Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
The truck’s headlights cut through the predawn mist, twin beams illuminating the winding mountain road like searchlights in fog. Wyatt’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel, his jaw clenched so tight he could feel the beginning of a headache pulsing at his temples.
He was driving too fast for these hairpin turns, especially with the lingering dampness from last night’s storm. One wrong move, one split second of inattention, and he’d be over the edge, tumbling into the ravines that had swallowed more than one careless driver over the years.
Maybe that would be simpler.
The thought came unbidden, shocking him enough that he eased off the accelerator. A few miles farther, he pulled into Redemption Point, a scenic overlook that tourists frequented during daylight hours but was deserted in these liminal moments before sunrise.
He cut the engine. Silence rushed in—not the complete absence of sound, but the living quiet of the mountains. Wind through pine needles. A distant owl. The cooling tick of the truck’s engine. The thunder of his own pulse in his ears.
Wyatt leaned forward, resting his forehead against the steering wheel. Exhaustion pulled at him with leaden hands, but it wasn’t the kind sleep could cure. This bone-deep weariness came from living divided—from being half present in every moment, from the constant vigilance required to remember which lies he’d told to whom.
His phone sat heavy in the cup holder, screen dark and accusing. Raven would be waking soon. He could picture her precisely—hair tousled from sleep, eyes slowly opening and focusing on the day, the way she’d reach across the bed for him before remembering he wasn’t there.
Again.
He picked up the phone, thumb hovering over her name. One call. He could tell her something—not everything, but something to ease the hurt he’d seen etching deeper lines around her mouth each day.
“Operational security isn’t just bureaucratic protocol—it’s what keeps people alive.” Agent Kwan’s warning from their last briefing echoed in his mind. People including Raven.
Wyatt’s finger moved away from her name. Instead, he pulled up a photo—one taken three summers ago at the lake, before this assignment, before the lies. They’d taken a rare weekend away, just the two of them, in a cabin on the water. The picture caught Raven mid-laugh, her head thrown back, sunlight setting her skin aglow, water droplets sparkling in her dark hair. He’d snapped it right after pushing her off the dock, right before she’d grabbed his ankle and pulled him in after her.
God, when was the last time he’d heard her laugh like that?
He traced her face on the screen with his thumb, a poor substitute for the real thing. Ten days. That’s all the time left before her ultimatum expired. Ten days to wrap up months of painstaking work. Ten days to bring down Moss’s entire operation. Ten days to save his marriage.
The phone rang in his hand, the vibration jarring him from his thoughts. Agent Kwan’s name flashed on the screen.
“O’Hara,” he answered, his voice gravel rough from lack of sleep and emotion held in check.
“Where are you? I’ve been trying to reach you for twenty minutes.” Kwan’s voice was sharp, professional, with that edge of constant urgency that seemed to define her.
“Taking the long way back. Needed to clear my head.” He glanced at the eastern horizon, where the darkness had begun to soften with the first hints of dawn. “What do you need?”
“We’ve got movement on the Murphy shipment timeline. Moss is pushing it up—Thursday instead of next week. The surveillance photos just came in.” She paused, and he could hear the faint sounds of papers rustling. “You don’t sound so good, O’Hara.”
“I’m fine.” The lie came automatically, worn smooth by repetition.
“No, you’re not.” Kwan’s tone shifted, softening almost imperceptibly. Few would have caught it, but Wyatt had spent enough time with her to recognize when the agent gave way to the human being. “Talk to me. Is it your wife?”
Wyatt exhaled slowly, watching his breath form a small cloud in the chilly mountain air. “She gave me two weeks. To explain or—” He couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Or she walks,” Kwan supplied. “I’m sorry. But you know we can’t?—”
“Can’t compromise the operation. Can’t risk the safety of the agents involved. Can’t jeopardize months of work.” He recited the reasons he’d repeated to himself a thousand times like a mantra. “I know the protocol, Kwan.”
“This is bigger than just one relationship, Wyatt.” Her use of his first name underscored the personal nature of the conversation. “The amount of fentanyl in this shipment could devastate communities across three states.”
“You think I don’t know that?” His voice rose, echoing slightly in the confines of the truck cab. “You think I’m not reminded of it every time I sit across from Moss, pretending to be the kind of man who would let poison flow into his hometown for profit? Every time I close my eyes and see the faces of overdose victims from my last case?”
Silence stretched between them, taut as a wire.
“I know you know,” Kwan finally said, her voice quiet. “That’s why you’re our best asset. Why you’ve lasted this long undercover without breaking. But I need you at one hundred percent, O’Hara. I need your head in the game.”
“It is.” Another lie. Another brick in the wall between him and the truth.
“Is it?” she challenged. “Because from where I’m sitting, you’re a man being torn in half. And split focus gets agents killed.”
Wyatt’s gaze drifted to the photo of Raven still open on his phone. “What would you have me do? She thinks I’m having an affair, Kwan. She’s sleeping in the guest room. She’s stopped asking where I’ve been or when I’ll be home. It’s like she’s already gone, just waiting for the deadline to make it official.”
“I wish I had an easy answer,” Kwan said after a moment, her usual brisk efficiency giving way to rare candor. “God knows I’ve lost enough of my own relationships to this job to understand what you’re facing. But the timeline’s accelerated now. Thursday’s shipment could be our last chance to bring down Moss’s entire network. After that?—”
“After that, I can tell her everything,” Wyatt finished. “If she’s still there to hear it.”
The first true light of dawn broke over the eastern mountains, painting the sky in watercolor washes of pink and gold. Below the overlook, Laurel Valley began to emerge from the shadows, the town he’d sworn to protect coming slowly awake. Somewhere down there, in their Craftsman with the blue door and white trim, Raven was starting her day, carrying the weight of his secrets without even knowing what they were.
“I’ll send the new surveillance photos to your secure drop,” Kwan said, reverting to professional efficiency. “Briefing at 1400 hours at the safe house. And O’Hara?” She paused. “Get some sleep. You’re no good to anyone running on fumes.”
The call ended. Wyatt set the phone down and rubbed his hands over his face, the stubble on his jaw rough against his palms. Sleep was a luxury he couldn’t afford, not with the Summer Festival starting today. The town would be crawling with tourists, creating both additional security challenges and perfect cover for Moss’s people to move unnoticed.
He’d need to do a sweep of the downtown area before the crowds arrived. Check in with Blaze about the security arrangements. Review the latest intelligence.
And somehow, find five minutes to stop by Raven’s boutique. Not because it would fix anything—those wounds ran too deep for casual conversation to heal—but because he needed to see her. To remind himself what he was fighting for. To store up the sight of her like water before a drought.
The sun crested the mountains fully now, spilling light across the valley in a bright cascade. Wyatt started the truck, the familiar rumble of the engine settling into his bones. He took one last look at Raven’s laughing face on the screen before tucking the phone away. Ten days. Somehow, he had to make it enough.
Putting the truck in gear, he began the descent into Laurel Valley, into the web of obligations and deceptions that had become his life. But for the first time in months, he felt the faintest stirring of something like hope. Thursday’s shipment. The operation’s endgame. The chance, however slim, to reclaim the life he’d put on hold.
To reclaim Raven, if she would still have him.
As he drove, Wyatt’s mind slipped almost involuntarily to the words his grandmother used to say about forgiveness. “Some rivers run slow and quiet,” she’d tell him. “Others crash and thunder. But they all reach the sea eventually. Forgiveness is like that—it finds its way home in its own time.”
He desperately hoped she was right.