Chapter 16 Ryan
SIXTEEN
Ryan
She emerges from the bathroom in the loose T-shirt and shorts I purchased days ago.
Her hair is damp from the shower, her skin flushed from the heat.
The bruise at her temple has faded to a yellowish shadow.
She smells of that citrus shampoo that’s becoming a persistent trigger for my increasingly problematic responses.
“Your turn,” she says, gesturing toward the bathroom.
I nod, keeping my expression neutral despite my body being anything but. The bathroom holds the humid evidence of her presence, the mirror fogged, the air heavy with her scent.
Cold shower. Again. A temporary measure that’s becoming less effective with each passing day.
Under the spray, I close my eyes and count backward from one thousand in prime numbers.
A mental exercise designed to redirect blood flow from the more insistent parts of my anatomy to my brain.
It’s only partially successful, and then fails completely, when my mind betrays me with an image of Celeste on her knees, looking up with those defiant eyes, waiting for my command.
“Fuck.” The curse escapes through gritted teeth as I brace one forearm against the tiled wall.
This has become a nightly ritual. Another form of insufficient release. My hand wraps around my shaft, movements mechanical and efficient. Just physical maintenance. Just taking the edge off. Nothing like what I really want.
The release, when it comes, is hollow—a momentary emptying of tension that does nothing to slake the thirst growing stronger with each passing day. The kind of thirst that won’t be satisfied by my hand, cold showers, or mental discipline. The kind that demands surrender—hers and mine.
I rinse away the evidence, disgusted with my lack of control. With my weakness. Years of operational discipline are unraveling over a woman I met a few days ago.
Back in the main room, Celeste is perched cross-legged on the bed, the news playing softly on the ancient television set.
I reach for my weapon. The habitual disassembly and cleaning helps center me.
Her eyes track my movements as I clean the Glock. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Cleaning weapons? Since I was twelve. My father was military.”
“No, I mean … This. Extracting people. Security work.”
My hands don’t pause in their routine. Field strip. Clean barrel. Check ejector. Reassemble. “Cerberus has been operational for seven years. I’ve been with them for five.”
“And before that?”
“Classified.”
She makes a sound of frustration. “Is everything about you classified?”
“The relevant parts.” I reassemble the slide, and the familiar click is a comforting sound in the quiet room. “The parts that keep people like you alive.”
“People like me,” she repeats, something in her tone making me look up. “And what exactly am I to you? An assignment? A complication? An inconvenience?”
The question catches me off guard. My hands go still on the weapon.
“You’re a civilian in danger,” I say finally. “My job is to get you safely to Seattle.”
“Your job,” she echoes. “Except this isn’t your job, is it? You weren’t assigned to protect me. You chose to help me on that platform. You chose to call your team. You chose to drive me across the country instead of putting me on a plane or handing me off to local authorities.”
Each statement lands like a precisely aimed bullet, finding the vulnerable spots in my professional armor.
“What’s your point?”
“My point is that this is personal for you. And I want to know why.”
I reassemble the weapon with more force than necessary, the sound sharp in the quiet room. “My reasons are irrelevant to your safety.”
“Bullshit.” She leans forward, eyes intent. “You’ve upended your life for me. Missed whatever mission you were headed back to Seattle for. Put yourself at risk. I think I deserve to know why.”
Because I couldn’t walk away, something about you arrested my attention from the first moment I saw you on that platform. Because watching you die wasn’t an option I could accept.
None of these are answers I can give her.
“Get some sleep,” I say instead, turning off the lamp nearest me. “We move at dawn.”
In the semi-darkness, her soft sigh of frustration fills the room. The sheets rustle as she settles into bed. The quiet that follows feels charged, heavy with unspoken words.
I close my eyes and implement another technique from my training days—sectioning off the mind into compartments. Placing problematic thoughts into secure containment. Focusing on the mission rather than the increasingly complicated emotions surrounding them.
It helps. Until it doesn’t.
Until her breathing deepens in sleep, and I listen to its rhythm. Until the memory of her scent overrides the mental barriers I’ve constructed. Until I’m back where I started—painfully aware of her presence just feet away, of the bed we could be sharing, of all the ways I want to touch her.
I exhale slowly. I’ve endured worse.
Though at the moment, I’m hard-pressed to remember when.
“What’s on the flash drive?” I suddenly ask, allowing my curiosity to finally get the better of me.
Celeste’s head snaps toward me, her expression instantly guarded. “What?”
“The flash drive you keep checking in your pocket. The one those men were willing to kill for. What’s on it?”
She stares out the window, shoulders tense. “It’s complicated.”
“I excel at complicated.” I keep my eyes on the road, voice deliberately casual. “Try me.”
“It’s sensitive information. The kind people die for.”
“I noticed.” My tone remains even despite the surge of irritation. “Given that I’m one of the people who might die for it, I’d appreciate knowing what ‘it’ is.”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”
“For whom?” I can’t keep the edge from my voice now. “For you? For your story? Because from where I’m sitting, information asymmetry only benefits the people hunting us.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is.” I pull the SUV onto the shoulder, killing the engine. The sudden silence amplifies the tension between us. “They’re after both of us now. I deserve to know what I’m risking my life for.”
She studies me for a long moment, something calculating in her gaze. “You’ve been helping me without knowing.”
“And now I’m asking.”
Her fingers drum against her thigh, a nervous gesture I haven’t seen before. “What do you know about artificial intelligence in military applications?”
The question sends a ripple of unease down my spine. “Enough to be concerned.”
“Project Phoenix is—was—a classified DoD initiative to develop an AI-driven targeting system for drone strikes. Autonomous target acquisition and elimination without human oversight.” Her voice takes on the detached precision of a professional relaying facts.
“It was supposedly scrapped five years ago due to ethical concerns and technical limitations.”
“But it wasn’t.” I can see where this is going. Similar black projects have disappeared from official records only to resurface under private contractors.
“It was privatized.”
Bingo. Called that one.
“Transferred to Northridge Defense Solutions with a different name but the same objectives.” She meets my gaze directly now. “And it works.”
The implications settle like lead in my gut. An autonomous AI targeting system in private hands. No oversight. No accountability.
“How do you know?”
“I’ve been investigating a series of deaths—analysts, whistleblowers, and other journalists.
All were ruled accidents or suicides. All with connections to either the original Project Phoenix or Northridge.
” She swallows hard. “One of my sources was Jared Caldwell, a former data analyst at Northridge. He contacted me three months ago with concerns about what he was seeing.”
“And now he’s dead.”
She nods, eyes haunted. “Throat cut in a hotel room. Made to look like suicide, but it wasn’t. He left me this.” She taps her pocket where the flash drive rests. “Evidence that Phoenix is not only operational, but that they’ve implemented something called Obsidian.”
“Obsidian?” The name hits me like a physical blow. I’ve heard it before—recently.
Willow. Marshal’s case. Her ex-husband’s files.
“What is it?” Celeste asks, noticing my reaction.
I weigh operational security against the clear relevance.
“We had a case. Our team leader—Ghost—rescued a woman named Willow Reynolds who was running from her abusive ex-husband. He was a federal judge. He was involved in many things; classified weapons development was one of them. She spent three years secretly downloading files from his system as evidence.”
“And?”
“Among the files she collected, several were randomly tagged with a single word: ‘Obsidian.’” I tap my fingers against the steering wheel, connecting dots. “Her ex-husband is dead now, but he worked for a military contractor with government ties.”
“Northridge?” Her voice sharpens with recognition.
“No. Different company, but in the same ecosystem. Shared projects, personnel overlap.” I process the implications rapidly. “This can’t be a coincidence.”
“Which means this is bigger than I thought.” Celeste’s face pales slightly. “If multiple contractors are involved—”
“Then Phoenix has broader implementation than one company’s initiative.” I complete her thought. “And Obsidian’s reach extends further than individual whistleblowers.”
“A system-wide cleanup protocol,” she whispers. “Anyone who gets too close, regardless of which component they discover …”
“Becomes a target.” The tactical implications shift again. If this connects to Willow’s case, we already have pieces of this puzzle. Cerberus may be further along in understanding the threat than I realized.
“A kill order for anyone investigating Phoenix. Automated identification of potential threats through surveillance integration. Predictive modeling of whistleblower profiles.” Her voice remains steady despite the horror of what she’s describing.
“The system, Obsidian, tagged Jared, and I’m pretty sure it tagged me too. ”