Generator noise drifted through the trees, low and constant.
Movement flickered near the eastern fence line. A guard patrolled along a predictable route nowhere near us, but I kept an eye on them. The security for this place extended five feet from the fencing all around, but we were placing what we had, twenty, sometimes thirty feet, beyond that.
I locked the mounting bracket into the bark, then adjusted the lens until it covered the main road and the outer gate where vehicles would have to slow before entering.
Once the camera was set, I paused and studied the compound again.
Two guards were near the main building—one patrolling the perimeter. Light spilling from a side structure that could have been storage or living quarters. The pattern of activity suggested some lack of discipline. A professional security team would conduct overlapping patrols and provide coverage of blind spots. They were trying to do the right thing, but their thinking stopped halfway through the problem, and people like that were easy to kill.
Footsteps.
Slow and unhurried, the rhythm of someone who believed the woods around them were empty.
A guard drifted along the narrow trail that ran parallel to the fence line, the glowing tip of his cigarette flaring orange everyfew seconds as he inhaled. He walked with the lazy gait of a man killing time on a patrol he didn’t expect to become dangerous.
“Movement on your six,” I whispered.
I pressed closer to the trunk and slowed my breathing. Below me, Caleb had already gone still. One hand rested on the equipment case while the other hovered near the cable he had been threading through the bark.
The guard stopped less than ten feet from where Caleb crouched in the shadows, flicked ash into the dirt, and stared into the trees as if they were nothing more than background scenery.
I studied the distance between us.
Measured the drop.
Two seconds to reach the ground.
One second to cover the space between us.
Another second to drive the knife under his jaw and sever the artery before he understood what was happening.
The calculation was automatic.
But killing him would create issues. A missing guard triggered searches, and searches triggered lights, radios, and men sweeping the forest with flashlights and rifles. The probability of discovery would increase with every person I killed. That kind of attention would put Caleb in the open. The guard could live—for now—because keeping Caleb unseen mattered more than satisfying the simple efficiency of eliminating a threat.
Unless he came closer, and then all bets were off.
Eventually, he finished his cigarette, crushed the butt under his heel, and wandered back along the trail toward the compound lights.
Only when the sound of his footsteps faded into the hum of the generators did Caleb release the breath he had been holding. The sound pulled something inconvenient to the front of mythoughts—the memory of the way he had breathed earlier when we broke apart after the kiss, his mouth still so close to mine that if the interruption hadn’t come through the comms, we wouldn’t have stopped where we did.
I shut that line of thinking down immediately.
“Done?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, landing beside him without sound.
We headed to the next tree along the ridge, keeping to the darker line of cover where the branches blocked the compound lights. The terrain sloped here, the ground damp under the moss and scattered with fallen branches from storms.
Caleb stepped over one of them, and his boot slid on the slick moss beneath it, and his balance went sideways fast.
I closed my fingers around his arm while my other palm braced on his chest to steady him and the momentum brought him hard against me.
He was breathing faster now, more from surprise than exertion, and I could feel the rise and fall of it under my hand. In the dim light filtering through the branches, I could see the line of his jaw, the faint scar near his mouth I had cataloged earlier, the way his eyes flicked toward mine as if assessing whether I was going to let go.
It would have been simple to release him straight away.
Instead, my hand stayed where it was a fraction longer than necessary. Not because he still needed the support—his balance had already returned—but because releasing him felt final, and I found I hadn’t finished assessing the solid weight of him against me.
