And this time, it's not just to shake the town?—
It's to bury it.
26
LOGAN
The bullet graze on Sloane's thigh is a perfect line, mocking me with its precision.
Clean entry, clean exit. Just like we trained. Just like Granger always did.
I trace my fingers around the edge.
The perfectionist in me wants to admire the shot—tactical perfection, accounting for wind resistance and bullet drop at that distance.
But the man in me, the one who held Sloane while Eli patched her leg, that man wants to put my fist through the person who fired the shot.
The town square has emptied now. The curious onlookers dispersed, leaving only ghosts of their presence—a discarded coffee cup, bootprints in the morning frost, the echo of whispered fears.
The package that started it all is gone too, swept away by Ryker's careful hands.
But I still hear the shot.
It rings in my ears like tinnitus, a high, clean note that won't fade. Not just the sound—themoment.
The split second when Sloane's body jerked, when blood bloomed on her jeans, when my heart stopped because I thought?—
No. Don't go there.
My eyes sweep the rooftops automatically, checking angles, noting reflections in windowpanes that shouldn't catch light this time of day.
Old habits, ingrained deeper than muscle memory. The kind that kept me alive through three tours and one betrayal.
But it's not the logistics eating at me now.
It's that damn file Dana showed us.
That picture.
Thatface.
Granger, standing behind Colonel Richards like a faithful shadow. Both in dress uniform, both wearing the kind of smiles that never reached their eyes. The timestamp in the corner puts it two years after Echo-13. After the "accident." After everything went to hell.
How?
My hands clench against the windowsill, knuckles white with tension. How did Granger walk away from that desert clean? How did he step back into formation like nothing had changed, like he hadn't put bullets in his own team?
LikeIhadn't made the call that broke us all.
"Logan?"
Sloane's voice cuts through my spiral. She's at Dana's desk, helping inventory the shop's security footage. Even injured, she moves with purpose—albeit slower, favoring her right leg. Her fingers fly over the keyboard, turning chaos into data points, violence into puzzle pieces.
I don't answer, but I watch her reflection in the glass.
She's not the woman who stumbled onto my porch anymore. Not the journalist with too many secrets and not enough trust. Now she's... something else. Something that terrifies me more than any sniper scope.
She believes in me.
