Page 68 of Collateral Damage
He pauses at the door, hand on the iron frame, and looks back once. It’s not just a glance; it’s an inventory, as if he’s committing the shadows across my face to memory. Then the latch clicks, the door groans against the storm, and my protector is gone again.
The cabin settles, the logs shifting under the wind, and I’m left with the dancing orange light of the hearth and the weight of everything he didn’t say.
Silas
I step off the porch, and a wall of ice immediately seals against my face, needles of frozen sleet stinging the exposed skin. My lungs seize as I draw in the sub-zero air, the scent of pine and ozone heavy in the storm. I pause, motionless, letting my senses expand into the dark. I listen for the cadence of the wind, searching for a rhythm that doesn't belong—a crunch of snow, a shift in the timber, a presence other than my own. There’s nothing but the relentless moan of the gale.
I force myself toward the shed; the frozen ground beneath my boots is like walking on glass. My muscles are a roadmap of aches, the deep, thrumming fatigue of days without real sleep making the world swim at the edges of my vision. I blink hard, rubbing at my grit-filled eyes, but the blur remains.
Inside the shed, I drop the toolbox, my hands shaking just enough to betray me. I drop to my knees, wrench in hand, and lean over the generator.
I don't have time for this. Every second the power is out, the cabin is vulnerable.
As I work, my mind rebels, dragging me back to the cabin. Ava.
Think. If Reagan attended those charity events before the clinic, he was hunting long before she ever knew his name. If he’s trained—if he has that kind of discipline—he wouldn't have just stumbled onto her. He would have mapped her. He would have stood in her foyer, smiled at her guests, and memorized the blind spots in her security while she poured him a drink.
I finish with the spark plug housing, my hands numb, and move to the voltage regulator. My thoughts fracture, splitting down the middle. One half of my brain is back at her estate, measuring the tension of the perimeter fence, counting the seconds it would take to bypass the garage sensors; the other half is back in the Cascades, the phantom weight of a rifle still pressing into my shoulder, the smell of damp pine needles and cordite rising to meet me.
I stop, my breath hitching as it leaves my lungs in a thick, white plume. I close my eyes, my forehead resting against the cold casing of the engine.
"Father," I whisper, the words barely audible over the howl of the storm. "I don't have the margin for mistakes. Give me what I lack."
I breathe out an Amen, the word ghosting into the darkness. I tighten my grip on the wrench, shifting my angle.
I squint. Sure I’m seeing something that can’t be true.
The governor linkage isn’t sitting right.
I lean closer, my breath hitching in my chest. The metal is dull, coated in a fine layer of frost, but the adjustment screw is exposed. It has been backed off—just enough. It’s a clean, deliberate turn. Not enough to stop the engine immediately, but enough to starve it under load, ensuring it would die the moment the system demanded power.
A tremor of pure, freezing clarity rips through my exhaustion.
Behind me, the shed door creaks—then shuts with a quiet, deliberate click.
I suck in a breath.
Instinct takes over. I don't look back. I dive, my shoulder hitting the frozen dirt, just as the air behind me shrieks.
Lead punches through the thick oak of the door, carving irregular holes exactly where my chest had been a heartbeat before.
Ava
I freeze, every muscle turning to ice. I strain to hear, waiting for the sound again—a snap, a thud, a voice—but the wind only howls through the eaves in hollow whistles.
Nothing. But my body refuses to settle. My nervous system is screaming, firing the same frantic signals I see on a monitor when a patient’s heart slips into its final chaotic rhythm.
Dread pools in my stomach, cold and heavy. My breathing is shallow, trapped high in my lungs, my shoulders aching from holding them still. Everything in me knows that sound wasn’t the wind. It had weight.
My mind churns through the worst possibilities, a clinical triage of catastrophe. What if he slipped? A concussion, a subdural hematoma—you look fine, you feel fine, then the brain swells, and you’re gone. My imagination is a cruel master. I can see the hemorrhage, the herniation, the quiet stop of a heart I’ve come to rely on more than my own.
Stop. Think. But I can’t. I know exactly how fast a life can bleed out. I know the anatomy of failure, and I can’t unknow it.
My hands shake so violently that the weapon feels slick. My chest tightens, a crushing pressure that reminds me of the moment a patient’s pupils fix and dilate, locked on a darkness I can’t reach. The air in the room feels like I’m breathing in a vacuum.
I can’t feel my fingers.
I start reciting scripture, the words disjointed, a desperate rhythm against the rising panic. “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life...” I swallow hard, my throat raw. I tighten my grip on the gun, squeezing my eyes shut. “When I am afraid, I put my trust in You.”
