My jaw tightens.
“That’s a mistake.”
“She requested you.”
I let out a short, humorless laugh.
“Then she hasn’t changed.”
“No,” he agrees. “Neither have you.”
I end the call and stand there a moment longer, staring at the thin gray line of dawn creeping across the horizon.
Montana.
Sentinel’s shadow.
And the one woman who knows exactly how I think—
and exactly how to break it.
“Damn it, Wren.”
I grab my bag.
Because whatever this is—
It’s already personal.
2
Wren
Wren McKay had once helped design the logic that decided who lived—
and who became a footnote.
Now she lived on the wrong side of her own systems.
Once, she had been powerful.
The architect in rooms where decisions were made long before anyone else even knew a war had started.
She had walked away from that power on purpose.
And it had cost her everything.
Boone Grant is not supposed to be on this operation.
That’s the first problem.
The second is that he said yes.
I watch him cross the tarmac from the terminal, the early morning wind tugging at the edges of his jacket. His shoulders are squared, and his stride is deliberate, as if every step is measured before he takes it.
Boone has always moved like that.
Like the world is a battlefield that hasn’t decided yet whether it wants him alive.
