Page 43 of Collateral Damage
Dessert presumably.
“I know you aren’t comfortable with this,” I say evenly, “While I’m out there, I want this within reach.”
I set it on the counter, safety on, grip angled toward her the way I showed her earlier. I don’t rush her. Rushing makes people miss details.
“You remember what I showed you?”
The slightest crinkle around her eyes gives her displeasure away. But she puts the can down and hovers her fingers over the gun, nodding.
“Good. I’ll only be a few minutes. If anything feels wrong—anything at all—you lock yourself in the bedroom and call for me. Understood?”
“Understood.”
I hold her gaze a beat longer, making sure she’s heard me, then turn for the door.
The snow is piling up exactly where Axel warned it would—against the north wall, drifting higher with every hour the wind holds its direction. It’s swallowing the cabin inch by inch.
The driveway is gone. No sign it was ever there.
I start a circuit, boots crunching through snow already knee-deep in places. Visibility is collapsing fast. Twenty feet in the gusts. Less when the wind surges and the white closes in.
If someone wanted to approach unseen, this would be the time.
Near the cabin, I rig what little warning I can. Nothing clever. Nothing that could hurt the wrong person. I run a length of line low across the lee side, tying it off to scrap metal tucked out of sight. I set another closer to the back corner, where the wind drops and sound carries truer. If it’s disturbed, it won’t stop anyone—but it’ll buy me a heartbeat.
My hand goes to the sidearm at my hip, checking its weight, its placement. Familiar. Necessary.
I check windows, corners, and the tree line where it still exists. The storm muffles everything beyond arm’s reach, sound swallowed whole. It’s the kind of quiet that hides movement rather than reveals it.
I know that feeling too well. I’ve lived it.
Lived this before.
The storm presses in the same way, the same white swallowing distance until the world shrinks to whatever stands within arm’s reach. For a moment, the cabin disappears, and the years fall away with it.
Images crash together, blurring until I can’t separate them.
Snow stings my cheeks where the mask doesn’t quite seal. It melts, refreezes, pulling tight when I move my jaw. My legs burn from holding position too long, muscles screaming for motion I won’t give them.
I raise a fist—hold—and the line freezes with me, bodies dissolving into timber and white.
We find the crash site just before dark.
I don’t know what it costs yet.
That comes later.
Days later.
Names I won’t forget.
I’ll never forget what my decision cost them.
Eleven
Ava
While Silas does whatever soldiers do, I step into the bedroom to grab a sweater. My suitcase sits open on the chair—the clothes I hastily repacked after my Denver trip inside.
