Chapter 11
SIERRA
The false intel is live, the trap is set, and all we can do now is wait for Shepherd to take the bait.
Eighteen hours have passed since Chris and I transmitted the encrypted data. Eighteen hours of hiking through terrain that makes my wounded shoulder scream with every step. Eighteen hours of climbing to this godforsaken ridge that Chris swears is the perfect intercept point.
He's right. Of course he's right.
The ridge sits at the convergence of three valleys, high enough for line-of-sight communication across the entire northern quadrant.
Chris knows this mountain like most people know their own neighborhood.
Every dead drop, every supply cache, every place the trafficking network uses to relay information.
This spot? This is their hub. Messages route through here before dispersing to operations sites. If Shepherd responds to our bait, the signal will pass through this ridge.
If. The word hangs heavy in the cold air.
I huddle behind an outcropping of rock, portable receiver balanced on my knees, laptop open despite the battery drain.
Chris insisted we bring the solar charger—another piece of gear he "liberated" from an unattended cabin.
The small panel sits angled toward the weak winter sun, trickling power into my devices.
Five hours we've been here. Five hours of watching signal patterns, monitoring frequencies, waiting for something that might never come.
My shoulder throbs. The bandage needs changing but we're conserving supplies. Infection is a risk I'll worry about if we survive the next twenty-four hours.
Chris is twenty yards away, prone on the ridge with his rifle, scanning the approaches through his scope. We've been trading off—two hours on watch, two hours rest. Neither of us actually sleeps during rest periods. Just sits with weapons ready, listening to the mountain.
The receiver crackles. Static, then nothing. False alarm. I've heard a dozen of those today.
I pull my jacket tighter, flex my fingers to keep circulation going. January in Alaska is no joke. Even with Chris's gear, even with layers and heat packs, the cold finds ways in. Seeps through fabric, settles into bones, makes your joints ache and your thoughts slow.
Focus. I force my attention back to the screen, run another diagnostic on the decryption software. Everything's operational. All I need is a signal.
"Anything?" Chris's voice is low, barely audible over the wind.
"Static and more static."
"They'll come. Healy's not the type to let a threat linger."
Healy. Deputy Director Lawrence Healy. The name I planted in our false intel.
The man I identified through linguistic analysis as the most likely candidate for Shepherd.
Former Army intelligence, served in Iraq during the same period as several known trafficking facilitators.
Currently oversees DOJ Organized Crime operations in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska.
The man with access to everything. Case files. Witness protection details. Undercover placements. He could feed the network intel with one hand while directing federal investigations with the other.
The perfect mole.
If I'm right. If the linguistic patterns I identified actually point to him and not some other bilingual fed with Great Lakes roots and intelligence training.
If I'm wrong, we just painted a target on an innocent man and accomplished nothing except our own deaths.
The receiver crackles again. Different this time. Not static. A signal. Weak, but there.
"Chris." My voice comes out sharper than intended. "I've got something."
He's beside me in seconds, rifle slung across his back. Moves like a ghost for someone his size.
I adjust the receiver, fine-tune the frequency. The signal strengthens, resolves into discrete pulses. Encrypted, high-frequency burst transmission. Exactly what we've been waiting for.
"How long to decrypt?" Chris asks.
"Depends on the encryption level. Could be minutes, could be hours." I open the decryption software, set it to work. "But if this is Shepherd responding to our bait, they'll be using the same protocols I've already mapped."
The algorithm runs. Fifteen seconds. Thirty. My shoulder screams in protest as I lean forward, intent on the screen.
There. The encryption breaks. Text resolves from gibberish into readable English interspersed with Russian phrases.
"Alpha team, converge on coordinates. Target is analyst, secondary is witness. Secure all electronic devices. Eliminate both if extraction not viable."
The words hang on the screen, cold and final as a death sentence.
"How long?" Chris asks.
I check the timestamp, cross-reference with known travel times from base camps to this area. "Six hours. Maybe eight if weather slows them."
"That's not enough time to get clear."
"We're not running." I scroll through the transmission data, isolate the voice signature embedded in the header. "We're ending this."
The voice print runs through my database. Comparing phonemes, syntax patterns, regional markers. The analysis takes ninety seconds that feel like hours.
Then the match pops up. 99.7% probability.
Deputy Director Lawrence Healy.
"Got him," I whisper.
Chris leans over my shoulder, reads the identification. His whole body goes rigid. "He sent my team into that ambush. He knew exactly where we'd be, exactly when we'd arrive. Joel and Tate died because of him."
"Then we make sure everyone knows it."
I pull up the evidence package I've been compiling.
Voice prints from this transmission and three others I've intercepted.
Linguistic analysis showing consistent patterns across five years of trafficking communications.
Financial traces linking Healy to offshore accounts.
Intercepted messages detailing operations.
Everything. Every piece of proof we need to burn Healy's entire network.
"We need a failsafe," Chris says. "If they take us out—"
"Already done." I show him the automated upload protocol. "I check in every twelve hours using a secure code. If I miss two check-ins, everything uploads to FBI, DOJ Internal Affairs, and three major media outlets simultaneously."
"Dead man's switch."
"Exactly." I save the final package, encrypt it with military-grade protocols. "If we go down, he goes down with us."
Chris nods slowly. "Smart."
The wind picks up, howling across the ridge. I close the laptop, tuck it into its protective case. My hands are shaking—not from cold. From adrenaline. From the knowledge that in a few hours, armed professionals are coming to kill us both.
"Sierra." Chris's voice pulls me back. "We should talk about—"
"Don't." I cut him off. "Don't do the 'in case we don't make it' speech. We're making it."
"I wasn't going to say that."
I meet his eyes. Hope and determination flicker in his expression, along with something deeper I'm not ready to examine.
"When I came here," I say quietly, "I was running.
From Chicago, from the warehouse, from the fact that I almost died and it didn't even matter because the network kept operating.
From the surveillance photos that got me burned.
From feeling like no matter how hard I fought, I was always three steps behind. "
Chris is quiet, listening. Really listening. Not interrupting, not offering platitudes.
"I thought maybe Alaska would be different," I continue. "Remote enough that I could do the work without it costing everything. Without having to look over my shoulder every second. Without wondering if today's the day someone recognizes me and finishes what they started in that warehouse."
"But?"
"But you." The words come out rougher than I intend.
"You stopped me from running. Reminded me why I became a cop in the first place.
Not to hide behind linguistics and data analysis, safely removed from the fight.
To actually fight. To make a difference even when it's hard and dangerous and probably stupid. "
"Sierra—"
"Let me finish." I need to say this while I still have the courage.
While there's still time. "I spent five years undercover on various cases pretending to be someone else.
Got so good at lying that sometimes I forgot who I was underneath.
Then Chicago happened and my cover got blown and I thought maybe that was it. Maybe I'd lost myself for good."
I look up at him, this man who's been living as a ghost, who understands what it means to lose yourself in the fight.
"You reminded me," I whisper. "Who I am. Who I want to be. Someone who doesn't run when things get hard."
Chris steps closer. His hand comes up, cups my face with a gentleness that seems impossible for someone with so much violence in his past. The touch is careful, reverent, like I'm something precious instead of someone who stumbles into bear traps and gets shot.
"You did the same for me," he says, voice low and rough. "Reminded me I'm more than a ghost on this mountain. More than what Healy tried to turn me into. More than guilt and rage and survival."
His thumb traces my cheekbone, and I lean into the touch despite myself. Despite knowing that getting attached to someone in our situation is dangerous and foolish and exactly the kind of thing that gets people killed.
"I thought I was dead," he continues. "Not literally, but inside. Where it counts. Eleven months of existing but not living. Of breathing but not feeling anything except cold and anger. Then you show up with your sharp tongue and your refusal to quit and suddenly I'm—"
"What?" I prompt when he stops.
"Alive again." The admission seems to cost him. "Wanting things I have no right to want. Like a future. Like tomorrow."
I close the distance between us. Don't know who moves first—maybe both of us. Maybe it doesn't matter.