I’m watching two recruits spar when my phone vibrates against my palm. The interruption is sharp enough to snap me out of my spiral, and I glance down before I can stop myself, thumb already hovering over the screen.
Moe.
My chest tightens, reflexive and instinctive, the same way it always does when his name lights up my phone. It still catches me sometimes, how immediate it is. How fatherhood came to me too late and hit anyway. I step away from the field, moving toward the perimeter fence where the noise fades just enough to think, and answer.
“Talk to me,” I say, voice rougher than I mean it to be.
There’s a pause on the other end, then Moe exhales. I can picture him perfectly—shoulders hunched, fingers flying across a keyboard, eyes bloodshot from staring too long at patterns that refuse to make sense. He’s always been stubborn like that. Gets it from me, unfortunately.
“I’m still running it,” he says. “The map. The one you sent. I thought it was noise at first—overlap, coincidence—but it’s not. It’s layered.”
My grip tightens on the phone. “Layered how?”
“Mikhail doesn’t move in straight lines,” Moe continues, voice sharpening with focus. “He cycles. Doubles back. Uses older routes as misdirection while shifting the actual operation east, then south, then back again. The scribbles—Delilah’s marks—they’re not just locations. They’re timing.”
I close my eyes for a brief second, something hot and dangerous flaring behind my ribs. Of course she saw it. Of course she did. Even without realizing what she was mapping, she’dbeen tracking him in her own way, piecing together fragments no one else thought to connect. Even half-buried under reports and sketches and that restless mind of hers, she’d still been doing what she always does—seeing the pattern under the noise.
“Can you pin it?” I ask quietly.
“I’m close,” he says. “Give me a few more hours. Maybe less. If I’m right, he’s not running—he’s consolidating. Preparing for something bigger.”
That tracks. Mikhail never burns a board unless he’s already set up the next one. Men like him don’t retreat. They reposition. They bait. They punish.
“Send me everything you’ve got,” I tell him. “The second you’re confident.”
“You got it,” Moe replies, then hesitates. “And, uh… for what it’s worth. I’m glad she’s alive.”
The words hit harder than I expect. Probably because he means them without complication. Probably because I don’t. For me, relief always shows up with guilt stitched into its throat.
“Yeah,” I manage. “Me too.”
The line goes dead, and I lower the phone slowly, staring at the dark screen as if it might give me answers I’m not ready to face. Delilah had handed us the key without even knowing it. Left it sitting on her desk like a breadcrumb trail, trusting that someone would be smart—or stubborn—enough to follow it.
I look back toward the training field, toward the orderly chaos of recruits still moving through drills, and for the first time since she was taken, something like clarity settles into my bones. Not peace. Nothing that generous. Just purpose with sharper edges.
Mikhail made a mistake.
And Delilah—whether she knows it yet or not—just handed me the leverage I need to end this.
I straighten, slipping the phone back into my pocket, my thoughts finally aligning into something sharp and dangerous.The mission comes first. It always does. But this time, the mission and the reason are tangled together in a way I can’t ignore.
She’s being released soon.
And when she is, the world is going to change—whether I’m ready for it or not.
I turn away from the field and start toward the main corridor, boots echoing against the concrete as the noise of training fades behind me. The base always feels colder once you step inside, like the walls are designed to strip anything human out of you the moment you cross the threshold. Fluorescents hum overhead. Air vents push recycled chill down long gray halls. I welcome it. Cold is easier to manage than everything clawing at my chest right now.
My office is two levels up, past operations, past medical, past the places I’ve been avoiding all morning.
I tell myself I’m not detouring. That this is the most direct route. That anything else is coincidence. That my body turning toward her before my brain signs off on it doesn’t mean a damn thing.
The med bay doors slide open just as I pass.
I don’t stop. I don’t slow. I don’t turn my head.
And still, I see her.
Delilah is standing just inside the threshold, jacket draped awkwardly over her arm, posture stiff in that way that tells me she’s still hurting more than she’s letting on. Her hair is pulled back, face too pale against the harsh lighting, eyes sharper than they have any right to be after what she survived. There’s a nurse talking to her, lips moving in what I’m sure is a list of instructions she’s half listening to, half filing away like intel. One hand is braced lightly against the wall, subtle enough that no one else would notice she needs it. I do. Of course I do.
