"I think you’re being too hard on?—"
"Don't." She held up her hand. "If you say something humble right now, I'll lose all respect for you."
He closed his mouth, but she could see the struggle. The man wanted to deflect. It was written all over him.
"So, I followed the path," she said. "Joined the military. Found my way into electronic warfare. And every time someone mentioned Rhodes, I paid attention. Not because I wanted to be you. Because you were proof that people like us—people who start with nothing, who lose the people that matter most—can still build something that matters."
He palmed her cheek, holding her gaze. He leaned closer. His breath was hot on her skin.
She rested her hand on his shoulder and tried to recall the last time someone had kissed her.
A year ago? She couldn't remember his name. Chad? Todd? Not Todd? Did it even matter? She tilted her face the last quarter inch.
Gideon pulled back. "I think we can go now."
"Right," she managed.
He pushed to all fours, and a second later was on his knees three feet from her.
It was for the best. She rolled into a sitting position a little further from Gideon.
The wind moved through the trees above them. Somewhere to the west, a branch cracked.
Zadie's pulse ticked. Gideon shifted into a crouch. His body angled toward the sound.
Another crack. This one louder and definitely closer.
"That's not human," Gideon whispered.
She scanned the brush line to their left. The terrain sloped down into a shallow ravine choked with deadfall and scrub. Visibility was maybe thirty feet before the timber swallowed everything. "It's not."
A shape moved low through the brush. Tawny. Fluid. The kind of movement that didn't waste a single calorie because every calorie had a purpose.
Cougar.
Zadie's breath caught in her chest. She'd grown up in country like this. She knew the rules. Don't run. Make yourself big. Make noise. Never ever turn your back.
But knowing the rules and applying them when a hundred-and-fifty-pound cat was thirty feet away and closing were two very different things.
"Don't move," she said, though she wasn't sure if she was talking to Gideon or herself.
The cougar stepped out of the brush and into the gap between the trees. It was a male—broad head, thick neck, shoulders rolling with muscle that made the enhanced soldiers she'd fought look like amateurs. Its eyes locked on her with the flat focus of a predator that had a made a decision.
The animal took another step. Then another. Each one unhurried. It wasn't charging. It was closing distance, eliminating Zadie’s options one step at a time.
And it was working. The slope of the ravine was to her left. The deadfall behind her. The cluster of fir to her right was too tight to move through quickly. The cougar had put her in a corner without her realizing it until she was already there.
She was a cyber analyst. The one who sat behind screens and found patterns in data and broke encryptions that other people built. She wasn't the one who dealt with apex predators in the backcountry. That was Scout. Scout would've read this terrain five minutes ago and never let herself get boxed in.
But Scout wasn't here.
"Zadie." Gideon's voice came from her right. He'd moved—slowly, deliberately—and was now standing with about ten feet between them. He had a rock in one hand. A big one. And he looked like a man who'd never thrown a rock at a living thing in his life but was fully committed to the concept. "When I throw this, you move toward me. Fast."
"If you miss?—"
"I won't miss. It's a cat, not a firewall."
"Firewalls don’t move as fast as a cat does," she whispered.
