But I'm still breathing. He brought me to this cabin instead of putting me in the ground.
I force my attention away from my name and back to the rest of the ledger. I refuse to let blind panic win. I need to understandthe man who kicked my front door off its hinges. I look for a data pattern, because analyzing chaotic information is what I do.
That's what makes me the best in the Treasury Department.
I trace my finger up the columns of black ink, scanning the completion status of the previous hits.
Entry forty-two.Target: Nadia Rostova.Status: Incomplete. Entry thirty-eight.Target: Maria Costello.Status: Incomplete. Entry twenty-one.Target: Sarah Jenkins.Status: Incomplete.
I do the math in my head, the numbers sliding into place. Forty-six total contracts. Forty-three dead men. Forty-three times Wyatt Harrison looked through a high-powered scope, took the shot, and collected the massive syndicate payout without hesitation.
But there were three contracts on women. And three times, he refused to pull the trigger. He walked away from millions of dollars to keep them alive.
There's a code of ethics buried underneath all that lethal violence.
I flip all the way back to the first page. The very first entry in the ledger.
It's different from the rows that follow. The handwriting is jagged, violent. The black ink is pressed so hard into the paper it nearly tears through the thick page. There is no syndicate payout listed. Just a man's name, heavily crossed out with vicious, overlapping strokes, and a single sentence scrawled in the margin.
Target was a federal witness. The broker lied.
Beneath that, traced in deep capital letters:BROKER CHAIN INCOMPLETE.
The scattered pieces of the puzzle suddenly snap together with absolute, terrifying clarity. He isn't taking these syndicate contracts for the money. He doesn't care about the payouts. He's taking the hits to reveal the phantom men who issuethem. He's systematically working his way up the dark-money chain, hunting the specific broker who set him up to murder an innocent man four years ago.
He's a man driven by vengeance and guilt.
A hard knock hits the heavy timber door.
I don't flinch. I close the folder and leave it resting exactly where it is, stark and visible on the wooden table.
I walk to the door and throw the deadbolt.
Wyatt steps inside. The frigid mountain air rolls off his shoulders, carrying the scent of pine. He pushes the door shut behind him.
His eyes drop to the table. He sees the manila folder.
He stops dead.
Every muscle in his frame locks down. The air in the cabin turns lethally quiet. He doesn't reach for the weapon at his hip. He doesn't move toward me. He just stands there, a towering wall of violence, waiting for me to run.
"You went through my gear." His voice is a low rumble.
"I'm an auditor left alone with an open drag bag." I hold his gaze. "What would you have done?"
A slow smile cracks the hard line of his mouth. He reaches up, rubbing the back of his neck in a brief, unexpected flash of charm.
"Exactly the same thing."
The smile vanishes. The heavy, lethal gravity returns to his frame. The predator is back.
"You saw your name." It isn't a question.
"I did. And the payout." I refuse to back down an inch. I grip the edge of the scarred table, anchoring myself against the sheer force of his presence. "I also saw the three other women you refused to kill. And the note on the first page."
A muscle tics along his hard jaw. The silence in the cabin stretches, thick and suffocating. He looks away, staring at thescuffed floorboards. It isn't a tactical assessment. It's the look of a man carrying a weight so immense it is physically pulling him into the earth.
"When we got out of the military, my brother went to work for an elite team of operators. Guardian HRS." His voice is a low, rough scrape of sound. It costs him something to say the words out loud. To admit the failure to a stranger. "I took the lucrative path. A freelance hitman. Four years ago, I took a high-level contract. I was given the intel by a syndicate broker I trusted. I took the shot."
