The certainty settles into my bones. Not panic—something colder, cleaner. The way the world snaps into focus when you're two hundred feet up a rock face, and your handhold crumbles. You don't have time for fear.
You assess, adapt, act.
Or you fall.
I slide out of bed and pull on my jeans. They're the same ones I was wearing when they brought me here—dark wash, broken in, flexible enough to move in. I've climbed in these jeans. I've scrambled up approaches, down-climbed sketchy descents, and trusted them not to bind when I needed to high-step onto a ledge.
I pull on my fleece—nothing special, just a gray quarter-zip I've had for years—and check myself in the plastic mirror. Practical. Ready. The kind of outfit that says I might need to run at any moment without screaming I’m going to run.
I've been sleeping in my clothes since day three. Just in case. Just in case of something I couldn't name but my body knows is coming.
The clock on the nightstand reads 5:47. Dawn is coming. The light outside the painted-shut window has shifted from black to the deep blue that means the sun is thinking about rising.
In the main room, Travis stops pacing.
"We've got movement on the access road."
Derek's voice, sharp: "How far out?"
"Half mile. Single vehicle, no headlights."
Silence. The click of a safety being disengaged.
My heart hammers against my ribs. Someone's coming. The thought should terrify me—more cartel, maybe, more men with guns and orders—but something else cuts through the fear. Something that feels almost like hope.
If Derek and Travis are scared, maybe the person coming isn't on their side.
I press my back against the wall beside the door. If it opens, I'll be behind it. A few seconds of confusion, maybe. Enough to run.
Run where?Daniel's voice again.You don't even know what's happening.
Footsteps in the main room. Both of them moving now, positions shifting. Travis at the window. Derek near the front door.
Glass breaking. Not my window—somewhere else, the back of the cabin. A muffled thump. A sound I don't recognize until I do.
A body hitting the floor.
"Travis!" Derek's voice cracks.
No response.
More sounds—fast, efficient, the kind of movement that doesn't waste anything. A scuffle. A grunt of pain that isn't a word. Then nothing.
Nothing for three seconds. Four. Five.
The floorboards creak outside my door.
I stop breathing.
The door swings open—not kicked, just pushed, steady and controlled—and a man steps through.
He's not what I expect.
I don't know what I expect. Cartel soldiers, maybe, all tattoos and dead eyes? Or FBI tactical teams with battering rams and shouted orders?
Not this—a lean figure in dark clothing, pistol held low, face half-shadowed in the pre-dawn gray. Tall. Broad shoulders tapering to narrow hips. The kind of build that says he uses his body for things more demanding than gym selfies.
A scar cuts through his left eyebrow, pale against tan skin. It should make him look dangerous. It does. But his eyes find me instantly, and they aren't the flat, robotic voids Derek andTravis have been wearing for five days. They are sharp. Alive. They burn with a focused kinetic energy that makes the air in the room feel thin. Where Derek was a cold, stagnant weight, this man is a storm in a tactical vest. There's a mobility to his mouth that suggests he smiles more than he scowls.
