"Hi."
"The noise..." She touches her temple. "It stopped."
"Good."
She reaches up, and traces the line of my jaw. "You take good care of me."
"It's my job."
"No." Her eyes are clear. Certain. "It wasn't a job tonight."
She's right.
I pull the quilt over us and tuck her against my side. She fits there like a missing piece of armor.
I lie awake longafter her breathing evens out. The perimeter monitor glows green on the bedside table. All clear.
But the math won't stop running. The photos. The coyote. The thirty-one-hour window ticking down in the background like a detonator she's carrying in her chest.
Tonight, I made the world go away for her.
Tomorrow the world comes back.
And it's bringing Ivan Kova with it.
TEN
Wren
The satellite phone is a heavy,rugged brick of black plastic that looks like it belongs in a bad nineties action movie. Right now, it's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
"Frost?" I press the receiver closer to my ear, straining against the static. "Say that again. You're breaking up."
Kade is at the front window, peering through the slats of the blinds. He's been like a caged animal all morning—pacing, checking weapons, checking the horizon. The peace of last night's blindfolded oblivion has been replaced by the sharp, metallic edge of what's coming.
"...confirmed the extraction," Frost's voice comes through, tinny and distant. "Echo is... forty minutes out... weather is... chop..."
"Forty minutes?" I look at Kade. "He says forty minutes."
Kade nods, but his shoulders don't drop. "Ask for the rendezvous coordinates. The cabin isn't a viable LZ if the cloud ceiling drops."
"Frost—we need coordinates. Kade says?—"
SCREEEE.
A high-pitched shriek tears through the speaker, sharp enough to wrench the phone from my ear. Then: absolute silence. No static. No hiss. Dead air.
"Frost?" I tap the screen. "Frost, are you there?"
The signal bars—two weak ones, barely holding—are gone. In their place, a blinking message: SEARCHING FOR NETWORK.
"I lost him." Panic flutters in my chest. "Dropped call."
Kade turns from the window, his expression grim. "Not dropped."
"What?"
"Signal strength—is it zero?"
