Her fingers close around mine. Tight. Crushing. Like she's gripping the edge of a cliff, and my hand is the only thing between her and the drop.
"We're not going to Ashburn," I say. "We're not going anywhere near it. And when this is over, when the mole is caught and the war is handled and you're safe, if you want, I will drive you back there. And you can walk through that town and look at everybuilding and every street and every corner where she used to live, and you can do it with me standing next to you. Or you can never go back. That's your choice. Not his. Not mine. Yours."
Her grip tightens. Her jaw is locked. A tear rolls down her cheek, and she wipes it away with her free hand, fast, angry, like the tear is a betrayal her face committed without permission.
"I haven't said his name out loud in three years," she says. "Daniel Voss. That's his full name. And I hate that saying it still makes my chest hurt."
"That's not weakness. That's a wound that hasn't finished healing."
"It should be finished by now."
"Says who?"
She laughs. Wet, broken, real. "Says Charlotte Richardson. She has very high standards for emotional recovery timelines."
"Charlotte Richardson sounds like a pain in the ass."
"She is. You should see her count ceiling tiles. It's pathological."
I squeeze her hand. She squeezes back. And we sit on the shoulder of a county road in rural Virginia with the engine off and the wind pushing the car and her hand in mine, and for a moment the war doesn't exist, and the mole doesn't exist and theclock isn't ticking and there is only this. A woman who told me who she is and a man who heard it.
I start the engine. Pull back onto the road. Head west.
Her hand stays in mine across the console. I drive one-handed and I don't care because I've done harder things with worse odds and this, holding her hand on a county road while the world tries to catch up to us, is the easiest hard thing I've ever done.
Fifty miles later, she falls asleep.
Her head tips against the window and her breathing goes deep and even and her fingers loosen in mine but don't let go. She sleeps like someone who hasn't slept in days. Heavy. Complete. The sleep of someone who just set down a weight they've been carrying for three years and doesn't have the energy to pick it back up yet.
So, I just drive. I watch the road. I hold her hand.
And somewhere in the quiet, in the space between the highway and the horizon, I make a decision that has nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with the woman asleep beside me.
When this is over, I'm going to find Daniel Voss.
Chapter Ten: Charlotte
Wefindthecabinat dusk. It took longer than expected because I had to detour away from Ashburn.
It's smaller than the farmhouse. One room, a kitchenette, a bathroom with a door that doesn't fully close. Emilio’s contact left the key under a rock by the front step, which is the least creative hiding spot in the history of hidden keys, but I'm too tired to have opinions about security protocols.
The cabin sits in a clearing surrounded by birch trees. No neighbors. No road noise. The nearest highway is six miles east, and the dirt track that leads here is narrow enough that only one car can pass at a time. Claudio drove it at ten miles per hour, scanning the tree line the whole way, his jaw tight, his hand on my knee.
His hand has been on my knee since the county road. Not gripping. Resting. Like he put it there to prove something andforgot to take it back, and now it lives there, warm and heavy through my jeans, and I've stopped pretending it doesn't affect me.
He clears the cabin before he lets me in. Gun drawn, room by room, which takes about forty-five seconds because there are only three rooms and one of them is a closet. He comes back to the door and nods, and I walk in and drop my coat on the one chair and sit on the edge of the one bed and look at the ceiling.
No tiles. Wood planks. I can't count them. They blend into each other in the low light, grain lines overlapping. It bothers me more than it should.
Claudio locks the door. Checks the windows. Draws the curtains. Pulls the burner phone from his pocket and sets it on the counter beside the Glock and a bottle of water he grabbed from the last gas station. His movements are automatic, the sequence of a man running a protocol he's performed a hundred times. He checks the mag, racks the slide, sets the gun with the grip facing the door. Ready. Always ready.
He sits on the counter. Not a chair. The counter. Legs hanging, boots muddy from the walk, one hand on his thigh and the other wrapped around the water bottle. He watches me.
I watch him back.
I'm hollowed out. That's the only word for it. I told him about Daniel on the side of a road, in a car that smells like his brother's cologne, and saying it out loud didn't kill me but it scoopedme clean. Three years of carrying that name behind my teeth like a swallowed razor blade, and I opened my mouth and let it out, and now there's a space where it used to be. The space is lighter, but it aches the way new emptiness always aches. The body doesn't know the difference between losing something heavy and losing something vital. It just registers the absence and panics.
I press my fingers to my neck. Vertebrae. Solid. Stacked.
