The storm thickened by the time I pull the sat phone from its case. The signal flickers, weak and erratic, but steady enough to make the call. My gloves hang from my teeth while I punch in the secure line, the old number buried deep in my memory. Static gnaws at the air, then a voice answers, clipped and formal, too careful to be anything but government.
“Cross.”
I don’t bother with pleasantries. “I have Brenner. Alive. Another one dead. You want them, you’ll take them off my hands. Away from my place.”
The voice hesitates, then gives me coordinates. A cave system above the ridge, remote and shielded from the storm. The tone is cautious, as if they know better than to press. I give no confirmation, just kill the line and tuck the phone away. My blood hums, not with relief but with the dread of knowing I’ve sounded a bell that will never fall silent.
Brenner is half-conscious when I drag him from the woodshed. Rope still bites his wrists, his weight deadened with exhaustion. I wrap him in blankets, enough to keep him alive until the handoff. Weber’s body is stiff and cold; I lash himbeside Brenner. The sled groans under the burden. I hitch it to the snowmobile, breath pluming white as I secure the knots. The machine roars to life, coughing smoke into the night, and I point its nose toward the ridge.
The ride is brutal. Wind lashes my face, like diamond dust cutting at exposed skin. The sled drags heavy, the dead and the living bound together, both destined for judgment neither will escape. The storm swallows sound, muffling the engine to a low growl. The mountain looms, black and indifferent, watching as I drag ghosts across its spine.
The cave system yawns from the ridge like an open throat. Shadows writhe along its walls, lanterns stuttering in the hands of the men waiting. I cut the engine and let the silence test me, dragging Brenner from the sled, and shoving him forward. He stumbles, falls to his knees, then rises again, eyes dead but defiant. Weber’s body follows, rolled unceremoniously from the sled to the snow. A man marks it down, businesslike, as if recording livestock.
The cave settles into its own silence. Melted snow beads off the basalt and vanishes on the stone, as if the hollow is swallowing its heartbeat. I kill the engine and let the quiet test me. No chatter. No wind. Only a drip counting seconds. I wait. Thirty. Sixty. Ninety. My hand settles on the rifle, finger straight, safety on. Headlamp off. I want their light before they see mine.
A pale beam skates across the ceiling and wakes a scatter of sleeping wings… bats erupt, wings snapping once before the dark swallows them. Two figures break the haze. I count boot prints, not bodies. Four impressions where there should be two. They brought a sled of their own or they are not alone. I stand in the open and let them measure me. The dead will ride in tow, bagged and tied. Brenner sits upright under blankets, eyes flat, rope snug around his wrists. He will not run. Not here.
We trade the codes the troopers insisted on, vowels clipped by cold. They ask for proof of life. Brenner answers with my words in his mouth. He knows what happens if he lies. A radio on their chest hisses once. I watch their throats when they listen. No flinch. No surprise. Professionals. One reaches for the sled and I let him, but I track the other one’s hands. He palms the tarp, pauses, peels it back two inches, checks the corpse, then seals it. He is careful. I respect careful. I do not trust it.
The snow under my boots pitches with hidden ice. A gust knifes down the throat of the cave and carries a grit that feels like old smoke. Somewhere water moves beyond the dark shelf, slow and patient, a river gnawing the mountain from the inside. If they try anything, that current will take these men and a secret before dawn. I position my body so the wind is at my back and their lamps blind them. My shadow climbs the wall and looks like something with antlers.
“Sign here,” the talker says, pen shaking in a mittened hand. I do not take it. I touch my thumb to the paper, leave a smear of grease and blood. He accepts it. He's seen worse. We make the exchange. Brenner goes with them, silent and upright, a parcel that remembers how to kill. I give them the bagged dead and keep the knives I took from his belt. They do not ask for them. They do not ask anything at all. When their taillights vanish into blowing snow, the cave returns to its own breath and I am alone with a silence that feels wired to explode.
My boots bite into the snow, each step dragging me deeper into shadow and away from their taillights. They think they hold Brenner. They think they’ve tied off the loose end. What they do not know is that he carried more than silence. He carried a spark meant to ignite ruin, and it waits to burn through everything they touch.
A faint ping echoes in my mind, memory snapping back to the sled. A blinking light on Brenner’s gear I dismissed asfrost.The realization lands hard, settling deep. A tracker. They had trackers. The handoff was never about retrieval. It was about lighting a beacon, marking my ground for whoever wants me found. Whoever sent them knows where I am now.
A second pulse rides the wind, faint and insistent, not mine and not theirs. It lands in my chest like a nail. I follow the sound to the sled rig and strip the blankets. Nothing. I go to the snowmobile and feel under the cowling. Cold metal, warm engine, then the tick of a tiny tooth against my glove. Tracker. Not one. Two. One on the machine and one buried in the lashings that held Brenner.
Whoever hired them will have received both pings. They will know the cave. They will map the trail. They will draw a straight line to the cabin. I crush the first device under my heel as I slide the broken tracker into my pocket. It will still be too late. The signal already ran. The line is drawn.
But as I slide the broken tracker into my pocket, the sat phone vibrates once, an encrypted pulse. The same voice from before sends a string of coordinates and a single sentence: “Sweep in progress.” I picture black-hulled snowcats climbing the lower trails, thermal scopes cutting through the white. The handoff wasn’t just a trap for me; it’s a net closing on them. For the first time since the cave, a sliver of relief cuts through the cold. They won’t reach the cabin tonight.
The storm rages, but the cold I carry is worse. I remember the last time I tried to save someone. A boy, barely eighteen, bleeding out in my arms overseas. I had pressed my hands to his chest, whispering lies that he would make it. His eyes dimmed anyway, fading while I begged him to stay. My silence after that became punishment. A vow carved into bone. Speak less. Feel less. Live less. If I stayed quiet, maybe no one else would die in my hands.
Caryn cracked that silence open. Her voice, her defiance, her surrender. The way she says my name like it carries weight. She pulled me out of the grave I dug for myself, and now every sound from her mouth burrows under my skin. I can no longer pretend she is just bait. She is the fire, and I am already burning.
By the time I reach the cabin again, the storm has swallowed the path behind me. The snowmobile is half-buried, its growl fading into the gale. My boots crunch against ice as I climb the steps. Then I see her.
Caryn stands in the doorway, blanket wrapped around her, rifle in hand, body rigid with fear and fury. Her hair lashes around her face, eyes blazing with something I cannot name. She was ready to come for me. Ready to face whatever waited in the white. The sight of her, framed by the storm and firelight, shatters something in me I thought long dead.
The door stands open a palm’s width. The wind tugs at it like a thief. She fills the gap in a stance that would make any instructor proud. Feet planted. Cheek welded to the stock. Breath steady. The rifle finds my chest, then lifts to my face when she recognizes the shape I cut in the snow. She lowers it, but not all the way. Her hands do not shake. Her eyes pin me the way I pin a target.
The sight of her waiting there unravels something I didn’t know I still had. I have bled in snow and deserts. I have buried good men. None of it reached this place. I walk into the muzzle and let it touch my coat. I want the cold ring printed on me. I want the lesson it carries.
I step inside, close the door, and the silence hits harder than the wind. She opens her mouth, but no words come. None are needed. I take the rifle from her hands and set it against thewall. A tremor flickers at her throat and she opens the blanket--unafraid and welcoming. She does not see me the way she did.
My knees crash to the floor before thought can catch up with instinct. My hands clamp her hips and drag her against me, the blanket falling as if the storm itself stripped her bare. I press my face between her thighs, breath scorching the fabric until I shove it aside and find the heat I crave.
The first taste crashes through me like lightning, searing and primal, consuming me in equal parts hunger and reverence. The ache I have starved in silence explodes in the flood of her, breaking every last thread of control. Heat pours over my tongue, thick and intoxicating, her body pulsing against my mouth as I drink deeper, worshipping her like a sinner at an altar, desperate for absolution and willing to be damned for it.
Her gasp slices the air, high and broken. Her fingers knot in my hair, pulling me closer, guiding me deeper.
I devour her, tongue unyielding, hands gripping her thighs as tremors ripple through her. She tastes of raw heat and salt, of surrender and defiance twisted into one intoxicating flavor. I feast on her until her knees buckle, until her spine arches like a bow strung to breaking, until her cry splinters into my name and fills the room like a confession she cannot take back.
I don't speak. I don't need to. She can read it in what I do. That I need her. That I am lost in her. That if she ever walked away, I would burn this mountain to the ground and let the ashes choke the sky.
Her climax rips through her, a violent quake that leaves her shaking. I hold her steady, drinking every sound, every tremor, every shudder until she collapses against me. Only then do I lift my face, slick with her, eyes locking onto hers with a hunger I cannot cage.
