His team. His Marines.Mybrother.
I stare at the reports spread across the table, the clean black text, and all the things left unsaid. “You still don’t know what he was trying to do,” I whisper.
“No.”
“And you covered for him, anyway.”
Rhys’s eyes meet mine. “He died there.” His voice fades into the silence. “That was enough punishment.”
Emotion swells suddenly, violently. Grief, confusion, anger… and love. I don’t know where to put any of it.
The problem with journalism is eventually, you learn people aren’t stories. They’re fractures. Contradictions. Living things that refuse to fit inside neat narratives.
And sitting here now, staring at the man I came to expose, I realize something horrifying.
Phoenix may not have been a victim.
He may have been willing to sacrifice everything for something I still don’t understand. And that means I no longer understand him.
Chapter
Fifteen
RHYS
The mountain goes quiet before the next storm. That’s how you know it’s coming. The birds disappear first. Then the wind shifts colder, and the entire world seems to hold its breath, waiting for something ugly to arrive.
I stand near the edge of the washout, staring down at the Jeep half-sunk in mud and shale. Still there. Barely.
The Wrangler leans harder now, front end twisted deeper toward the drop. Another hard rain and it’ll disappear into the ravine completely.
I should let it go. That would be smarter. And safer, too.
Instead, I tighten my grip on the wet rope slung over my shoulder and study the slope, as if stubbornness alone can hold the mountain together.
Rainwater snakes through the fresh scars carved into the earth from yesterday’s slide. Mud shifts under my boots, unstable. Everything about this is unstable.
The Jeep. The slope. The woman inside my cabin.
I exhale slowly, fog curling from my mouth into the cold spring air. I should’ve sent her away the second she showed up. I should’ve lied harder… kept my mouth shut.
Instead, she’s inside going through reports and transcripts and memories like she can dissect the truth cleanly enough to survive it.
But I know better. It doesn’t work that way. Never has.
My gaze drifts lower toward the Jeep again, toward the broken driver’s side door. Metal bent inward from the boulder strike—the jagged edge that sliced through my arm.
Funny. Barely felt it yesterday. Not compared to hearing Phoenix’s name on her tongue.
Thunder murmurs somewhere deep in the mountains. Too distant to matter yet.
I crouch carefully near the edge, checking the pine I finally managed to anchor the line to. The ground around the roots has softened another inch. Not enough to fail. Yet.
The mountain always wins eventually, though. Doesn’t matter how much rope or steel or manpower you throw at it. It takes what it wants.
My jaw tightens. I know something else that works the same way.
Memory.
