Chapter Fourteen Briar
The first week is muscle memory.
Every morning, I wake before sunrise. I scan the perimeter, listen to recorded audio, check the cams and the glass sensors on the doors.
Even in this fortress, it’s habit. The moment I open my eyes, I test for the faintest drift of air—a vent tampered, a window unlatched, a trick of pressure that means someone is inside the walls.
It always comes back clean.
The mountains do their job. Brooks’s chalet is an exoskeleton, nothing but steel, glass, and dense old wood.
Three miles from the next neighbor, nine from a town with more goats than people.
All the supply roads are unplowed. In the dead of winter, the only way up is by foot, snowmobile, or chopper.
Still, I check.
I make it through the first four days on nothing but coffee and adrenaline.
Landon adapts quicker. He takes to the schedule without complaint, rising late but eager, eating whatever I set in front of him, never asking for more than he thinks I can handle.
He doesn't mention the way I always sit facing the doors, or the way I keep a loaded Beretta on the kitchen counter.
On the fifth morning, I find him on the terrace, breathing in the cold. His breath fogs the air, curls up and around his head. He has a notebook—spiral-bound, creased from his pocket. The pages are a mess of crossed-out lists, reminders, phrases I can’t make out from where I stand.
He hears me and looks back. His hair is a black tangle, eyes wide and hungry. He’s not afraid. He’s at peace.
He closes the notebook. “How’s the perimeter?” he asks, like we’re talking about the weather.
“Frozen solid,” I say. “No tracks.”
He nods, then opens the notebook again and writes it down. He’s building a log, tracking my security runs, the intervals, the way I rotate the checks. At first I think it’s suspicion, but after a few days, I realize he’s just trying to memorize the patterns.
He wants to learn the rules. He wants to play by them.
The routine is simple. After morning checks, we make breakfast. Sometimes eggs, sometimes whatever the supply staff restocks in the cold room.
Landon always eats, even if my cooking is shit.
He sits across from me, knees bouncing under the table, hands cradling the coffee mug like it’s the only heat source in the world.
He talks, but never about the city, or the program, or the world we left behind.
He tells stories about his mother, or the first time he saw snow, or the worst hangover he ever had.
They’re trivial, almost meaningless, but I know what he’s doing.
He’s filling the silence with things that can’t hurt us.
After breakfast, we split up. I walk the property again. He reads, or writes, or takes long, scalding showers. Sometimes, he watches me through the glass, his breath leaving a mist on the window. He’s trying to figure out who I am when I’m not hunting or being hunted.
The answer is: I have no idea.
By midday, the house warms up, the sun turning the snow outside into a blinding field of white. Landon wanders, mapping every inch of the chalet, always curious about the locked door at the end of the hall, but never pushing the boundaries either.
He’s a fast study.
Once, I catch him staring at the bookshelf in the living room, running a finger along the spines of the old, leather-bound volumes. I watch him for a long time before he notices.
“You ever read any of these?” he asks, not turning around.
“Most of them,” I say.
He grins, and for a second, the city boy is back. “Which was your favorite?”
“Whichever one put me to sleep the fastest.”
Landon laughs, quiet and warm. “You’re full of shit, you know that?”
I shrug. He’s not wrong.
The next time we leave the house together, it’s not a tactical training session. Landon just wants to hike. He wants to see more of woods, the sky, the world outside the glass.
I let him set the pace. He is steady for the first mile, asking questions about animal tracks, about avalanche risk, about whether or not the birds hibernate. I answer in a word or two, scanning every line of sight, checking for irregularities in the snow, for the glint of a scope on the ridgeline.
After a while, he stops talking, and just walks.
We make it up to the north lookout, a little flat spot on the cliff where Brooks and I once built a fire pit. Landon sits on the edge, boots dangling over nothing, and I stand behind him, arms crossed, eyes on the valley.
He’s quiet for a long time.
Finally, he says, “I don’t get you, Harrington.”
“No one does,” I say.
He laughs. “Not true. Brooks gets you. That’s why he helps you. Maybe he even loves you.”
I don’t know how to answer that, so I don’t.
He looks up at me. The sun catches the flecks in his eyes, turns them almost gold. He’s not afraid, not even of the height.
“Did you ever love him?” He asks. “As more than a friend? A brother?”
“No.”
On the hike back, he lets the silence grow.
*
After ten days, something shifts.
The threat is still out there, a ghost with a gun, but nothing comes for us.
The world goes soft around the edges. My shoulders stop knotting every time the wind rattles a shutter.
I sleep longer. I eat more. I start to believe, just a little, that maybe this time we’ve found a loophole in the system.
I catch Landon watching me, sometimes. Not with the hunger from before, or the challenge of teaching him the rules. This is a different thing. He’s trying to see if I’ll ever relax, if I’ll settle into the peace like a man who deserves it.
He doesn’t know what to make of me, and I don’t blame him.
One night, he corners me in the kitchen. He’s in his usual attire—sweater, jeans, bare feet. There’s flour on his hands and a streak of it on his jaw. I have no idea what he’s making, but the whole house smells like sugar.
He pours us both a drink, whiskey for me, wine for him. He sets the glass down in front of me, then leans against the counter.
“You gonna relax yet?”
“Nope.” I pop the ‘p’ just before downing another sip.
He laughs, and the sound makes me smile.
He slides the bottle closer, closes the gap between us. His hand brushes mine.
“You know what I think?” he says.
I shake my head.
“I think you’re dying to relax. You just don’t know how.”
I look at his hand, his fingers drumming the rim of the glass. “And you think you can teach me?”
He tilts his head, smile crooked. “I could try.”
I don’t tell him that I want him to. I just let him close the distance, let him touch my face, let him pull me down for a slow, careful kiss.
It’s not desperate, not rough. It’s… gentle. Like he’s testing to see if I’ll bite.
I don’t.
By week three, I’ve entered an uneasy truce with the fact that no one has come for us yet.
He spends his mornings on the terrace, sketching or journaling or just staring out at the white.
I take my coffee in the living room, feet up on the ottoman, ‘The Art of War’ in hand but eyes always on the windows.
Sometimes, we sit together, backs to the fire, laying on the floor legs tangled on the couch. He reads aloud, voice smooth and low, and I close my eyes and let the sound settle in my chest.
Once, he falls asleep with his head in my lap, breath warm against my thigh. I stay perfectly still, not daring to move. I don’t want to wake him. I don’t want the moment to end.
*
The third Sunday, the sun is out and the air is clear, so I drag Landon out for another hike. He complains the whole time, says I’m a sadist for making him climb in fresh powder, but he keeps pace and never asks to turn back.
At the crest of the trail, we stop. The valley below is so perfect it hurts to look at. Everything is peaceful.
Landon leans against me, resting his head on my shoulder. “Tell me what you see,” he says.
I scan the tree line, the switchbacks, the thin line of a frozen river below.
I tell him, in detail, every possible approach, every blind spot, every place someone could hide a body.
He laughs. “God, you’re dark.”
“I prefer to be prepared.”
He looks at me, grins. “So do I. But I was hoping you’d say something about how pretty it is.”
I study the view again before looking down at him.
“It’s pretty,” I say.
He squeezes my arm, satisfied.
We stand like that, side by side, until the wind picks up and numbs our faces. On the walk home, he talks about all the places he wants to go when this is over. Istanbul. Tokyo. The jungles in South America. He wants to see everything, do everything, like time is catching up to him.
I let him talk. I memorize the cadence of his words, the way he spins a future out of nothing.
I want to believe in it, even though I know better.
My peace shatters on a basic Tuesday.
A vibrating that disturbs the tranquility of the morning.
“Broiler is acting up. I’ll be back in a minute, pet.”
The source is a little black cube, tucked behind the water heater. My own design—lead-shielded, battery-powered, triple-wrapped in foil. It’s a SAT phone, the kind you can only get from old government or new crime.
Even Brooks doesn’t know about it. The only person who knows this line exists is the only other Harrington alive worth a damn.
I pick it up, press my thumb to the reader, and wait for the cold blue screen to flare to life. No ID on the call. No number. Just the word: “INCOMING.”
I answer, nothing in my voice. “Yeah?”
The line is silent, then a crisp, familiar sound.
“Your timing was impeccable, Harrington,” says Eve.
I close my eyes, let the name unlock a dozen old wounds. “Cousin. To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She laughs, but it’s a flat sound. “You’re still good at hiding. The Director had a bet you were dead by now.”
“He’ll have to pay up,” I say. “What’s the situation?”
Another pause, this one loaded with implication. “There’s a breach. East sector. Something big enough that even the Disposals are paying attention.”