The shift.
The way the past wakes up when the future gets dangerous.
Logan and Scout won their war.
But this one?
This one is quieter.
Slower.
And if we’re wrong—
It won’t explode.
It will spread.
And Boone Grant is about to step straight into the fire.
With me standing beside him.
And for the first time in years…
I’m not sure which of us is the bigger risk.
3
Boone
It doesn’t come as a confession.
It comes as a discrepancy.
That’s how these things always surface—not with drama, not with speeches, but with something small that refuses to fit.
I’m three hours into pulling apart the recruitment chain when I see it.
A timestamp.
Two files that should line up.
They don’t.
I lean closer to the screen.
The monitor's glow throws cold light across the room. Outside, Montana sits quiet and dark, the kind of silence that makes you forget the world can be dangerous.
But the numbers on my screen say otherwise.
“Wren,” I say without looking up. “Come here.”
I hear her chair move.
Footsteps behind me.
Even after all these years, I know the sound of them.
“What is it?” she asks.
