Page 9 of Untamed Hunter Daddy

"Listen to that instead," I say. Still not looking at her. "The fire. The wind outside. The generator humming. Those are the sounds that are real. The metal door isn't real anymore. It's memory. Memory is loud but it can't lock."

Silence. Then, very quietly: "Memory is loud but it can't lock."

She repeats it like she's testing the words. I let the silence sit. The fire crackles. The wind pushes at the cabin and the cabin pushes back.

"Can you leave the fire going?" she asks. "I know it wastes wood. But the dark is⁠—"

"I'll keep it burning all night. Every night you're here. Don't worry about the wood. I've got a cord stacked on the porch and another in the lean-to. You won't run out of light."

I hear her exhale. Something deeper than a sigh. The quilt rustles as she lies back.

"Ryker?"

"Yeah."

"Thank you for not coming over here. When I was— if you had touched me right then I would have— I don't know what I would have done."

"I know."

"How did you know?"

I consider the truth. That I've been where she is. Not the same place, not the same kind of damage, but the same dark water where someone reaching for you feels like someone pulling you under. I consider telling her about the nights after Fallujah. I consider being that honest.

"Experience," I say instead. It's not a lie. It's just a smaller truth, and smaller truths are easier to carry at three in the morning.

"Okay. Goodnight, Ryker."

"Goodnight, Zoe."

I sit on the couch. I don't lie back down. I feed the fire every forty minutes, rebuilding it each time it sinks toward embers, keeping the room lit and warm through the long dark hours. She sleeps. Not peacefully. There are small sounds throughout the night, catches in her breathing, a soft moan once that could be pain or memory or both. But she doesn't scream again. And each time she stirs I hear her breathing change for a moment, and I know she's listening for me the same way I'm listening for her.

Present. Accounted for. On opposite sides of a room that feels smaller every hour.

The storm howls. The fire burns. And I keep watch through the longest night I've had since the desert.

5

Ryker

Day two of the storm. The satellite phone gets a signal at 6:47 in the morning, a narrow window when the wind drops long enough for the uplink to hold. I take the phone out onto the porch where the cold hits hard and dial Mason's personal line before the window closes.

He picks up on the first ring. Mason always does when one of us is in the field.

"You're late," he says. No greeting. No preamble.

"Storm knocked the signal out for eighteen hours. I'm up at the cabin."

"I know where you are. Davenport called me yesterday when you didn't check in. Said you went into the backcountry on a sweep and never came back. His words were 'your boy went into the trees and the trees kept him.' I told him that sounded about right."

"I found someone."

The silence on his end sharpens.

"From the mine operation?"

"Yeah. A woman. Ran during the raid. Bolted when the shooting started, went up instead of down. She's been alone in the backcountry for eight days. I tracked her from the eastern perimeter of the mine site. Found her in a rock hollow about six miles up, half-dead from exposure. Sprained ankle, stage two hypothermia, severe malnutrition. I brought her to the cabin."

"Name?"