“Then tell me.”
His eyes lift to mine, exhausted. Terrified in a way that has nothing to do with war zones, storms, or mountains collapsing beneath us.
“If I do,” he says roughly, “there’s no version of him left for you to hold on to.”
The words slice clean through me. Because part of me already knows that’s true. The hero version. The victim version. The uncomplicated version.
They’re all dying here. Slowly. Painfully. And somewhere beneath them is the real Phoenix. A man whose role I’m no longer sure I understood at all.
I sink slowly back onto the sleeping bag, staring at the reports scattered across the table and floor—the evidence, the omissions, the spaces between facts where people bury the things they can’t say out loud.
Anger twists through me, sharp and directionless. Only it’s not for the mountain man I hunted to Hollow Peak. Now it’s for the brother whose story I’ll never fully understand.
I came here to expose Rhys Ward. Now I don’t know who I’m exposing.
Chapter
Seventeen
RHYS
The storm breaks just after midnight. Thunder cracks hard enough to shake the cabin walls while rain lashes the roof in brutal waves. Wind screams through the pines outside like something alive, tearing its way across the mountain.
Sloane jerks awake on the floor.
I’m already standing. I can never sleep through weather like this anymore. Not after the city. Or the dust clouds swallowing streets, radios screaming over gunfire, and buildings collapsing faster than men could run.
Lightning flashes white through the windows.
Sloane pushes upright immediately, her sleeping bag falling from her delicate shoulders. “What was that?”
“Thunder.”
“That sounded close.”
“It was.”
Another crack splits the sky almost instantly after. Closer. Too close. I light a kerosene lamp, watching its golden flames flicker in the dark.
Sloane rubs sleep from her face, chestnut hair tangled around her shoulders. Her gaze finds me standing near the window. “You ever sleep?” she asks quietly.
I don’t answer because the truth is ugly. Every time I close my eyes lately, Phoenix dies differently. Sometimes because I let go. Others because I don’t.
Lightning flashes again. For a second, the room glows stark white.
And Sloane sees it… whatever slips across my face in that moment. Her expression changes instantly. Suspicion and anger replaced with understanding, sharp enough to cut.
“Tell me,” she says softly.
I look back toward the storm. “No.”
“Rhys.”
“Not tonight.”
Thunder rattles the windows again.
She rises from the floor slowly, sleeping bag rustling. “You keep saying that.”
