"Stay," I say.
I move through the cabin. My eyes adjust to the gloom. I scan the room. Single room with a small loft accessible by a wall ladder. One window, heavily shuttered from the outside, and a timber back door that looks like it leads to a storage lean-to. An iron woodstove sits in the corner beside a stone hearth blackened by decades of fires.
A stack of dry, split logs piled between them. A heavy oak table in the center of the room, an old bearskin rug stretched in front of the hearth. A wooden desk on the opposite wall. A rusted metal cot pushed against the far wall, a thin mattress laid across the wire springs.
I go to the stove. I find a tin of waterproof matches and some dried kindling inside the firebox. A ranger left this prepped years ago. I strike a match. The flame catches the dry pine needles. I feed the fire quickly, methodically. Within minutes, a thick,rolling blaze roars to life behind the iron door. Heat begins to radiate into the freezing room.
I stand up. I look at the desk.
Resting on top of the scarred wood is a heavy, military-grade ham radio setup. A long antenna wire snakes up the wall and disappears through a sealed hole in the ceiling.
I walk over to the desk. I brush a thick layer of dust off the metal casing.
My mind immediately clicks back into the cold, steady focus of the watcher.
Before the helicopter crash. Before this mountain. Before Reese.
I was hunting a lead.
A physical lead buried in a Bellanti blind trust. A name connected directly to the massacre that took my family long ago. I boarded the extraction helicopter to chase the lead in the northern territories. But before I left the compound, I caught an anomaly.
I stare at the dials on the radio. My brain processes the timing.
The intelligence file containing the ghost's digital signature had leaked. Only a handful of people at the Costa compound had clearance to access that specific server. I checked the biometric logs hours before my flight.
Someone accessed the file thirty minutes before the external leak triggered the alarm.
I picture the war room in the basement of the Chicago mansion. The reinforced steel door. The screens. A color-coded legal pad in Clara's handwriting at Matteo's station — the only thing on that desk that does not look like a weapon. Matteo cooking upstairs. Dante brooding. Enzo analyzing data.
Turi.
Turi had walked into the war room with fresh espresso right at that timestamp. He had stood near the terminal. He had a keycard. Turi raised us. Turi is our uncle Carlo's best friend. He calls Dominic his son.
I file the anomaly away. I do not name it betrayal. I do not jump to conclusions. I observe. I catalog. The thread is paused. When I get back to Chicago, I will pull the security footage. I will verify.
Right now, the only thing that matters is the woman shivering on the cot.
I flip the power toggle on the radio. A tiny red light flickers, then glows steady.
The battery array connected to a solar panel on the roof is still functional. The system has power.
I twist the frequency dial. Static hisses out of the speaker. Violent, crackling white noise. I begin to tune the dials, searching for an emergency broadcast band, a ranger frequency, anything.
"Is it working?"
Reese's voice is stronger. The heat from the stove is reaching her.
I turn around. She is sitting up on the edge of the cot. She has pushed the wool blanket down to her waist. Her curves are outlined by the tight thermal shirt. Her hair is wild, tangled, and drying in the warmth. The bruise on her temple is a dark, angry purple.
She looks like a battered warrior. She looks fierce.
"It has power," I state. "I am scanning for a signal."
She stands without waiting for permission and crosses to the desk, her socked feet silent on the dusty floorboards. She checks the drawers beneath the radio. The first is empty. The second holds something.
She hauls out a thick, plastic-wrapped bundle. Topographical maps.
She drops the bundle onto the desk beside the radio. She pulls a pocket knife from the pants drying near the cot and slices the plastic open. She spreads the large, creased map over the wood. She leans over it, her eyes tracing the contour lines.
