Calder: Channel 16 is for operational comms. Which this is not.
Riggs: fine. but tucker hasn't denied anything.
I pocket the phone and resume my patrol. North side, check the tree line. East side, check the access road. South side, check the beach where a woman with a broken story and a curl that won't stay put just looked at me like no one's looked at me in months.
Professional. I need to stay professional.
Back at the main house, I do a final sweep of the ground floor. Doors locked, alarm set, cameras operational. Decker takes the overnight shift, and I brief him on the evening—movements, positions, nothing to flag.
"Quiet night," he says.
"Yeah."
"You good?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
Decker shrugs. He's been with Salt & Steel for a year, former Marine, good instincts. A guy who notices things without making a production of it.
"No reason. Just checking."
In my quarters—a converted ground-floor room with a twin bed and a desk—I lie in the dark and listen to the ocean through the window. This is usually the worst part. The quiet hourswhere civilian life feels like a costume and every sound that isn't gunfire or orders reminds me of what's missing.
But tonight, the quiet has a different quality. Less empty. I keep replaying the conversation on the beach, the way Kassidy's face changed when she talked about her character being stuck. The way she said scared like she was describing herself.
She came here to write, and she can't. Something—someone—knocked the words out of her. A breakup, maybe, or a failure, or just the slow erosion of believing in your own voice. Whatever it is, she's carrying it in her shoulders and her half-smiles and the way she talks to invisible people on beaches because she can't get them to cooperate on the page.
My phone glows.
Riggs: for the record i think writer girls are underrated
Calder: Go to sleep, Riggs.
Riggs: yes sir. tuck, report in the morning. want details.
I set the phone face down and close my eyes.
Professional. I need to stay professional. But the way she lights up talking about her characters—even the ones who won't do what she wants—is something I haven't seen in a long time. That kind of passion, even frustrated, even blocked. It's the opposite of the flatline I've been living.
She asked if her character should go after the man. She doesn't know the answer yet. Neither do I.
But something about the way she said scared—like she was describing herself and didn't mean to—stays with me longer than it should.
Chapter 3
Kassidy
Five hundred and twelve words.
That's what I managed yesterday—my first real output in three months—and they're not even good words. They're serviceable, paint-by-numbers words that sound like a thousand other contemporary romances. But they exist on the page instead of floating in the anxious soup of my brain, so I'm counting it as a victory.
Day two of the retreat begins with coffee strong enough to strip paint and a view of the Atlantic that makes my chest ache with its indifference. The ocean doesn't care about my deadline. It doesn't care that my protagonist has been standing in a doorway for six chapters refusing to do anything interesting. It just keeps rolling in and pulling back, endlessly, patient in a way I will never be.
My phone lights up with a text from Mariana:
Mariana: Word count update?
Me: 512 words. Don't celebrate.
