The kitten on my lap stirred at my sudden tension. I stroked its tiny head to settle both of us. "From the beginning? When you took this job?"
"Before the job," Ellie said. She resumed wrapping my ankle, her touch gentle despite the weight of what she was telling me. "Alex came to Kara with her plan. Told us everything."
My journalist brain catalogued this information even as my heart raced. They'd known. They'd all known exactly who Alex was, what she'd done, what she was planning. And they'd agreed to help her anyway.
"How long have you all known each other?" I asked.
"Since we were eighteen," Cam said, her words measured as always.
"We met in basic training," Ellie added. "After high school. Three scared kids who didn't know what the hell we were doing. Plus Alex, of course. She's never been afraid a day in her life, I don't think."
Something in her tone suggested there was more to that story, but she didn't elaborate.
I tried to picture them at eighteen—Kara, Ellie, and Cam fresh out of high school, walking into a world designed to break them down and rebuild them. And Alex, already carrying the weight of her family name, already knowing things about violence that basic training couldn't teach.
"So you've known each other, like, a decade or something?"
Ellie gave me a small smile. "Fourteen years, if you're looking for exact numbers, Ms. Reporter."
I felt heat rush to my cheeks. "Old habits die hard."
"We're the same age you are, Sabine." Ellie's smile widened slightly. "Thirty-two. Though Kara likes to pretend she's the mature one because her birthday is before any of us."
The detail felt absurdly normal—the kind of thing friends teased each other about over drinks. I'd been thinking of them as my captors, my protectors, these untouchable operatives. But they were just women my age who'd grown up together.
Cam shifted her weight, drawing my attention back to her. "Not much we don't know about each other."
I absorbed this, thinking about the level of trust that must exist between them. Fourteen years. These women had shared more than a decade of their lives, probably seen each other at their worst and their best. The kind of bond that couldn't be faked or manufactured. The kind of bond that meant when Alex said she needed help, they didn't hesitate.
"So this assignment," I said carefully, "protecting me..."
"Protecting you protects Alex," Ellie finished for me, her eyes still focused on wrapping my ankle. "We take it seriously."
Cam moved closer, her presence solid and reassuring despite my lingering confusion and fear. She crouched down to my eye level, resting her forearms onher knees. The vulnerability of the position wasn't lost on me—she was making herself smaller, less threatening, meeting me where I was.
"If anyone tries to hurt you," she said, her voice low and certain.
"They will die before they touch you," Ellie interrupted, looking up from my ankle to meet my eyes.
The simple declaration sent a chill through me. Not because I doubted her, but because I absolutely believed her. There was no bravado in her words, no threat. Just a statement of fact, as immutable as gravity.
The kitten stretched in my lap, tiny paws extending toward my stomach before curling back into a ball of contentment, unaware of the deadly promises being made around it.
I couldn't stay angry with them. Not when they looked at me like this, not when Ellie's hands were so gentle on my healing ankle, not when Cam had positioned herself at eye level instead of looming over me. They could have been cruel. They could have treated me like cargo, like a problem to solve.
Instead, they'd given me my favorite foods and let me keep the stray kittens and washed my hair when I couldn't stand on my own.
"You could have told me," I said finally, my voice quieter than I intended.
Ellie finished wrapping my ankle and looked up at me. "Would you have believed us?"
She had a point. I wouldn't have.
"I still don't understand why Alex kept her identity from me," I admitted.
Cam settled back on her heels. "Not our story to tell."
The three of us sat in silence for a moment, the only sounds the soft mewling of kittens and my own breathing. I stroked the tiny ball of fur in my lap, feeling its heartbeat against my fingertips.
