Chapter Twenty
Knox
The dream starts the way it always does. Dust and heat and the high whine of something mechanical failing. Kandahar, maybe.
Or Helmand. The geography stopped mattering years ago. What matters is the convoy, the sudden wrong silence before the world
tears itself apart, and the face I see through the smoke when I turn my head.
Liam. Covered in blood. Reaching for me.
Then the convoy becomes the lodge. The smoke becomes the hallway. Men in tactical gear drag Liam away while I watch, paralyzed,
unable to close the distance no matter how hard I try.
Then Hailey’s there too. They’re dragging her in the opposite direction, her mouth open in a scream I can’t hear, and I’m
standing between them unable to save either one and the explosion finally comes and—
“Knox. Knox, wake up.”
Hands on my shoulders. Gentle pressure. A voice cutting through the static.
My eyes snap open and I’m already half-sitting, muscles coiled, pulse pounding in my ears. The cabin. Stone fireplace, floor-to-ceiling
windows, white morning light spilling across the sheets. Not Afghanistan. Not the lodge.
Hailey’s face swims into focus. She’s propped on one elbow beside me, hair a mess, those dark eyes causing my chest to ache.
She’d slept between us last night—a buffer zone, a no-man’s-land—and sometime in the night she must have shifted closer to
my side.
On her other side, Liam is awake too, sitting up against the headboard, watching us in a way I can’t parse.
“You’re okay,” Hailey says. “You’re safe.”
The lie of it almost makes me laugh. None of us is safe. We’re locked in a cage by a woman who talks about murder with the
same inflection she uses to recommend wine pairings. But Hailey’s touch is warm and steady, and for a moment I let myself
believe her anyway.
“Bad dream,” I manage. My voice comes out wrecked.
“I figured that out from the thrashing.” Her thumb traces my jaw. “Want to talk about it?”
“Not particularly.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t push. Doesn’t pry. Just keeps up that slow, grounding pressure like she knows exactly what I need without
me having to explain it.
From the other side of the bed, Liam shifts. “Afghanistan?” he asks quietly, and there’s no judgment in it. Just understanding.
He has his own version of these dreams. You don’t spend years in combat zones without accumulating some ghosts.
“Yeah.”
“Those never go away.” His voice is rough with sleep. “They just get quieter.”
Something in my chest loosens at his words. At the fact that he knows. That I don’t have to explain.
“Coffee,” Hailey announces, sitting up. “I’m making some. You two stay.”
“You don’t have to—” I start.
“I want to.” She leans down and kisses my forehead—brief, almost sisterly, nothing like the way she looked at me yesterday.
Then she slides out of bed, still in the oversize T-shirt she found in the dresser, and pads toward the kitchen.
Liam and I watch her go. Neither of us moves to fill the space she left.
“So,” he says after a moment. “That was the worst night’s sleep I’ve ever had.”
“Worse than Kandahar?”
“Different kind of uncomfortable.” He scrubs a hand over his face. “I pulled a muscle in my neck trying to stay on my edge
of the mattress.”
“You could have taken the floor again.”
“And admit defeat? Never.” He meets my eyes, and there’s something almost vulnerable there. “Besides, Hailey would’ve dragged
me back by the ankle.”
I don’t have a good response to that, so I don’t try.
The coffee maker gurgles to life across the room. We can hear Hailey moving around the kitchen, the soft clink of mugs being
pulled from cabinets. Domestic sounds. Normal sounds. Completely at odds with the fact that we’re prisoners waiting for a
madwoman to decide if we live or die.
“How bad was the dream?” Liam asks. “Scale of one to ten.”
“Solid seven.”
“Seven’s rough.”
“I’ve had worse.”
“I know.” He’s quiet for a moment. “Remember Marjah? You didn’t sleep for three days after that convoy hit.”
“I slept.”
“Sitting up with your eyes half-open doesn’t count.”
“I was resting my eyes.”
“You were hallucinating from exhaustion. You called our CO ‘Mom’ during a briefing.”
The laugh surprises me, rusty and genuine. “I called him ‘ma’am.’ Not Mom.”
“Nah, we all heard Mom.”
From the kitchen, Hailey calls out, “Are you two actually bonding, or is this some kind of trauma-off?”
“Bonding,” Liam says. “Through shared suffering. It’s a military thing.”
“I’m winning the trauma-off, though,” I add. “I jumped on a grenade.”
“It was a dud.”
“I didn’t know that when I jumped on it.”
Hailey crosses back to us, three mugs balanced precariously in her hands. “I’m sorry, you jumped on a grenade?”
“Like a golden retriever diving after a tennis ball,” Liam says, taking his mug from her. “Very noble. Very idiotic. Very
Knox.”
“I saved three people.”
“You got a concussion and cried when they gave you a medal.”
“I did not cry.”
“Your eyes were definitely wet.”
“That was dust. From the explosion.”
“The explosion from the dud grenade that didn’t explode?”
I open my mouth to argue and realize I’ve been thoroughly outmaneuvered. Hailey is grinning, and Liam looks insufferably pleased
with himself.
“You’re both the worst,” I say, taking my coffee.
“And yet here we are, trapped together.” Hailey settles onto the bed cross-legged, somehow managing to position herself exactly
between us without touching either one. The distance feels intentional. Careful. “So. Day two. What’s the plan?”
The question lands like a weight. Day two. Eight more days until Marlena’s deadline. Eight more days to figure out how to
get out of here without handing over a twenty-million-dollar diamond or watching one of us die.
“We keep looking for weaknesses,” I say. “Check the windows again, test the door hinges, look for anything we might have missed.”
“We did that yesterday,” Liam points out. “The windows are industrial-grade. The door might as well be a vault. Short of finding
a blowtorch in one of these cabinets, we’re not breaking out.”
“Yesterday doesn’t count. Yesterday we were half-drugged and at each other’s throats before we’d even finished our first cup
of coffee. Today the fog has lifted and we’re not swinging at each other, which puts us ahead.”
“Then we look harder.”
“Or,” Liam says, and there’s something careful in his voice, “we consider the other option.”
“No.”
“Knox—”
“We’re not giving her the diamond.”
“I’m just saying we should discuss it. Weigh the pros and cons. She said she’d let us go if—”
“She said a lot of things.” I set my mug down harder than I mean to. “She also said she’d kill one of us, without blinking.
You really want to bet our lives on the word of someone who monologues about her emotional wellness journey while threatening
murder?”
He opens his mouth like he’s going to push harder, then seems to think better of it.
“Fine,” he says, but the word sounds hollow. “We look harder.”
Hailey’s watching the exchange with sharp eyes, her gaze bouncing between us like she’s trying to read something neither of
us is saying out loud.
“What?” I demand.
“Nothing.” She takes a long sip of her coffee. “We just think maybe you could take a breath. That’s all.”
“I’ll take a breath when we’re out of here.”
“You’ll give yourself a stroke before we’re out of here if you don’t calm down.”
“I’m perfectly calm.”
Liam snorts. “You’ve got a vein pulsing in your forehead.”
“That’s my thinking vein.”
“That’s your ‘about to have an aneurysm’ vein. I’ve seen it before. Usually right before you do something stupid and heroic.”
“I don’t do stupid.”
“Grenade,” they say in unison.
I throw a pillow at Liam’s head. He catches it, laughing, and for a second everything feels almost normal. Almost okay.
Then the laughter fades.
“Okay,” Hailey says. “New plan. Knox works out his anxiety with push-ups instead of giving himself an ulcer. Liam cooks something for breakfast. I pretend to read that book I’ve been failing to read since we got here. We revisit the escape plan at noon. Deal?”
“That’s not a plan,” I say. “That’s just . . . killing time.”
“Fine. So we need another way out.”
Liam catches my eye. Tilts his head toward the ceiling. I follow his gaze to the smoke detector above the kitchen area, and
he raises his eyebrows. Message received.
He stands, stretches like he’s just working out the stiffness from sleeping on the floor, and wanders toward the kitchen.
Casual. Bored. He runs water in the sink, opens a cabinet, lets it bang shut. Noise cover.
I move closer. He leans in, mouth near my ear.
“Cameras,” he whispers. “Smoke detectors. I want to see what’s in them.”
I nod. Grab a chair and carry it to the kitchen, positioning it under the detector like I’m checking something mundane. Hailey
watches us from the bed. She’s sharp enough not to ask out loud.
I pop the casing. Inside, right where the sensor should be, there’s a lens and a circuit board. I angle it so Liam can see.
He leans in close, turning the board with his fingers, tracing the wires.
“No mic,” he breathes against my shoulder. Barely a sound. “Video only.” He pauses, eyes on the chip. “Wi-Fi. That’s how she’s
getting the feed.”
Something passes across his face. He doesn’t say anything else, but I can tell he’s turning it over.
I fit the casing back together. Leave it exactly where it was.
Liam moves to the one above the main living area. Same routine. Hailey’s on her feet now, standing close, pretending to look
out the window while she watches us work. Liam pops the second casing, checks it, mouths “same” at me.
The third is above the bed, built into the light fixture. Same deal. Lens, board, no microphone.
Three cameras. All visual. No audio.
Liam steps down and crosses to where Hailey and I are standing near the windows. We cluster close together, backs to the room,
faces toward the glass. Anyone watching the feeds would see three people staring at the snow.
“She can see us,” Liam says, low but no longer whispering. “She can’t hear us. As long as we keep our faces away from the
cameras, she can’t even read our lips.”
Hailey lets out a breath. “You’re sure.”