Chapter 7
Coop
The eastern sky was bleeding pink when I loaded the last of my gear into the truck bed.
Early November in Montana meant frost on everything, turning the old cabin into something that might’ve been beautiful if it weren’t a nest of domestic terrorists planning mass murder.
My breath clouded in the cold air as I closed the tailgate, buying myself thirty seconds to scan the area one more time.
The compound was quiet this early, just the five of us moving through morning preparations. Six weeks I’d been embedded here, and the isolation still felt like a noose slowly tightening.
Snake’s boots crunched across the gravel behind me, that deliberate walk of his that always sounded like a countdown to violence. “Change of plans, Coop.”
I straightened, keeping my expression neutral while my hand drifted toward the knife on my belt. Not threatening. Just ready. “Oliver change his mind about the timeline?”
“Nope.” Snake lit a cigarette, taking his time with it. Making me wait. Power games, even at dawn. “I’m riding with you and your little toy. For security.”
The words landed like lead in my gut, but I turned slow, casual, like his announcement was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. “Don’t need a fucking babysitter, Snake. We had this conversation yesterday.”
He exhaled smoke through his nose, watching me with those dead eyes. “I don’t like unknowns. You understand that, don’t you?”
Behind him, Diesel was loading his truck while Tommy struggled with a heavy crate, trying not to look like he was eavesdropping. The kid had radar for tension, probably the only thing keeping him alive this long.
I took a step forward, closing the distance between Snake and me. Not aggressive, but not backing down either. The key with men like Snake was establishing dominance without making it a challenge worth killing over.
“I understand that questioning me twice in two days is starting to feel like disrespect.” I kept my voice low, conversational. The kind of tone that made smart men nervous. “I don’t need a chaperone. You tested me last night. Don’t push it again.”
Snake’s hand shifted, not quite reaching for his weapon but reminding me it was there. “I want to make sure you remember who you work for.”
“I work for Oliver. Not you.” I let that distinction hang between us, heavy as a threat. “And Oliver values what I bring to his operation a hell of a lot more than he values your paranoia.”
Snake’s jaw tightened, the cigarette forgotten between his fingers. For a moment, I thought he might actually try something. Part of me hoped he would. One less monster between Mia and freedom.
But Snake was smart. Or at least smarter than Diesel or Tommy. He knew his place in Oliver’s ecosystem, knew I was right about my value to the operation. They needed me to verify and price Oliver’s inventory, to use my connections to move product. Snake was replaceable muscle. I wasn’t.
“You’re not riding with us. I don’t do audiences.” I turned back to the truck, dismissing him.
The silence stretched tight enough to snap. I heard Diesel stop loading, probably watching to see if this would turn bloody. Tommy had definitely stopped pretending not to listen.
“Your funeral, Coop.” Snake’s hand lowered back to his side. “But if that bitch causes any complications at Oliver’s compound—”
“She won’t.” I shrugged. “She knows what happens if she does.”
Snake flicked his cigarette into the dirt. “Fine. We’ll take the lead truck, then. You follow.”
“Whatever you say.” I kept my tone neutral, not giving him the satisfaction of an argument.
“Diesel, Tommy, with me.” Snake headed toward the other truck. “We’re driving point.”
I watched the three of them load into their vehicle—Diesel behind the wheel, Snake riding shotgun where he could keep an eye on us through the mirrors, Tommy in the back.
Two trucks for the journey: them leading, me and Mia following.
They’d control the pace and the route, and Snake would be watching our every move in his side mirror.
Not ideal, but better than having him breathing down our necks in the same vehicle.
Mia stood by the passenger door, wearing the same clothes from yesterday, her hair pulled back in a messy bun. “Get in,” I said, loud enough for the others to hear.
She climbed into the truck without a word. I started the engine, letting it warm while the others finished loading. Through the windshield, I could see Snake watching us from his vehicle, that reptilian focus that never seemed to blink.
I waited until we’d put two miles between us and the lodge, until the road curved enough that Snake couldn’t see my hands moving off the steering wheel, before I reached under my seat.
My fingers found the small device I’d hidden there weeks ago, part of my contingency planning.
The RF detector was about the size of a pack of cards, military-grade, the kind we’d used overseas to sweep for surveillance devices.
Mia watched from the corner of her eye as I powered it on, keeping it low, out of sight from the vehicle ahead. I held a finger to my lips, then slowly swept the detector across the dashboard, under the steering column, anywhere they might’ve hidden a bug.
The detector stayed silent. I checked the vents, the radio, even the cupholders. Nothing. Only after I was certain did I tuck the detector back under the seat.
“It’s clean,” I said quietly. “But at Oliver’s compound, assume everything is wired. Every room, every building, maybe even the outdoor areas near the main structures.”
She nodded, staring straight ahead at Diesel’s truck. “Okay.”
“We won’t get moments like this there. No privacy. No letting our guard down.”
“How long will we be there?”
“I don’t know.” The admission burned. “Could be days. Could be longer. Depends on when Oliver’s ready for the weapons demonstration.”
“And after that?”
After that, the operation would go hot—full tactical teams moving in, and anyone at the compound would either surrender or die. But I couldn’t tell her that.
“After that, we figure out how to get you out.”
“We?” Her voice was flat.
The single word hit harder than Snake’s threats. I’d earned that distance, that distrust, not just with the past twenty-four hours but with what happened six years ago. Still didn’t make it easier to swallow.
Miles of mountain road passed in silence, nothing but the sound of tires on weathered asphalt and the occasional crackle of the radio.
Pine trees pressed close on both sides, their shadows making the morning feel like twilight.
The temperature dropped as we climbed higher, frost still clinging to the shaded spots.
I knew we needed to talk. I knew this would be the only chance we had.
The words started building in my throat, pressure like a dam about to break.
I’d promised myself I’d never explain, never make excuses, never burden her with my failures.
But here we were, trapped in this rolling cage headed toward something worse, and I owed her something. Even if it wasn’t everything.
“I know you must hate me.”
The words escaped before I could stop them, rough as the gravel roads we’d left behind. She didn’t respond, didn’t even shift in her seat. Just kept watching the mountains pass like they held answers to questions she hadn’t asked.
“For leaving like I did. No real explanation.”
Still nothing. Her profile could’ve been carved from stone, beautiful and cold and completely closed off from me.
“Hate’s a strong word.” Her voice was carefully neutral, the tone she used to use when trying not to start a fight about something that mattered.
I gripped the steering wheel tighter, knuckles white under the skin. The next words felt like pulling shrapnel from old wounds, each one tearing something on the way out.
“That last deployment went sideways.” I couldn’t give her details, not the classified parts. “Mission went wrong. Lost several guys under my command. My call, my route, my decision that got them killed.”
She shifted slightly, just enough that I knew she was listening.
“Got back stateside a few weeks later and found out my buddy Danny killed himself.” The words scraped raw. “Remember Danny? I told you about him—the guy who could make jokes in a firefight, who kept us all sane over there?”
A slight nod. She remembered.
“Left a note saying he couldn’t quiet the voices in his head. That he hated what he’d become. He was…he was supposed to be the strong one. The one who had his shit together. If he couldn’t handle it…”
I couldn’t finish. Couldn’t voice what Danny’s death had proven—that we were all broken beyond fixing, that the war had hollowed us out and sent us home as walking corpses who just hadn’t stopped breathing yet.
“I was falling apart.” The admission felt like stepping off a cliff. “Drinking too much. Not sleeping. Started having…episodes.”
That was a clean word for it. Episodes. A better word would be blackouts, where I’d come to standing in my backyard at three a.m., holding my service weapon, looking for threats that existed only in my head.
Or rage so pure and sudden that I’d put my fist through a wall because someone dropped a plate in a restaurant.
I risked a quick glance at her. She was looking at me now, really looking, those honey-brown eyes I’d fallen into six years ago finally seeing me again.
“I told myself I was protecting you by leaving. Truth is, I was a coward.”
There it was. The truth I’d been running from for six years, laid bare on a mountain road with nowhere to hide from it.
“Couldn’t let you see me like that. Broken. Dangerous. I was afraid of what I might—” I stopped, swallowed hard. “I was afraid of what I was becoming. What I might do if I stayed.”
The radio crackled, Diesel’s voice breaking through. “Road work ahead. Slowing down.”
I grabbed the handset. “Copy that.”