I moved to the window, peering into the darkness. The woods revealed nothing—no movement, no sign of Evelyn or whoever might be following her—only the silent sentinels of pine trees and the distant glimmer of stars emerging above them.
The glass was cold against my forehead as I leaned into the glass, exhaustion suddenly pressing down on my shoulders. Alex appeared behind me, and his hands came to rest on either side of my waist. Neither of us spoke as he pressed his chest against my back, his chin finding the curve where my neck met my shoulder.
He asked a direct question. "You're thinking about what we've lost?"
I covered one of his hands with mine. "I'm thinking about what we can't afford to lose."
He turned me gently until we faced each other, the window at my back. His fingers traced the line of my jaw with unexpected tenderness.
"I've spent eighteen months looking backward," he said quietly. "Even when I was with you in Tahiti, I was still looking back, searching for something. But now..."
"Now?" I prompted, though I already knew.
"Now, I've got nothing left to find, and I'm terrified of the future, but I'm looking toward it anyway. With you."
We shared a brief but essential kiss—an affirmation rather than a distraction from the danger around us. When we separated, the world hadn't changed, but something in me had shifted—a realignment of purpose that went beyond duty or justice into something more personal.
Behind us, a rustle of papers and the soft click of laptop keys indicated Alex was already processing what we'd learned. Marcus methodically checked every lock and blind in the cabin while Miles unpacked supplies with mechanical precision. Each of us retreated to what we knew best in the face of overwhelming uncertainty.
We gathered slowly around the dining table, drawn by some unspoken gravity. Four men connected by circumstance and choice, now sitting in judgment of our own futures.
Alex broke the silence. "This isn't only about us anymore. Innocent people have died already." He choked up briefly. If Asphodel goes live next month—many more will."
"People we'll never meet." Marcus wasn't dismissive, but he acknowledged the abstract nature of our situation. "For a cause we stumbled into by accident."
Miles looked up from his hands. "Does that make their lives worth less?"
"We're not off the grid anymore," I said, looking at each of their faces in turn. "We're in the crosshairs."
Chapter eighteen
Alex
Icouldn'tstopreplayingthemoment Evelyn walked out the door. Michael's shoulders tensed. Something unspoken had passed between them—a silent recognition between two people who understood what it meant to carry a burden that could kill you.
I traced the edge of Evelyn's flash drive with a fingertip. I'd plugged it into my laptop. The contents sprawled across my screen—thousands of documents, each a nail in Project Asphodel's coffin if we lived long enough to hammer them in.
Marcus sat in the corner armchair, his service weapon disassembled on a cloth spread across his knees. He cleaned each piece with surgical precision, the smell of gun oil sharp in my nostrils.
Miles paced near the window, scrolling through his phone with tense thumb swipes. Occasionally, he paused to peer between the curtains, his breath fogging the glass.
Marcus looked up momentarily. "Anything? I left a coded voicemail for James before we left Seattle. Just in case we disappear, he'll know to get Mom out of town if things go sideways."
Miles shook his head. "No cell signal. Internet's crawling. I tried texting Matthew earlier, just in case there was even a flicker of signal. Nothing."
"Good. That means we're hard to find."
I turned back to my laptop, trying to compile everything we'd learned into some coherent narrative—our statement of purpose. My academic training pushed me to organize, categorize, and find a pattern to make sense of the chaos.
Unfortunately, my fingers hesitated over the keys. How does one distill mass surveillance and algorithmic execution into bullet points and paragraphs? Words were inadequate to explain the potential human toll.
Michael moved silently to stand behind my chair, and his voice startled me." You okay?"
"Just trying to..." I gestured vaguely at the screen. "Frame it all."
Miles abandoned his window vigil and dropped onto the sagging couch across from us. "So what's the play? We've got the flash drive, but what do we do with it?"
None of us had ventured beyond the theoretical since Evelyn left. The reality of our situation—four men against an invisible empire—was absurd on the surface.
