Chapter 31 Damian
Damian
The farmhouse clock coughed out the hour—late, but not late enough for sleep.
Outside, the sky was a bruised smear, the kind that promised rain or trouble (sometimes both).
Inside, the team sorted through paper and chatter like a band of men trying to sew together a map from torn edges.
My eyes kept returning to the couch. To the way Morgan folded her knees under the blanket, voice low and steady into that recorder, like she was stitching herself back together, phrase by fragile phrase.
I told myself to be tactical. That was what I did.
Tactical thinking had kept me alive, kept a dozen others breathing.
But there’s a part of you that’s not wired for checklists—some borrowed thing left behind in childhood, or maybe found on a mission when a kid looked up at you and expected a hero.
That part of me tightened every time Morgan breathed.
River pushed a chair back with a scrape and rattled through a list of surveillance hits.
Cyclone flicked links across his screen like a conjurer throwing cards.
They were good at this—too good. I watched the way River’s mouth worked when he tried to hide a grin at a useless lead; Cyclone’s fingers never stopped.
“Dam?” River asked, jerking his chin toward my rifle. “You done staring into the fireplace or you planning to light it yourself?”
“Not funny,” I said, but the edge of sarcasm softened.
“We have a location cluster in Caldwell County. Hemsley’s signature traffic up north like he’s moving runners.
Holloway Trust still shows transfers to shell accounts—two weeks old, but active.
Luthor—” I stopped. Saying names felt like blessing them with life.
“Luthor’s name’s clean for now. But Hemsley’s been sloppy. Sloppy leads to mistakes.”
River folded his arms. “Sloppiness is the gift that keeps on giving. You want to go look?”
My jaw loosened. The answer lived in my fists and in the unspent heat behind my ribs.
“We go tonight,” I said. “Small team. Quiet. Cyclone stays on comms. River you shadow me. I’ll take—” I hesitated, because we weren’t just a team of soldiers; we were a fractured family.
There were rules and loyalties. “Take Raven’s feed. Grab the van.”
Cyclone nodded, already toggling channels. River rubbed his jaw and then, unexpectedly, slid a glance toward the couch. “You want me to bring her?”
Every muscle in my body clenched like a spring. It was the practical question—Morgan’s knowledge, her recorder, the contacts she’d scraped together. But it was also the stupid, dangerous part: the part that wanted her close so I could feel less like I might break.
“No,” I said before I was ready. The word tasted wrong.
Protective instinct and command protocol braided together and told me to put her somewhere safe, and the right thing, the professional thing, felt like barring the door.
“She stays. If she comes, she gets in the way. If she stays, we get her back. Same result either way.”
Morgan’s throat made a small sound—half laugh, half exhale. She’d been listening. Of course she’d been listening. She always was. She folded up the recorder like a talisman and slid it into her jacket pocket.
Her fingers trembled when she gripped the fabric. “I’ll stay put. Promise. Don’t worry about me.”
Her promise felt like a confession. I wanted to tell her that would not be enough.
I wanted to tell her that my head would be somewhere else the whole time—even with my rifle, even with the operation—but the real answer was borne on something quieter.
“Good,” I said, because my voice is trained to be short.
“Lock the doors. Battery on the phone. If we need you, we call.”
She nodded. Her eyes met mine again, gray and raw.
Before I stood, my hand brushed the wooden arm of the chair—an anchor.
River watched. Cyclone watched. I shouldered my kit, checked the mag as if that would steady me.
It didn’t. What steadied me, strangely, was the sight of Morgan folding the blanket tighter around her knees, like she was wrapping herself in a flag.
Outside, the van coughed to life—old diesel, no flair.
The road ahead tasted like rain and rust. The team climbed in with the silent coordination of men who’d practiced this particular dance too many times.
As the farmhouse slipped behind us, I felt that tug I always feel when leaving the only place that made noise into the dark: the part of me that keeps promises even when promises break.
And there, half a cough, half a whisper, in the rearview mirror—Morgan’s silhouette at the window—was a thing I could not file under mission priorities.