the current token, and both stay with me." A pause. "They'd have to take my hand off my body to stop it."
I look at her—the steadiness in her voice, the set of her jaw. She weaponized herself before she ever picked up the Glock. The realization lands with its full weight.
"I don't feel like a wolf," she says, softer now, something cracking under the precision. "I feel violated. They were inside my life."
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.
The sound cuts through the cabin like a blade.
Wren jumps, knocking her coffee mug over. Brown liquid sloshes across the table, missing the laptop by inches.
"What is that?"
"Perimeter." Already moving. I grab the rifle from the couch. "Lights off. Now."
She kills the table lamp. I flip the wall switch. The cabin drops into gray dusk shadow.
I move to the window, staying low. The tripped sensor is on the north trail—Sector 2. Steep and rocky. The most difficult approach.
"Get the shotgun."
Movement in the dark.CLACK-CLACK. The sound of the slide racking.
She learned.
"I have it." A whisper. "By the couch."
Through the scope: the treeline. Nothing moving. Wind picking up, rustling the pines.
BEEP-BEEP-BEEP.
Closer.
"Contact." My voice drops. "Thirty yards out."
My heart rate slows. The tech work terrifies me—the digital architecture, the invisible threat. But this? A physical threat in the physical world? This is where I live. This is where I thrive.
I center the crosshairs on the brush where the movement should originate. Finger takes up the slack on the trigger.
"Kade?" A tremor in her voice.
"Quiet. Wait for my command."
A shape bursts from the undergrowth.
A coyote. Scraggy, mangy, terrified. It sprints across the clearing, glancing back over its shoulder, and vanishes into the south woods.
I hold. Scan the treeline behind where it came from. One minute. Two.
No heat signature. No unnatural movement. Just the wind.
I lower the rifle. "Clear."
