Chapter 6 #2
"How did you survive?"
"Ran. Moved before they could finish the job. Tracked their radio chatter, avoided their search pattern." I pause. "Left a blood trail a mile long, but the snow covered it. They assumed I'd bled out somewhere in the wilderness. Eventually, so did everyone else."
She doesn't offer platitudes. Doesn't say "I'm sorry" or "it wasn't your fault" or any of the meaningless phrases people use when they don't know what death actually looks like. She sits with it for a moment. Then she says, "I've held someone bleeding out too. It doesn't leave you."
My chest tightens. Not breaks—it's been broken for a long time. But cracks wider, letting in light I'm not sure I want.
"Afghanistan?" I ask.
"Syria. I was asked to go because of my ability to decipher and break codes and my linguistic skills.
An IED took out their transport. I ended up holding pressure on a wound while the medic worked on someone else.
" She drinks her coffee, eyes distant. "Kid was nineteen.
Kept asking if his mom would be proud. Died before the helicopter arrived. "
We sit with that shared ground. Two people who've seen the worst of what humans can do, who carry those moments like stones in our pockets.
"Before I came to get you," I say, shifting gears because lingering in the past won't solve the present, "I tracked the intruder. Found their route in, their observation point. They watched you for at least an hour before making their move."
Sierra straightens. "What else?"
I reach into my jacket pocket and pull out the handheld radio. Set it on the ground between us. "They dropped this. Encrypted frequency. Professional gear—not something local poachers would carry."
She picks it up, turns it over in her hands. Her expression hardens as she recognizes what it means.
"Someone connected to the network," she says.
"Has to be. Same equipment I saw before, same frequencies they were using for coordination. Which means—"
"They know I'm here because someone told them." Her jaw tightens. "Someone on the inside."
"Same as what happened to me." I lean forward, elbows on my knees. "We were sent on a mission through official channels. Encrypted coordinates, standard protocol. But someone high up knew exactly where we'd be and when. Cut our communications. Set up a professional kill team to be waiting for us."
"Do you know who?"
"I have suspicions. Nothing concrete. But there are only so many people who had access to our investigation notes, who knew our patrol routes.
" The names run through my head like a litany.
Garcia, who always seemed too interested in our progress.
Thompson, who transferred out two weeks after the attack.
Whoever's running logistics now. "Could be any of them. Could be all of them."
Sierra absorbs this, her analytical mind already working through implications and connections. "The same network that killed Joel and Tate is the one destroying evidence now. And if they're willing to kill federal agents—"
"They won't hesitate to kill anyone." I finish the thought she doesn't want to speak aloud. "Especially one who's already exposed networks like this before."
The wind rattles the tarp. Snow accumulates at the edge of our shelter, building a wall between us and the world.
"How did you know?" Sierra asks. "About the cabin being sabotaged."
"Heard the sound of a snowmobile headed your way. Followed it. Saw someone watching then smelled gas. It has a distinct odor even in freezing temperatures.” I refill my coffee, more for something to do with my hands than because I want more.
"Took me about thirty seconds to find the cut line.
Clean work. Professional. Meant to look like equipment failure if you didn't know what to look for. "
"But you knew what to look for."
"Military training. Then federal training. Then survival training the hard way." I meet her eyes across the fire. "I know what it looks like when someone wants you dead but needs it to look like an accident."
She looks at me in the firelight, and the calculation happens: weighing risks, measuring trust, deciding how much to reveal.
Finally, she says, "The documents I've been reviewing.
The patterns I'm seeing. It's not just poaching, Chris.
It's a full commercial operation with government protection.
Permits that shouldn't exist, oversight that doesn't happen, money flowing through accounts that trace back to—" She stops, shakes her head.
"I'm not ready to say yet. Not until I'm certain. "
"But you're close."
"Close enough that someone's worried." She looks at the radio again. "Close enough to kill for."
The pieces click together in my head. Nate and now Sierra are investigating the same network that killed Joel and Tate.
Someone on the inside feeding information to the wrong people.
An escalating pattern of violence meant to look like accidents or natural causes.
And now Sierra, trapped on a mountain with a ghost who's supposed to be dead.
"You can't go back to that cabin," I say quietly.
She looks at me, fire reflected in her dark eyes. There's fear there, buried under layers of determination and professional distance. But there's also something else. Resolve.
"Then I guess I'm staying with you," she replies.
The words hang between us, loaded with implications neither of us is ready to examine.
Staying together means shared risk. Shared vulnerability.
It means I can't disappear into the mountains anymore, can't maintain the isolation that's kept me alive.
And it means Sierra can't go back to being just an observer, documenting from a safe distance.
We're in this together now. Whether I like it or not.
The fire crackles between us, casting dancing shadows on the rock wall. Outside, the storm rages with no sign of letting up. We're stuck here until dawn at least, possibly longer if the weather doesn't break.
I look at Sierra. Firelight catches her profile, the determined set of her jaw.
She's not backing down. Not running. Even after the sabotage, after learning what happened to Joel and Tate, after seeing exactly what kind of danger she's walked into.
She's settling in, pulling that thermal blanket tighter, like she plans to see this through.
Eleven months I've kept everyone at arm's length. Eleven months of no names, no connections, no one close enough to bleed when the bullets start flying again. But Sierra's here now, in my camp, drinking my coffee, sharing my fire. I brought her here. Made that choice when I could have walked away.