Chapter 3
Delilah Barrinheart
The cold hits first.
It seeps into my spine like it’s hunting bone, not skin—slow, patient, vicious.
I’ve lost track of time, of how long I’ve been down here, but I know it’s long enough for the blood on my lip to dry, crack, and bleed again.
Long enough for my toes to stop tingling and start burning with that deep ache that says numbness is coming.
The concrete beneath me is wet—either from water or someone else’s past—and the ropes around my wrists have chewed deep enough into the skin that my fingers are going numb.
The room reeks of sweat, diesel, and something metallic that I don’t want to name.
Copper and rot, threaded with stale cigarettes and mold.
There’s a pipe leaking somewhere in the corner, the steady drip-drip-drip loud enough to make me want to scream.
It’s like a metronome ticking off the seconds of my remaining usefulness.
But I won’t. I haven’t made a sound since they dragged me in. Not a cry, not a curse, not a plea.
They don’t deserve my voice.
The door groans open.
I don’t lift my head. I don’t have to. The boots give them away.
Three of them this time. Heavier steps. No panic.
No rush. They know I’m not going anywhere.
One of them lights a cigarette, the flare of the lighter a brief orange ghost against the concrete ceiling before the room sinks back into dirty gray.
The smoke curls sharp and bitter through the room, worming its way into my lungs.
“Australian bitch still doesn’t talk,” one of them mutters in Russian.
I’m Latina even if I was born and raised in Australia but whatever. Let him choke on my silence. Let him drown in it.
Another voice, rougher. Older. “She will. When she’s ready to die.”
I keep my eyes down. Let them think I’m broken.
Let them believe I’m stupid or afraid. Let them think anything—just don’t let them know that I’m counting their steps, cataloging their voices, tracking where they stand from the sound of their breathing and the weight of their boots.
Don’t let them know that I’m remembering the last time I saw his face.
Jon.
God, he’s going to come for me.
And he shouldn’t.
If they got me, they’ll try to get him. And if he walks into this—if he walks into anything even close to this—it won’t be a rescue. It’ll be an execution.
“You know we’ve been watching Greenport,” the older one says suddenly, switching languages like he’s bored, like we’re trading secrets over coffee instead of blood. “For months now. Tsk. You Americans are so careless.”
I stare at the ground. A cracked tile. A roach skittering between shadows, antennae flicking as it disappears into a dark seam in the wall. My pulse thuds in my ears, steady, controlled. I don’t let it spike. I don’t give them the satisfaction.
“She knows what we’re talking about,” another one says, kneeling. His knee hits the concrete with a dull thud. I feel his breath at my jaw, hot and sour, as he suddenly switches to English. “You know what I’m saying, don’t you? You understand.”
His accent is thick but clear. He wants me to understand. He wants me to know they’ve done their homework.
I say nothing. My jaw is clenched so tight my molars are vibrating.
If I move my mouth at all, I’m afraid something will slip out—words, a curse, a sob.
His fingers catch my chin, rough and unforgiving, trying to tilt my face toward his.
I resist, muscles locked, settling deeper into the persona of the beaten, exhausted prisoner.
“Her father was smart to disappear,” the man whispers, his thumb digging into the bruise blooming along my jaw. “But it didn’t save you.”
Something fractures deep in my chest.
They know who I am.
Not just my code name, not just that I’m Australian or working intelligence under a buried badge, they know who my father is. They know where I came from. They know me.
I press my lips tighter, a prayer caught between my teeth.
Jon, stay away. Don’t come for me. Don’t be the one they kill to hurt me. Please.
They eventually give up trying to get a rise out of me.
I hear one of them spit, the wet slap of it hitting concrete too close to my boot, before the door slams again, the metal vibrating with the force.
The sound rings through the room, rattling the chains at my wrists, then fades back into the heavy hum of pipes and distant machinery.
I don’t let myself relax. Not even for a second. I don’t trust silence. Not anymore.
But then it hits.
The quiet.
The weight of it.
Heavy enough to crush lungs.
I let myself fall back against the wall, chains scraping, head tipping toward the damp brick.
The cold soaks through the back of my skull, grounding me and shaking me loose all at once.
The flashback rushes in before I can stop it.
Not a memory. A lifeline. Something warm to cling to while the dark presses in.
Jon’s voice is sharp, unforgiving.
“No. Again. Elbow tight. You’ll shatter your wrist if you shoot like that under pressure.”
I reset my stance, boots kicking dust over spent shells.
The smell of gunpowder hangs thick in the air, stinging my nose and tongue.
We’re alone at the range, the sun barely cresting the trees behind us.
The sky is a washed-out gray-blue, the kind of light that makes everything look washed clean, even when it isn’t.
No one else dares come here this early. Not when he’s like this.
Not when he’s furious.
“You wanna play soldier? Then act like one.” His hand comes up, wraps around my waist, and hauls me into position.
It’s not gentle. It never is when he’s trying to keep me alive.
His chest brushes my back, solid heat and tension all wrapped in worn leather and restraint.
I can feel the steady rise and fall of his breathing against my spine, the coiled energy in him like a loaded spring.
“I should’ve stopped this before it started,” he mutters near my ear.
His breath ghosts over my cheek, warm and angry.
“You didn’t,” I shoot back, lining up my sights, pretending my heart isn’t trying to kick through my ribs. The target blurs for a second, then sharpens again as I blink. I refuse to look at him. If I do, I’ll forget how to aim.
“I should have.”
There’s pain in his voice. Not just anger—regret. Like he’s already lost something.
Like I’m already gone.
His hand slides up, fingers curling around my wrist, correcting my grip, thumb pressing into the tendon until I adjust the angle exactly the way he wants. “You don’t belong here, Delilah.”
“I do.”
The words come out softer than I mean them to, more plea than declaration.
He exhales through his nose, the sound hardened at the edges. “You don’t see it now, but this job eats people. Chews through them from the inside. You think you’re tough, but I’ve buried tougher.”
I fire the round. It hits center mass. Dead center. The paper jerks, flutters, then swings back into place with a lazy sway.
He doesn’t compliment me.
“Just go back,” he says quietly, the fight leaving his voice, leaving something rougher behind. “Before it gets bad.”
“I’m already in,” I whisper. I don’t know if I mean the job or him. Maybe both. “You can’t pull me out now.”
He flinches—barely—but I feel it. In the way his hand leaves my waist, in the fraction of space he puts between our bodies. In the silence that follows, in the distance he suddenly creates between us like a wall dropping.
He doesn’t speak again, not even when I fire three more rounds clean through the heart. Each shot lands where it should. Each one feels a little less satisfying.
Back in the dark, I press my eyes shut, the echo of gunfire ringing louder than the Russian threats. The phantom warmth of his chest at my back lingers like a cruel joke.
He told me not to do this.
Told me it would break me.
Told me to run, but I stayed.
And now I’m paying for it in blood and silence.
They know who I am, which means I’m not a prisoner.
I’m bait.
The truth of it lands like a blade, slow and clean, slicing through the last of my hope. They didn’t grab me for leverage. This isn’t a scare tactic. They knew who I was from the start. My name, my bloodline, my training. They took me so Greenport would come. So he would come.
And now I wait like a trap with a heartbeat.
The silence stretches, and I count seconds to keep from unraveling. Thirty-three. Thirty-four. Thirty-five—
Something shifts.
It’s small at first—air pressure, maybe.
The kind of thing you only notice when your senses are raw and screaming, when your body is attuned to survival like it’s a song on repeat.
A subtle change in the way the cold sits on my skin.
Then it’s a thud. Distant. Muffled. A body dropping?
No, two. A grunt. Boots sprinting. The staccato echo of chaos starting somewhere down the hall.
Before I know it, it’s pure chaos.
The door doesn’t creak this time. It explodes open, slamming against the concrete wall with a shriek of rusted hinges.
Light from the corridor slices into the room in a harsh, yellow strip, making the dust and smoke look like it’s alive.
Shadows burst through the frame. I blink against the sudden brightness, momentarily blinded, but I know that silhouette.
The mass of him. The speed. The precision of movement.
King.
He moves like a storm—all fire and calculation—with that stupid shirt draped over his face, just like always. A makeshift mask to hide the snarl I know he wears underneath. Shoulders wide, steps sure, eyes locked on the threats as if I’m already checked and accounted for in the corner of his mind.
Two Russians rush forward, but they’re too slow.
Too loud. Too cocky. One goes down with a sickening crack—neck or knee, I can’t tell from this angle—and the other is slammed into the wall so hard the plaster caves in, dust raining down like ash.
King doesn’t stop. He’s a moving wall, all momentum and violence, pushing through them like he’s done this a thousand times.
He pivots toward me, reaching for the rope at my wrists, but he hesitates. Just long enough for a shot to ring out.
He grunts, jerks back, body twisting, and three more men swarm in like they were waiting for that exact opening.
One slams the blunt end of a rifle against the back of King’s skull, and I see him stagger.
His mask shifts. His arms lift, reflexively defensive, but the numbers aren’t in his favor.
They swarm like wolves. Boots, fists, blows that would shatter bone if they landed on anyone less stubborn than him.
He goes down hard, landing next to me with a grunt, blood already seeping through his shirt from a gash on his ribs. The impact rattles through the floor and up my spine.
“Get his gear!” someone shouts in Russian.
They tear the comms unit from his ear, fingers ripping the wire like they’re tearing out a vein. They yank the vest over his head, rough and eager, and stomp on the small black transmitter with deliberate, gloating pressure. It crunches beneath a boot like it deserved to die.
But not before I hear it.
His voice.
Jon.
“—King, report. What do you see? King?”
Then static. Then silence.
My lungs stop working.
Jon didn’t come. He sent someone else.
And for a moment—just one—I wish they’d killed the transmitter sooner because that voice undoes me more than the bruises, more than the fear.
It cuts through the fantasy I’d been clinging to.
The one where he stormed through that door with blood on his knuckles and my name on his lips.
The one where he proved, without a doubt, that I wasn’t the only one who felt it.
Every look. Every argument. Every electric second, when our hands brushed too long or our stares locked too hard. Every time his gaze dipped to my mouth and then snapped away like he’d burned himself.
I thought he wanted me too.
I thought.
God, I’m so stupid.
“Your boyfriend sent someone else,” one of the Russians mocks as he kicks King’s rifle out of reach. The metal skitters across the concrete and slams into the far wall. “Guess you’re not worth as much as you thought.”
I don’t look at him. I don’t flinch. I keep my eyes pinned to a crack in the floor, to the smear of King’s blood spreading slowly toward my boot.
But inside, I’m falling apart. Because he’s not my boyfriend; he never has been, and apparently, he never will be. He’s my captain. My handler. My mistake.
King groans beside me, rolling onto his side, blood slicking his shoulder.
His breathing is rough, uneven, but he’s still here.
His eyes meet mine beneath the fold of his mask, and for once, they’re not arrogant or cocky or even amused.
They’re furious. With the enemy, with himself—for failing.
For getting caught. For not being enough to get us both out.
He doesn’t speak, but I see the questions in his gaze.
Are you okay? Did they touch you? Did they find out more than they should?
I blink once. That’s all he gets. One answer. It has to be enough.
The Russians shout back and forth, arguing about who calls it in and what to do now that they have two. I hear the word “Greenport” again. I hear my father’s name, spit out like a curse. They know King’s one of theirs. They’re salivating with the leverage. They think they’ve won.
But none of that lands as hard as the hollow that’s opened up inside me.
Jon didn’t come.
And now I’m not sure if I want him to.
Because I’m not sure what’s worse—dying here with all this silence inside me… or living long enough to realize I imagined everything that ever passed between us.