Chapter 14
GABE
The lodge appears through the trees like salvation, familiar and solid against the morning light. Sarah kills the engine and for a moment we just sit there, the silence broken only by the tick of cooling metal and our own ragged breathing.
"Inside," Sarah says finally. "We need to verify the upload, coordinate with Tommy, and figure out what Crane's next move will be."
We move stiffly, adrenaline crash hitting hard. Mara's hands shake as she opens the truck door. I catch her elbow, steadying her. Her face is pale except for the angry red scratches from the granite chips, small cuts that have stopped bleeding but will bruise.
"You did good," I tell her quietly.
"I shot someone." The words come out flat. "Maybe killed him."
"You saved Sarah's life. He was hunting her."
"That doesn't make it feel better."
I don't have an answer for that. Nothing makes taking a life feel better, justified or not. The weight just becomes something you carry.
Inside, the lodge feels different. Safer, maybe, or just familiar in a way that matters after facing death on a frozen mountainside. Zeke's already there, along with Nate and Zara. They must have come straight from their positions.
"Tommy confirmed the upload," Zeke says without preamble. "Files hit every destination. FBI's already issuing statements about opening an investigation. Three major news outlets are running stories. It's done—the evidence is public."
My legs go weak. I sit down hard on the nearest chair.
"Crane?" Sarah asks.
"Pulled back from Grotto Falls. We lost track of him after that—he's in the wind.
" Nate moves to the window, checking angles out of habit.
"But with the files public, he's got bigger problems than us.
The Committee's exposed. They'll be too busy managing the fallout to come after individual targets. "
"For now," Sarah adds, pulling out her phone. "Let me check in with Rhett and Colton."
While she makes the call, I watch Mara. She's set her rifle carefully in the corner, moved to the kitchen sink to wash the blood from her face.
Her hands are steadier now but still trembling slightly.
Zara appears beside her with a first aid kit, begins cleaning the cuts without saying anything.
Sometimes silence is better than empty reassurance.
My phone buzzes. Unknown number. My thumb hovers over the decline button, then I answer. "Andrews."
"Gabriel." Crane's voice, but different now. Strained. Controlled fury barely leashed. "You've made a serious mistake."
"Have I? Because from where I'm standing, you're the one whose entire operation just got exposed to the world."
"The Committee will survive this. We always do. Bureaucracies have short memories and even shorter attention spans. In six months, this will be yesterday's news and we'll be back to business as usual."
"Maybe. But you won't be there to see it."
Silence stretches across the connection. When Crane speaks again, his voice is cold. "This isn't over between us."
"Yes, it is. You've got nothing left to threaten me with. The evidence is public. Mara's safe. My sister's safe. You can't touch any of us without drawing attention you can't afford."
"There are always ways, Gabriel. Always pressure points that can be exploited."
"Then I suggest you focus on the pressure points currently tearing apart your organization instead of the ones you've already lost." I pause. "This is me walking away, Crane. I suggest you do the same before what's left of the Committee decides you're too much of a liability to keep around."
I hang up before he can respond. The phone feels heavy in my hand.
Sarah finishes her call, crosses to me. "Rhett and Colton are secure. They got the evidence from the bank—turns out you set up multiple boxes under different names, each with partial copies. Smart. Redundant. Very you."
"I don't remember doing it."
"Your subconscious did. The part of you that was planning to survive even if your conscious mind didn't make it." She studies my face. "You okay?"
"Crane just called. Made threats he can't back up anymore."
"Wounded predator syndrome. He's got nothing left but bluster." But her eyes are sharp, assessing. "We should still watch our backs. Desperate men make dangerous choices."
Zeke's phone rings. He answers, listens, his expression shifting from neutral to grim.
"Understood. Keep us posted." He hangs up, looks at us.
"That was my contact at the FBI. They've issued arrest warrants for seventeen people connected to the Committee, including Crane.
Federal marshals are coordinating raids right now across four states. "
"It's really over," Mara says from the kitchen, disbelief in her voice.
"The immediate threat is," Nate corrects. "But the Committee had connections, resources, people who won't take kindly to their operation being exposed. This isn't finished—it's just entering a new phase."
"Which we'll face when it comes," Sarah says firmly. "Right now, we need rest, food, and time to process. We've been running on adrenaline and fear for days. Our bodies and minds need recovery time."
She's right, but part of me resists the idea of standing down, of lowering my guard even slightly. The hyper-vigilance that kept me alive is hard to switch off.
Zara and Nate leave first, Nate promising to coordinate with his contacts about monitoring any remaining Committee activity. Zeke follows shortly after, citing a mountain of paperwork that comes with having federal agents crawling all over his jurisdiction.
Sarah lingers by the door. "I need to head back to Montana, debrief with Victoria Cross and the Echo Ridge team.
But Gabe..." She pauses, choosing words carefully.
"Your memory isn't coming back because you're not letting it.
You built those psychological barriers for protection, but you don't need them anymore.
The threat's contained. You can stop hiding from yourself. "
"What if I don't like what I remember?"
"Then you deal with it. You're not the man you were three months ago anyway—trauma and amnesia changed you. The question is whether you want to integrate your past with your present or keep them separate forever."
After she leaves, the lodge feels too quiet. Mara's in the kitchen making coffee, the familiar routine of scooping grounds and measuring water. Normal actions that feel surreal after the morning's violence.
"You should rest," I tell her.
"So should you."
"I'm not the one who got hit by a blast wave and dragged through a firefight."
"No, you're just the one who's been carrying this entire situation on your shoulders for days while your memory slowly tears itself apart." She pours two mugs, slides one across the counter to me. "We're both wrecked, Gabe. Let's at least be wrecked together."
The coffee tastes like bitter salvation. I wrap my hands around the mug, letting the heat seep into my palms. "I killed two of Crane's men. Maybe three. I don't know if the one I shot in the parking lot survived."
"Does it bother you?"
"Not as much as it should. That's what bothers me." I meet her eyes. "They were trying to kill us, trying to kill you, and I didn't hesitate. Didn't question. Just put them down like it was routine."
"Because it was routine. For whoever you were before." Her voice is gentle but honest. "You were a soldier, Gabe. That training doesn't just disappear because you forgot specific memories. The muscle memory, the tactical instincts—those are deeper than conscious thought."
"Sarah said I'm not letting my memories return. That I built the amnesia as protection but don't need it anymore."
"Do you believe her?"
I consider the question while the lodge settles around us, wood expanding in warming air, the subtle sounds of a building at rest. "I don't know.
Part of me wants to remember everything—who I was, what I did, the person I used to be.
But another part..." I trail off, searching for words.
"Another part is afraid that person isn't someone I want to be anymore. "
"You're not who you were. You get to choose who you are now." She sets down her coffee. "The past happened. You can't change that. But you don't have to let it own you either."
I can't argue with that. Don't want to.
"I think I need to sleep," I admit. "Really sleep, not just close my eyes and replay the firefight in my head."
"Bed or couch?"
"Couch. I don't want to be alone in a room if the nightmares come."
She doesn't argue, just pulls a blanket from the closet and spreads it over the couch cushions. I collapse onto it, suddenly exhausted beyond measure. The adrenaline that's been carrying me has burned out completely, leaving only the bone-deep fatigue of survival.
Mara settles into the chair across from me, her own mug of coffee cradled in both hands. "I'll be right here. If you need anything, just say."
"Stay," I manage before exhaustion pulls me under. "Just stay."
I wake to afternoon light slanting through the windows and the smell of something cooking.
Mara's in the kitchen, her back to me as she stirs something on the stove.
The rifle's gone from the corner—probably locked back in its case where it belongs.
Normal is slowly reassembling itself from the fragments of chaos.
My phone shows three missed calls from Sarah and a text:
FBI wants to interview you. I bought you 48 hours. Rest first, then we'll figure out the debrief.
Forty-eight hours. Two days to process everything that's happened, to decide how much of the truth I want to share with federal investigators. The Committee's exposed, but there are still classified operations, still secrets that could get people killed if they became public.
"You're awake." Mara turns, a slight smile softening her face. "How do you feel?"
"Like I got hit by a truck, dragged behind it for a mile, then asked to run a marathon."
"So, normal post-adrenaline crash. Good." She ladles soup into bowls—vegetable beef from a can, nothing fancy. "You need food. Real food. Not just coffee."
The soup tastes better than it has any right to. I eat mechanically at first, then with more awareness as my body wakes up to the fact that it's been running on empty for too long.
Halfway through the bowl, it hits—a memory fragment so vivid it stops my spoon mid-motion.
A kitchen. Different from this one, smaller, warmer somehow.
A woman with grey hair and kind eyes, flour dusting her hands.
Sarah younger, maybe sixteen, watching intently as the woman demonstrates something.
"Patience," the woman says. "That's the secret to good soup.
You can't rush it." Her eyes find mine across the room.
"Gabe?" Mara's voice pulls me back. "What is it?"
"Memory. My grandmother's kitchen. She was teaching Sarah to cook." I press my palm against my forehead. "It just came. Clear as anything."
"That's good, right? A sign your brain is starting to let go?"
"Maybe." The fragment sits strangely in my mind, familiar but foreign. A piece of someone else's life that's somehow mine. "It doesn't feel like my memory. Feels like watching someone else's home movie."
"Give it time. The more memories that come back, the more they'll feel like yours."
I finish the soup in silence, processing the memory and what it means.
My grandmother existed. Sarah had a life with her that included me.
There's a history there, relationships and moments that shaped who I became, all of it locked behind walls I built to protect information that's now public anyway.
My phone buzzes. News alert: brEAKING: Federal Raids Target Covert Operations Group. Multiple Arrests.
I show it to Mara. She reads it, then looks up at me. "It's really over. The Committee, Crane, all of it."
"The immediate threat is. But Sarah's right—this isn't finished. There will be trials, testimony, people looking for revenge or trying to cover their own involvement. We bought ourselves time and safety, but we didn't end the war."
"Then what did we do?"
"Survived." The word feels inadequate but true. "We survived when they wanted us dead. Everything else comes after that."
Later, after the sun sets and the lodge settles into evening quiet, Mara and I sit on the couch with coffee and silence and the weight of everything that's happened. The fire crackles in the hearth, orange light dancing across the walls.
"What happens now?" she asks.
"FBI debrief in two days. After that..." I trail off. The future stretches out, uncertain but possible. "I don't know. Depends on what they want from me, what charges they might bring, whether the amnesia complicates legal proceedings."
"And if they don't charge you? If this actually ends with you walking away free?"
The question catches me off guard. I've been so focused on immediate survival that I haven't let myself think about what comes after. A future where I'm not running, not hiding, not looking over my shoulder for the next threat.
"I guess I'll figure out how to be a person again instead of just a problem that needs solving." I look at her, firelight catching the copper in her hair. "Maybe I'll stick around Glacier Hollow. See what it's like to live somewhere instead of just hiding there."
"The lodge could use help. Someone who knows their way around repairs and can handle a rifle when the occasional bear gets too curious."
"Is that an offer?"
"Might be. Depending on whether you're planning to stick around or if you've got other places calling you."
I think about that—other places, other options. Sarah and the Echo Ridge team in Montana. Former contacts who might still remember me. A whole world I used to know that exists outside this mountain lodge.
But none of it pulls at me the way Mara's question does.
"I don't have anywhere else to be," I tell her. "And I think I'd like to find out who I am when I'm not running or fighting."
"Stay then. Figure it out here."
"What if I never figure it out?"
"Then you stay anyway." She shifts closer on the couch. "I'm not asking for answers, Gabe. I'm just asking you not to leave."
The simplicity of it cuts through all the complexity. Not promises about the future or declarations about feelings. Just stay. Don't leave. Be here.
"Okay," I say. "I'll stay."
Outside, snow begins to fall again, covering the mountain. Inside, the fire burns low. Mara's hand finds mine in the darkness between us.
I don't pull away.