Chapter Eight
“YOU TWO TAKE your time or what?” says Damian when we walk into the cabin after restarting the generator.
“Got caught in the rain,” Ryder says. “Had to pull over and wait it out.”
Damian’s mouth twitches, one brow lifting—a look halfway between suspicion and amusement.
“Sure,” he says, drawing the word out. The implication stings.
Inside, the cabin is gray, the fire the only light. Wyatt’s stretched out on the couch under a blanket, Jake’s in the chair, Damian’s cross-legged on the floor. They’re all holding a fan of cards.
“Thank God,” Wyatt says. “Can’t even see the cards anymore.”
Ryder goes around and turns on the lamps, while I drop the candy bag on the coffee table. “We brought snacks.”
“Thought you two were never getting back,” says Jake, with a trace of the same irony Damian had. Neither Ryder nor I say anything.
“Pull up a seat,” Wyatt says, swinging his legs down to the floor and nodding at the sagging cushions beside him.
I sink down at the far end, tucking my feet underneath me, but Ryder says he’s going to make dinner and heads into the kitchen.
“What are we playing?” I ask as the men toss their cards into a loose pile on the coffee table. Damian taps the stack together and starts shuffling with quick, neat flicks of his wrist.
“Five-card draw,” he says. “Little to no math.”
He deals me in with brisk precision, one card each around in a circle, until we all have five cards.
“I know this game,” I say, flipping my cards up just enough to peek at them. Four black cards—the ace of spades, ace of clubs, eight of spades, and eight of clubs, and one red, the five of hearts. “Played it in one of my foster homes growing up.”
I set the five of hearts down and pick up the five of clubs. Play moves around the circle. Jake discards two, Damian one, Wyatt none at all.
Wyatt reaches for the candy bag and rips open the licorice. “Call,” he says, throwing a twist of licorice on the table like it’s a poker chip.
We all reveal at once. Jake has a pair of tens. Damian’s got four in a row. Wyatt has three queens.
“Two pairs,” I say, laying my cards down last, fanned out on the scarred wood.
Wyatt straightens in surprise at my hand. “Hey! Look at that.”
Jake leans forward. “Oh, no way. She pulled the Dead Man’s Hand.”
“What does it mean?” I ask. “Is it cursed? Do I win something? Do I die? What’s the vibe here?”
Damian gives me the kind of look men save for women who’ve never seen Die Hard.
“Young one,” he sighs. “Wild Bill Hickok?”
I shrug, and Jake laughs, reaching over to squeeze my knee.
“You forget,” he says to Damian, “Maximillian here is only a child.”
“Fuck off,” I say with a laugh, pushing his hand.
“The name comes from history,” Wyatt says. “Wild Bill Hickok. Old West legend, gunfighter, lawman, gambler. He got shot in the back during a poker game while holding this hand.”
“This is Wyatt’s favorite story,” Jake says with a grin.
“It’s a very famous story!” Wyatt protests with a chuckle. He looks at me, seeing my confusion, and explains. “The night before our first mission together I pulled this hand and thought it was a bad omen.”
“Turns out he was right,” Ryder calls from the kitchen.
I glance over, catching the faint smile tugging at Ryder’s mouth before he looks back down at whatever he’s stirring. There’s a shared pulse of amusement among the men, like they all know exactly where this anecdote is headed.
“We were in staging for hours,” Damian picks up the story.
“Weather delay, intel delay, command arguing with itself…typical military foreplay. We’d been training together for months, but it was our first time actually deploying as a four-man team.
” He gestures to Ryder in the kitchen. “Grandpa over there pulled out a deck of cards.”
Ryder barks out a laugh from the other room.
“So we’re sitting in this damp, freezing tent somewhere on the border of Colombia, killing time, and Wyatt pulls this hand and is like, uh-oh, this is a bad omen.”
Jake laughs. “Right before we went into this highly tense military situation.”
“But,” Wyatt says archly, giving Jake a meaningful look. “Was I wrong?” He turns back to me. “The next morning we’re on a chopper and the pilot clips a tree. Drops us two clicks off the LZ—”
“That means landing zone,” Jake inserts.
“—and there’s a goddamn storm. Mud up to our ankles, rain pouring down.”
“And we landed in a snake nest,” says Ryder.
I look up to see him leaning in the kitchen doorway now, arms crossed.
“Fer-de-lances,” says Jake with a shudder. “Whisper-fangs. Venomous little bastards. They like debris piles and we landed right in one.”
“I get bit,” Damian says, “because I kicked what I thought was a vine.”
“And then I get bit,” Ryder adds, “pulling him out of the pile.”
Wyatt rolls his eyes, smiling ruefully. “Comms were fried in the storm and we had no backup and no med kit. First mission as a unit and we’re going down before we even hit the target.”
“But we didn’t,” says Ryder.
“Only because things got intimate real fast,” says Damian with a grin.
The men laugh.
“We literally didn’t have any antivenom, nothing,” says Wyatt. “So Jake and I grabbed them, dragged them under a tarp, and did the only thing we could do. We sucked the venom out.”
My face twists in distaste and he laughs.
“Yup. We each took one man. I took Damian and Jake took Ryder. We cut the punctures open with my field blade, and then drew venom until our mouths went numb, and then we spit and repeat.”
Damian huffs a laugh. “Romantic, really.”
Ryder smiles. “Saved our lives. Slowed the spread, bought us time.”
“But then we had to keep them awake,” says Wyatt.
“Because if they’d slipped under, their breathing could’ve tanked.
We had to keep them warm too, and keep ourselves from going hypothermic.
We took turns talking. Singing. Swearing.
We were under that tarp for the better part of twenty-four hours waiting for these two to pull through. ”
“Aw,” says Damian, looking at the others proudly. “We weren’t a team before that night.”
“But by dawn we were Hellbent,” says Ryder, reflecting back his proud smile.
“Wow,” I breathe. “That’s bonding.”
“Yeah,” says Wyatt. “We were brothers after that.”
“And wait,” I clarify. “This is all because of the Dead Man’s Hand? Am I going to get bitten by a snake?”
Wyatt laughs warmly. “No. The cards didn’t doom us. They warned us. Hickok got shot because he trusted the room. Sat with his back to the door. Thought he was safe.”
Jake adds, “Dead Man’s Hand means don’t assume safety.”
“Still sounds like you’re saying it’s an omen,” I grumble.
Wyatt spreads his hands. “More like a reminder,” he says. “Don’t sit with your back to the door.”
I look down at the two black aces and two black eights in front of me, thinking about everything I still don’t know about these men.
The years they spent together in battle, the waiting, the injuries, the suffering, the struggle.
They’ve been through things I can’t even imagine.
But then, I guess I’ve been through things they can’t imagine, either.
“Speaking of our past,” says Damian. “It’s Hellbent Night in two days.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“We celebrate the anniversary of that first mission every year,” Jake explains. “Super dorky. Ryder thinks it’s dumb, but it’s to remind ourselves of what we went through, what we shared, what we will do for each other.”
“I don’t think it’s dumb,” Ryder protests. “I think it tends to be an excuse to get drunk more than anything else, but I think it’s…charming.” He gives me a wry smile.
“All right,” says Jake, clapping his hands. “Enough cowboy lore. Someone bet something.”
“Okay,” I say. I reach into the licorice bag and throw a twist on the table on top of Wyatt’s. “I see Wyatt’s licorice and I raise.”
Jake slaps the table. “Hell yes.”
We play a few more quick hands while Ryder goes back to the kitchen and continues cooking.
He likes to cook for the enjoyment of it, and makes it clear that anyone else stepping into his space will break the rhythm he’s building.
I think he just wants some time alone. Pots clink, the sound of a wooden spoon tapping the side of the pan, the windows fog up with steam. Finally:
“Dinner,” he calls.
He sets a pot on the table, and we settle around it.
We used to eat together like this before I was taken—“family dinner,” they always called it.
It feels good to be seated among the four of them, eating Ryder’s sausage pasta.
He says he threw it together, but it tastes like one of the fanciest meals I’ve ever had.
Conversation drifts over the sound of forks scraping plates. We talk about the day, the interminable rain, praise Ryder’s cooking. Damian says he’ll go feral if we stay here another day, but Ryder just answers with a laugh that makes me think we aren’t going anywhere any time soon.
Only Jake barely touches his food. He has Silas’s tablet in his hand, his head bent over it. He’d been waiting on a decode this afternoon, he explains—whatever that means—but now that the progress bar has finished, he’s back at it, typing one-handed while twirling pasta with the other.
“If the connection holds,” he says, eyes glued to the screen, “I might finally finish unpacking these logs.”
“Cool, bro,” says Damian nonchalantly. Wyatt swats his arm.
“I’m more worried about what Max’s card hand means for us.” Damian winks at me. “If I get bit by a snake again, I’m going to be pissed.”
“Is that why you all have that snake tattoo?” I ask, suddenly piecing it together. Wyatt and Damian both nod.
“Yup,” says Wyatt. “Around a dagger—symbolizing the one we used to release the venom.”
But before we can get into it any further, Jake sits up straighter, his whole body going still.
“That’s weird.”
“Hmm?” says Wyatt, only mildly interested.
“I just reconnected to the diagnostic,” Jake says slowly. His fingers fly over the keys, eyes narrowing at the screen. “And it’s…responding. Or trying to.”
“Isn’t it supposed to?” asks Wyatt.
“No, this is different,” says Jake, his attention fevered. “This is external. It’s like it recognized me. Some kind of handshake request.”
The attitude of patient tolerance among the men shifts. Ryder frowns.
“It’s live,” Jake continues. “And it’s not local.”
He turns the tablet so we can all see. Strings of code run over the screen, with a soft pulse of green in the corner.
“See? It’s answering,” Jake says. “Someone’s on the other end.”