My breath caught.
I looked at the man again.At the way he stood there like the world had just shifted beneath his feet and he hadn’t quite figured out how to stand on it again.At the way his shoulders were set—not rigid, not guarded—but… weighted.Like he was carrying something that had just become unbearable.
Something about him felt familiar in a way I couldn’t explain—like a memory half-buried, clawing to the surface.
It settled beneath my ribs and pulled tight, sharp enough to make my chest ache.
I swallowed against it, my gaze lingering on him a second too long, searching for something I couldn’t name.
But my grief was too loud.
It rose fast and merciless, swallowing every thought whole, dragging me under before I could make sense of the strange pull he left behind.
So I looked away.Folded into my own sorrow like it was the only thing left for me to do.And even as the tears blurred my vision, I could still feel him there—like something unfinished standing at the edge of my life, waiting for the moment I finally looked back.
36
The Stranger
The woman’s grief tore through the air as she screamed into the fading light.
She cradled Archie’s head, lay beside him, begging him to wake.She shook him, and let her own sorrow consume her as she tried in vain to keep him beside her.
One of the men helped her up from the ground, then literally dragged her away, his face no less tortured than hers as he looked back at where Archie lay.
I stood heavy in the silence as the woman walked away, glad that she had finally left.Because her grief was a howling, living thing.
It crawled under my skin and stayed there.
I’ve seen men die, watched life leave a person’s eyes more times than I could count.But it never bothered me like this.Because seeing her grief; the way she broke over him… The sound she made when he stopped breathing…
I dragged a hand down my face, jaw tightening.
I was glad she was gone.Because another second of that, and I would’ve put a bullet in my own head just to make it stop.
I looked down.
Archie lay on the tarmac, still in death, blood soaked through his shirt, his chest unmoving beneath the hands of men who had already started to give up.
I saw it in their faces.That shift.That quiet resignation.The moment they looked up at each other and decided to call it.
No.Not Archie.This was not the end of his story.
“Keep going.”
The words spilled out of me without warning.Flat and cold.
One of the medics looked up at me, sweat running down his temple, eyes flicking between me and the body beneath his hands.
“We’ve done all we can?—”
I pulled the gun before he finished speaking and pressed it to his forehead.
The metal clicked softly as it settled into place.
“You’re notdone,” I hissed.
The man froze.His partner went still beside him.
