Because Harper’s face was there, steady in my mind, her voice whisperingtogether.She needed me whole. Not just a soldier dripping with fury, but the man she trusted to come back.
I checked my watch. Dawn was barely past, but the forest already felt like a battlefield. “We head north. Keep low, keep moving. Find high ground and call in for extraction. We can’t drag this out.”
Cyclone gave a short nod, Gideon pushing back to his feet. River yanked Sable upright again, his grip iron on the prisoner’s arm.
I took point, rifle raised, senses sharp. Every step forward was one step closer back to her.
And I’d burn through hell itself before I let Redwood steal that from us.
94
Harper
The hours stretched like chains.
I sat at the kitchen table, my hands wrapped around a mug gone cold, staring at the clock until the numbers blurred. Every tick was another reminder: Carter was out there, and I was here. Waiting.
I’d never hated waiting more in my life.
I tried pacing. I tried tidying the same counter three times. I even tried to sleep, but the moment I closed my eyes, gunfire filled the dark and I jolted awake with a gasp.
It wasn’t just fear—it was knowing this wasn’t some random mission halfway across the world. This wasbecause of me.My name on a list. My face in the wrong hands. My life turned into bait.
And yet, even with that truth clawing at me, I knew one thing with absolute certainty: Carter wouldn’t stop. Not until he got back to me. Not until this was over.
I pressed the mug to my chest, whispering into the quiet, “You promised, Carter. Always.”
The fire popped in the hearth, but the cabin still felt too big, too empty without him in it. My eyes drifted toward thewindow again, to the treeline where fog curled low like smoke.
Every sound outside made my heart leap—an engine, a branch snapping, even the hoot of an owl. But none of it was him.
Still, I held on to that vow like it was oxygen.
Because I had to believe the next sound I heard would be his boots on the steps, his voice calling my name.
And when it came, I’d never let go.
95
Harper
By the second night without word, the silence wasn’t just heavy—it was suffocating.
I sat cross-legged on the floor near the fire, my notebook open in my lap, though the page was still blank. I’d thought writing might calm me, might steady the storm inside, but the pen never touched paper.
Because all I could think about was Carter.
The way his jaw had tightened when he said they’d move Sable at dawn. The steel in his eyes when he pressed the rifle into the man’s back. The brief brush of his hand against mine before he left, quick and fierce, like he’d poured a promise into that one touch.
I held on to that touch now, replaying it over and over.
But underneath it was the gnawing truth: Redwood wasn’t just a name anymore. It was real. Alive. A network strong enough to send men into the mountains after us. And Carter had walked straight into their fire with nothing but his team, his rifle, and his vow to me.
I curled forward, pressing my forehead to my knees. “Come back to me,” I whispered into the folds of my shirt. “I don’t care how broken, how bloodied. Just come back.”
The words cracked, but saying them out loud steadied me somehow.
Because I couldn’t just be the woman who waited in silence, drowning in fear. I had to be the woman he’d see when he walked back through that door—the one strong enough to stand at his side, no matter what truths he carried with him.
