Chapter 10 #2
The pieces start connecting in ways I don't like. Cray's revelation about Gunnery Sergeant Hart. The Yemen operation. The black ops cleanup that buried evidence of chemical weapons development. And now someone who knows about Willa, knows about me, and is making it personal.
"We need to retrieve that package," I say. "But we do it carefully. Full bomb squad protocol. Nobody gets close until we know what we're dealing with."
"I'll go," Mercer volunteers. "Did a year with EOD before going operator. If it's wired, I'll see it."
"Take Stryker for overwatch. And Mercer?" I meet his eyes. "If this goes sideways, you pull back immediately. We can't afford to lose anyone else."
"Copy that."
They're gone within five minutes, geared up and moving with the practiced efficiency of men who've done this too many times.
Willa watches the screens beside me, arms crossed. I can feel the tension radiating off her. "What did he mean? About my father and Yemen?"
I can't lie to her. Not now. Not after last night. "A number of years ago. Joint operation with Marines providing security while my team investigated reports of chemical weapons development by a rogue faction. Your father was one of the Marines on site when we found the cache."
"And?"
"And we burned it. All of it. Weapons, research, everyone involved. The Committee wanted the evidence buried, and we were the ones holding the shovel."
Her jaw tightens. "Did you kill my father?"
"No." I turn to face her. "He died of a heart attack. Natural causes. But he knew what we did. Knew we destroyed evidence instead of reporting it. The Committee's been tracking his family ever since, probably worried he told someone before he died."
"He didn't." Her voice is hollow. "He never said a word about Yemen. Never mentioned chemical weapons or black ops teams or any of it."
"Because he was protecting you." I reach for her hand, find it cold. "The Committee destroys anyone who knows too much. Your father kept quiet to keep you safe."
She pulls away. I let her go, even though every instinct says to hold on. "And now they want me dead because I saved a dog that knows where they're hiding more weapons. Because my father saw something years ago that he never even told me about."
"Willa...”
"No." She rounds on me, eyes fierce. "Don't tell me it's going to be okay.
Don't tell me we'll figure it out. My father died keeping secrets that are now threatening my life.
You were part of burying those secrets. And now someone out there knows about us—about us—and is leaving packages like this is a game. "
Every word is justified. Every accusation earned. But there's something underneath the anger—betrayal, maybe. Fear that being with me means inheriting all the ghosts I've spent five years trying to outrun.
"You're right," I say quietly. "About all of it. Your father died protecting you from a truth he should never have known. I was part of the operation that put that target on his back. And being with me makes you visible to every enemy I've made in twenty years of operations."
I step closer, hold her gaze. "But I'm not going to apologize for Yemen. I'm not going to apologize for the choices I made to survive. And I'm sure as hell not going to apologize for pulling you into this cave and keeping you alive."
"I'm not asking you to apologize." Her voice cracks. "I'm asking you to tell me the truth. All of it. No more surprises. No more revelations from prisoners. If I'm standing beside you, if I'm in this war, I need to know exactly what we're fighting."
Fair. More than fair.
"Okay." I nod. "After we find out what's in that package, I'll tell you everything. Every operation. Every ghost. Every reason the Committee wants me dead. Deal?"
She studies my face for a long moment. Then nods. "Deal."
Tommy's screen lights up. "Kane, Mercer's at the clinic. He's got eyes on the package."
We crowd around the monitor. Through Mercer's body cam, we see the package up close. Brown paper, neat lettering, no visible wires or trigger mechanisms.
"Thermal's clear," Mercer reports. "No electronic signature. No chemical markers. Just paper and whatever's inside."
"Open it," I order. "Carefully."
The body cam shifts as Mercer produces a knife. He cuts through the tape with surgical precision, peels back the paper. Inside is a manila folder.
He opens it.
My blood goes cold.
Photographs. Dozens of them. Surveillance shots taken over days, maybe weeks. Willa at her clinic. Odin in the recovery kennel. Me leaving the cabin. Willa and me together in the parking lot after the ambush. Willa's truck on the mountain road heading toward the cabin.
Professional-grade surveillance. Clean angles. Perfect timing. This isn't amateur hour. Whoever took these has done this before—probably to people like us—and won't stop until we're dead.
The last photo stops me cold. It's from the parking lot after the ambush—Willa and me, close enough that the body language says everything. The way I'm touching her face. The way she's looking at me. The intimacy unmistakable.
Beneath the photo, one sentence written in the same block letters: YOU CAN'T HIDE WHAT I'VE ALREADY FOUND.
"Kane?" Tommy's voice sounds distant. "What do you want me to do?"
I can't answer. Can't think past what I'm seeing. Someone watched us. Photographed us. Knows exactly where we are and what we mean to each other.
Willa's hand finds mine, squeezes hard. "We knew they were looking. We knew the Committee wouldn't stop."
"This isn't the Committee." The words come out rough. "This is personal. Someone who wants us to know we're being hunted. Who's patient enough to watch and wait instead of just putting a bullet through our heads."
"The stalker," she says quietly. "The enforcer. The one with ties to my father."
I turn to Tommy. "Pull every bit of intel we have on Gunnery Sergeant Hart. Deployment records, known associates, anyone who might've been with him in Yemen. Cross-reference with Committee contractors. I want to know who's hunting us by nightfall."
"On it."
I look back at the screen, at the photographs documenting our lives, our relationship, our vulnerability. The tactical ones I expected. But the photo from the parking lot—that moment I thought was private, just us. He invaded that.
"Mercer, bring everything back to base," I order. "And Mercer? Check for trackers. Whoever sent this might want to know when we retrieve it."
"Copy."
The screen goes dark as Mercer's body cam cuts out.
Willa leans against the console, exhaustion finally showing. "So what now?"
"Now?" I pull her against me, feel her heart beating too fast. "Now we figure out who's behind the camera. We find them before they find us. And we end this."
"How?"
"The same way we end everything." I press a kiss to her temple. "With violence and overwhelming force."
She almost smiles. Almost. "You really know how to show a girl a good time."
"Stick with me long enough, you'll get used to it."
"Kane." She pulls back, meets my eyes. "That warning you're about to give me—about how I'll never have peace if I stay with you, how I should leave before it's too late, how being together puts a target on my back—save it. I already know. And I'm staying anyway."
She says it like a fact. Like the decision's already made and nothing I say will change it. This woman has killed without hesitation, stitched my wounds while the Committee hunted her, looked at my scars and saw something worth keeping.
"You're stubborn," I tell her.
"So are you." She stands on her toes, kisses me hard. "Now let's go find out who's stupid enough to think surveillance photos will scare us off."
Tommy watches us leave. His face says what he's too smart to say out loud: he's seen what happens to civilians who get close to operators like me. Seen the body count.
But Willa's already proven she's not most civilians.
I don't sleep that night.
Can't. Every time I close my eyes, I see those photographs. Not the ones of Willa at her clinic or me at the cabin. The one from the parking lot. The way I was touching her face. The way she was looking at me. A moment I thought was ours.
Someone watched that. Documented it. Turned intimacy into intelligence.
I'm in the operations center very early, reviewing the surveillance photos for the hundredth time. Looking for details I missed. Angles that reveal the photographer's position. Anything that gives me a vector to hunt.
"You're going to burn your retinas staring at those screens."
I turn. Willa stands in the doorway, wrapped in one of my shirts, hair loose around her shoulders. She's barefoot on cold concrete, but she doesn't seem to notice.
"Couldn't sleep," I say.
"Neither could I." She moves closer, studies the photos on screen. "That's the one that bothers you most, isn't it? The parking lot photo."
I don't answer. Don't need to.
"It bothers me too." Her voice is quiet. "Not because someone saw us. Because someone made us a target for being together. Like what we have is something that needs to be weaponized."
"It is weaponized now." The words taste bitter. "Whoever took these knows what we are to each other. Knows how to get to me."
"Through me," she says.
"Through you."
She's silent for a moment, studying the photo from the parking lot on screen. Then: "My father used to say that the most dangerous thing in combat wasn't the enemy who wanted to kill you. It was the enemy who wanted to make you watch while he killed everyone you cared about first."
I look at her. "Your father was right."
"So what do we do?"
I pull her close, feel her warmth against me. Real and solid and alive despite someone out there documenting her existence like she's already dead. "We find him first. We make him understand that photographing us was the last mistake he gets to make. And then we end it."
She leans her head against my chest, and we stand like that for a long moment. Two people who've survived too much to be scared by surveillance photos. Two people who've decided that whatever comes next, they're facing it standing side by side.
The stalker wanted to send a message with those photos. Wanted us to feel exposed. Hunted. Vulnerable.
He miscalculated.
People like us don't run from threats. We identify them. We track them. We eliminate them.
And then we go back to living on our own terms.
Willa pulls back, meets my eyes. "When we find him—and we will find him—what happens?"
I think about the parking lot photo. About someone watching while Willa and I had a moment together after surviving an ambush. About the invasion of privacy, the weaponization of intimacy, the calculated cruelty of documenting our vulnerability.
"What happens?" I pull her closer. "I show him exactly why photographing the people I protect was the worst tactical decision of his life."
She nods once. Satisfied. Then: "Good. Because I want to be there when you do."
This woman. This stubborn, fierce, damaged woman who should be running but instead wants front-row seats to violence.
"Wouldn't have it any other way," I tell her.
And I mean it.