He stops. His chest rises and falls with a sharp, uneven breath.
"Two days later, the news hit the wire. The target wasn't a corrupt cartel boss. He was a federal witness operating under deep cover."
He finally meets my eyes. The devastation in his gaze is absolute. There is no defense. No justification. Just raw, bleeding guilt.
"Frost cut me off immediately. He had to. Guardian HRS operators don't harbor men who execute innocents."
Wyatt takes another slow, heavy breath, locking the emotion away behind a wall of tactical ice.
"I spent the last four years operating in the dark. Taking contracts from the same syndicate network, tracing the payouts back up the chain. Hunting the broker who set me up to murder a good man."
"But the chain is incomplete."
"They use phantom shipping manifests and encrypted crypto transfers. It's a ghost network. Every time I get close to the top, the money vanishes into a shell company." He looks at me, the harsh reality of his existence laid bare. "I didn't bring you here to hurt you. I'm waiting on my brother. He's sending a team at dawn to extract you. You'll be safe with Guardian HRS."
He expects me to pack my bag. He expects me to shrink away from the monster in the room.
I walk back to the table.
I reach into my heavy canvas go-bag and pull out the reinforced hardshell drive. I set it down on the scarred wood, right next to his manila folder.
Wyatt frowns. His gaze drops to the drive.
"What is that?"
"Fourteen months of tracing offshore shell companies, encrypted crypto transfers, and phantom shipping manifests." I press my hand flat against the hard plastic casing. "I'm a forensic accountant for the Treasury Department. I found a sanctions-evasion network, uncovered the principal, and proved the crime. That's why the broker put the contract on my life."
He goes perfectly still. The air in the cabin seems to freeze.
"The federal witness you killed four years ago." I refuse to look away from the devastation in his eyes. I don't soften the blow. He needs to hear the truth. "He was the linchpin. He was the key to cracking this network from the inside. When he died on your crosshairs, the case went completely cold. Fourteen months ago, the Treasury Department assigned me to tear the syndicate apart from the outside."
The realization hits him with the force of a physical blow. He takes a half-step back, his boots heavy against the floorboards. He didn't just kill an innocent man. He protected the syndicate by taking out a key witness against them.
"We're hunting the same people." I look up at him. For fourteen months, I've lived entirely alone. I've trusted no one. Giving him this data means tethering my survival completely to a man who was handed a contract to end my life.
It is a terrifying leap of faith. But survival demands calculated risks.
"You have the operational capability." I step closer, closing the distance between us, shedding the final layer of my isolation. The heat radiating from his massive frame washes over me. "And I have the data to burn their empire to the ground."
I pull my hand away from the hard drive, leaving it resting on the scarred wood right next to his hit ledger. Two pieces of the same puzzle.
"Will you work it with me?"
FIVE
The Long Night
WYATT
The LED lantern casts a stark, white circle of light over the scarred wooden table. Beyond the reach of the beam, the cabin is swallowed by the thick darkness of the Bighorn Mountains.
I stand by the window, staring out into the black timber, but my focus is entirely on the woman sitting behind the glow of the screen.
Addy is a weapon.
I've spent four years hunting the broker's network. Four years kicking in doors, tearing apart hard drives, and executing contracts just to get a single scrap of intel. It was a war of violent attrition fought in the shadows.
She's dismantling the entire network with a ruggedized laptop and a spreadsheet.
